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The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

appenmedia.com

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Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#51

Post by Ekaros »

sterlind wrote: post #40
1970-01-01 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not missing anything. Here is the full text: (this could have been an email:) On Sept. 30, 2025, a Flock vice president logged into the Dunwoody PD’s Flock system and looked at a camera in the children’s gymnastics room of a private community center here in Dunwoody. He did not look at any other cameras in the entire 400-camera network that day. The community center shared their cameras directly to the PD unde…

why are private community centers installing Flock cameras indoors?

Why do they have any cameras indoors? Outside very specific time limited presentation uses...

Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#52

Post by Grimblewald »

mywittyname wrote: post #23
dghlsakjg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a hyper local business. The chance of making any revenue off EU users is close to 0, which is much higher than the cost of figuring out EU compliance. The conversation went like this: IT director: “If we serve ads or collect data from EU users we have to be GDPR compliant. That’ll cost several thousand dollars worth of employee time” Exec: “how much revenue is attributable to EU users.” IT: “Single digit dol…

GDPR compliance is good IT practice. It's easy to do, good for users, and states are rolling out similar laws. But now, instead of their story being read by people all over the world, having gone viral, it's just going to pirated. Not only losing them out on revenue, but recognition as well. This is part of the long death of online local news. They can't be bothered to do the simplest things for their site (make pers…

I get resistsnce. GDPR is good in theory but implementation has been shocking. Dark patterns in banners, banners when not required (ie no relevant cookies) etc. the gdpr banners as a whole make the internet a shitter experience. I categorically refuse work on anything requiring gdpr specific compliance and recommend against any practices which would require it on work I accept, and walk if demanded anyway.

I'm lucky in that I mostly work in areas where it really has no value add, and so far always get my way, but fuck I wish GDPR banners had some form of standard that didn't wreck internet experience in general.

Was it too hard to require the already opt-in nature of the cookies to no fuck with average user experience? no one in their right mind clicks accept all.

Was it too hard to enforce some default stance one can set?

Was it too hard to not fuck everything up without fixing the issue?

apprently. so now i have to constantly read and interpret information I have zero interest in to consistently hit the exact same button, to access information I _might_ be interested in. all of which is an excercise in dark pattern gymanastics so draining im near ready to swear off the open web entierly.

Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#53

Post by advisedwang »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #10
advisedwang wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This website is a small, local company. They have a newsletter signup page so they do collect user info. Quite likely they are not GDPR compliant (e.g. take longer than 30d to delete records, don't have a process for answering data requests etc). It is reasonable for them not to want to invest in getting the legal advise to know whether they are compliant or process improvements to become compliant, as there is no RO…

I’m still not clear why US companies with no business units in Europe feel the need to make any changes at all to be in compliance with a law that has no jurisdiction over them, but agree that Geofencing is a cheaper solution than asking a lawyer.

They geoblock EU users so that the EU doesn't have jurisdiction over them.

Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#54

Post by Our_Benefactors »

manytimesaway wrote: post #18
arjie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is going to go around complying with random rules from other countries, man. If you don't serve that population, just opt them out.

So we're supposed to deal with your bullshit Patriot Act while GDPR is too "random" for you?

The GDPR is an overreach as evidenced by the OP kvetching about why a foreign country does not comply with his country’s regulations regarding cookie use.

What’s the corollary for the patriot act? AFAIK, its provisions would only affect immigration and travel, which happen inside a country’s borders.

Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#55

Post by manytimesaway »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #54
manytimesaway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we're supposed to deal with your bullshit Patriot Act while GDPR is too "random" for you?

The GDPR is an overreach as evidenced by the OP kvetching about why a foreign country does not comply with his country’s regulations regarding cookie use. What’s the corollary for the patriot act? AFAIK, its provisions would only affect immigration and travel, which happen inside a country’s borders.

