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Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

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Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#441

Post by junto »

_v7gu wrote: post #209
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #65

I wonder - why didn't the the EU put the burden on user agents a.k.a. web browsers to handle the cookie notices? When I visit a site, before saving any cookies, have my user agent ask me if I want to allow cookies for that site. Could have a default "no cookies" option with a whitelist, or default "yes" with a blacklist. It would have been so much easier, with a far more consistent UX, wouldn't it have? Now we have t…

DNT existed, but websites decided they could freely ignore that. Hence the regulation

Technically they can ignore the users’ choices on cookie consent as well though. In fact, I would be curious just how many websites honor a user’s selection, and how many of them are just smoke and mirrors by having a consent modal that has zero subsequent value.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#442

Post by [deleted] »

MattHeard wrote: post #321
throwawaysleep wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us had no real problem with the ad-supported web in the first place. I was happy with the status quo. So yes, I do blame the government as I would be fine returning to the prior state.

"I would like website operators to assume that I consent to being tracked, so I'm annoyed that website operators are not allowed to assume that everybody consents to being tracked."

[deleted]

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#443

Post by phkahler »

alistairSH wrote: post #374
throwawaysleep wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us had no real problem with the ad-supported web in the first place. I was happy with the status quo. So yes, I do blame the government as I would be fine returning to the prior state.

A site can serve ads without tracking (and the banner) - the ads just couldn't be targeted at individuals. Instead they'd have to guess what ad was appropriate ("Rolling Stone" could serve everybody ads for Taylor Swift's latest album without a banner, etc).

>> A site can serve ads without tracking (and the banner) - the ads just couldn't be targeted at individuals.

The biggest problem with online advertising is not tracking users. It's a lack of trust between advertisers and pretty much everyone else. If you're going to pay for an ad, you want to be sure it was seen by a real person. I'm not sure that's the concern any more because click-through is more important than "seeing" an ad. Regardless, the goals are to make sure it's easy for a given advertiser to get on many web sites, easy for a site to get ads, and also possible to prevent fraud since there will obviously be multiple parties involved.

I suspect tracking users was an offshoot of just verifying that users were real to prevent fraud in the ad world. Not saying any of it is OK, but it seems like the way to prevent tracking is to find a way to verify authenticity while also preserving privacy.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#444

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #419
boxed wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law isn't that bad actually, just that the courts have been very slow. The dark UI patterns are actually illegal and have been judged so in court now. This realization just has to trickle down to the companies writing these cookie banners.

> The law isn't that bad actually I've clicked 3 cookie banners today alone and its not even 2pm yet. How many cookie banners have I clicked in my life so far? How many cookie banners can I expect to click over the remaining 40-50 years of my life? The law is objectively bad.

>The law is objectively bad.

No, the websites you visit are probably bad.

Which cookies did you have to accept/reject? What do they do? Why do the websites believe they must ask you to accept them?

Also, the law allow browsers to automatically accept/reject the cookies on your behalf (actually, the law does not care about which specific technology the websites use to collect and process personal data). You, as a user, can choose a browser/extension that rejects these cookies by default, except the necessary ones. I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/istilldontcar... and I haven't see a single cookie banner for years on desktop and mobile. I don't like cookies and I like the law.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#445

Post by rglullis »

nolok wrote: post #17

Imagine a market in which companies charge a lot of hidden fees behind their customers' back, and users are not happy when they realize after the fact. The law is updated to say you are not allowed to charge the user a fee unless you tell him in advance. Companies with tons of hidden fees decide to keep them but force you to read all the fees on every page of the menu before you can see the rest of the text, in the m…

> The law is updated to say you are not allowed to charge the user a fee unless you tell him in advance.

Why not a real regulation then to get rid of hidden fees and heavy fines/jail time for companies that are found to be doing it?

PG's argument (I hope) is that there is no point in talking about "regulation" and "customer protection" if companies STILL get away with their ridiculous and hostile practices.

There is no customer benefit in having user data collection and tracking. Companies do it only to exploit you. Even the usual BS excuses ("oh, we need user data to customize the experience") could be done completely in-device.

I don't want regulatory bodies to just give more hoops for other companies to jump. They will jump it anyway, because it is profitable to do so. What I want is for regulatory bodies to effectively stop predatory practices.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#446

Post by [deleted] »

LunaSea wrote: post #439
alistairSH wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A site can serve ads without tracking (and the banner) - the ads just couldn't be targeted at individuals. Instead they'd have to guess what ad was appropriate ("Rolling Stone" could serve everybody ads for Taylor Swift's latest album without a banner, etc).

This means you get less money for it and can't survive due to the lesser revenue.

[deleted]

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#447

Post by maccard »

qarl wrote: post #431
maccard wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company recently announced a game, and we launched a website for the game. There's no ̶t̶h̶i̶r̶d̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶t̶y̶ e:tracking cookies (I didn't make the site, but I do run it). Our US based legal team told us we needed a cookie banner if we were going to have visitors in the EU. I pushed back, but I lost, and ultimately it's not my fight.

Your legal team is holding the door open for the day they decide to start tracking. They probably won't tell you that, tho.

Our legal team is following the checklist that they have that they know is pre-approved

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#448

Post by hgomersall »

cseleborg wrote: post #232
rkangel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Clearly I am providing out of date information.

More interestingly, that article says: > We are also committing that going forward, we will only use cookies that are required for us to serve GitHub.com. A few pixels further down, on the cookie banner: > We use optional cookies to improve your experience on our websites and to display personalized advertising based on your online activity. I guess now we finally have a rule-of-thumb figure for what "going forward"…

OTOH, github.blog is not github.com.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#449

Post by actionfromafar »

LunaSea wrote: post #439
alistairSH wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A site can serve ads without tracking (and the banner) - the ads just couldn't be targeted at individuals. Instead they'd have to guess what ad was appropriate ("Rolling Stone" could serve everybody ads for Taylor Swift's latest album without a banner, etc).

This means you get less money for it and can't survive due to the lesser revenue.

This is contrafactual. Many things survived on exact that model before hyper targetted ads. And besides, with targetted ads the middle men take most of the cut.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#450

Post by d--b »

Well pg is right in that the EU should have forbidden tracking users completely.

But I'm pretty sure that close to 100% of pg's YC startups do track their users. So here's pg's shitting all over the regulators who made him a flower by still allowing his businesses to track people by tricking them into accepting cookies.

Ugh

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