(nice username)

Patriot Act, FISA, Cloud Act allows the USA to basically impose its justice over other countries. And it's never in the interest of its citizens.

Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#56

Post by hermanzegerman »

mandevil wrote: post #33
goldenarm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They complied by building a blocking system, instead of just disabling cookies with a flag, which would have taken exactly the same effort.

This would be true if they were working from a baremetal Apache server. But they seem to be using a vendor, Cloudflare, for their CDN. And so I strongly suspect that they used their existing Cloudflare account to do it. Just type the countries you want to block into a field in the Cloudflare UI and you're done. I've used that UI myself (not for GPDR reasons but for compliance with my countries sanctions). Significant…

You don't need to get an Audit for Compliance with GDPR.

Whoever told you that was scamming you

Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#57

Post by hermanzegerman »

Grimblewald wrote: post #52
mywittyname wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR compliance is good IT practice. It's easy to do, good for users, and states are rolling out similar laws. But now, instead of their story being read by people all over the world, having gone viral, it's just going to pirated. Not only losing them out on revenue, but recognition as well. This is part of the long death of online local news. They can't be bothered to do the simplest things for their site (make pers…

I get resistsnce. GDPR is good in theory but implementation has been shocking. Dark patterns in banners, banners when not required (ie no relevant cookies) etc. the gdpr banners as a whole make the internet a shitter experience. I categorically refuse work on anything requiring gdpr specific compliance and recommend against any practices which would require it on work I accept, and walk if demanded anyway. I'm lucky…

Just use an Add-On like Consent-O-Matic

Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#58

Post by XCSme »

The linked website shows this for me:

451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact hello@appenmedia.com or call 770-442-3278.

Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#59

Post by mandevil »

hermanzegerman wrote: post #56
mandevil wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be true if they were working from a baremetal Apache server. But they seem to be using a vendor, Cloudflare, for their CDN. And so I strongly suspect that they used their existing Cloudflare account to do it. Just type the countries you want to block into a field in the Cloudflare UI and you're done. I've used that UI myself (not for GPDR reasons but for compliance with my countries sanctions). Significant…

You don't need to get an Audit for Compliance with GDPR. Whoever told you that was scamming you

When you don't know what you're talking about, an option you always have is to be silent. I suggest that you exercise that option next time.

At the time I was doing this, it was part of a very large company that quarterly ran audits of all their own systems for security and legal compliance, and they did GPDR as one of their things to audit against.

So we were not scammed, we had our internal employees do their job.

Re: The creepiest 'sales demo' of all time

#60

Post by Grimblewald »

hermanzegerman wrote: post #57
Grimblewald wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get resistsnce. GDPR is good in theory but implementation has been shocking. Dark patterns in banners, banners when not required (ie no relevant cookies) etc. the gdpr banners as a whole make the internet a shitter experience. I categorically refuse work on anything requiring gdpr specific compliance and recommend against any practices which would require it on work I accept, and walk if demanded anyway. I'm lucky…

Just use an Add-On like Consent-O-Matic

given dark patterns employed to date, what makes you think this would generally work? If i wanted to capture all consent-o-matic users, I'd simply use text of buttons that don't line up with what the buttons descriptors are. human users are still able to hit the correct buttons succesfully but automated scripts start submitting "please, 3d scan my rectum at your first conveniance" style settings, and you'd never know unless you start using a whole suite of addons to prevent scripts form other sites, tracking cookies etc. from loaidng which itself suffering an arms race of its own that corporate interest is an attrition heavyweight in.

So, my problem remains, why do I now need an extra point of failure to surf the web due to something that was supposed to make it less, not more, hostile to do?

One could have acheived the same by simply banning addblock and cookie block detection. Simply let users set, in any privacy friendly browser or addon, whatever they like, and have it work reliably because industry isnt allowed to subvert.

Acheives the same while introducing less moving parts. the web is crazy bloated as it is, we need to trim back not stack on more.

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