61–70 of 171 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
can't google just threaten to pull out like they did in australia?
That could indeed potentially create a little bit of friction for a few weeks before everyone had replaced their services with different solutions.
can't the govt simply ban google and fund these 'different solutions'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's revenue per user is unfortunately much higher than $10/year.
Do you have exact numbers? The estimates I've seen are about $60 per user per annum, so about $5 per month. That's for all services, not just search. So for less than a Netflix subscription you have Youtube, Gmail, Search, Drive, Translate, Calendar, Maps, Photos, Hangouts and more. Services that many people use regularly. It wouldn't be hard to argue that any of these products is worth a lot more than $10 a year, bu…
(Also, many users would agree on the value but balk at redirecting funds from an existing allocation to continue service on something they've already gotten for free.)
God no. Governments absolutely suck at changing the incentives to deter bad behaviour. Do we really want more cookie banners and GDPR consent forms? Maybe I'm missing something, but why can't we block all forms of stateful identifiers to third-party content? First-party cookies, localStorage, etc only. Is there some big legitimate use case I'm not seeing? Having said that, I'm sure if they were blocked, tech companie…
Other identifiers are required for the functionality of the service, such as your contact details or information you enter in a social network.
Given you can't work around providing the information, the only solution is to use legislation to prevent that information for being used in malicious ways.
Also, the current situation with the consent prompts in Europe is not because of the GDPR but because of its lack of enforcement. The GDPR learned from the former "cookie law" (which I agree was a shit-show) and explicitly prohibits annoying/misleading consent prompts.
What the EU should really do is fine / tax monopolists like Google and Facebook into submission then invest that money into the EU-based startup ecosystem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's revenue per user is unfortunately much higher than $10/year.
Do you have exact numbers? The estimates I've seen are about $60 per user per annum, so about $5 per month. That's for all services, not just search. So for less than a Netflix subscription you have Youtube, Gmail, Search, Drive, Translate, Calendar, Maps, Photos, Hangouts and more. Services that many people use regularly. It wouldn't be hard to argue that any of these products is worth a lot more than $10 a year, bu…
[1] https://mondaynote.com/the-arpus-of-the-big-four-dwarf-every...
God no. Governments absolutely suck at changing the incentives to deter bad behaviour. Do we really want more cookie banners and GDPR consent forms? Maybe I'm missing something, but why can't we block all forms of stateful identifiers to third-party content? First-party cookies, localStorage, etc only. Is there some big legitimate use case I'm not seeing? Having said that, I'm sure if they were blocked, tech companie…
Some stateful identifiers are required for technical purposes. IP addresses for example. Other identifiers are required for the functionality of the service, such as your contact details or information you enter in a social network. Given you can't work around providing the information, the only solution is to use legislation to prevent that information for being used in malicious ways. Also, the current situation wi…
Yeah that one's pretty unavoidable, but is at least for many people temporary and pseudonymous only. Once their dynamic IP rotates (granted this isn't the case for everybody), the connection is lost. Much better than every website with a "Like" button on the page allowing facebook to track you as you traipse across the internet.
> Other identifiers are required for the functionality of the service, such as your contact details or information you enter in a social network.
That's first-party information. You're not posting on facebook via an iframe on another site. If you choose to provide your information to facebook, they're gonna use it - legislation or not. Legal encodings of intent are always full of loopholes, even if they escape regulatory capture via lobbying. The best way to stop Facebook from getting information about you, is to not give them information.
> Also, the current situation with the consent prompts in Europe is not because of the GDPR but because of its lack of enforcement. The GDPR learned from the former "cookie law" (which I agree was a shit-show) and explicitly prohibits annoying/misleading consent prompts.
I'm sure it won't be long before that argument goes to court and teams of lawyers spend the next decade arguing over the meaning of the word "annoying". Hence my argument that if we want Facebook to not know everything about us, perhaps we should stop them knowing everything about us?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the other way around. Things with technical solution should never be solved by law. Lawmakers and law enforcement is absurdly expensive and law has unforeseen side effects, we should use that only when absolutely necessary.
We'll probably disagree on this, but I think we're well past the point where this is "absolutely necessary". Some of best engineering talent in the world is spent on engineering the internet to 1) misuse human psychological affinities to lure you in and keep you in and 2) build large profiles of you to make as much money from (1) as possible. Targeted advertising and the incentives it creates should be banned as a be…
At this point honestly I just wish for a general ban on tracking ads of any kind. Just give me good old contextual ads and remove some MBs of js, with the only purpose of tracking me, from most websites of the internet.
The thing is these ads are not exactly effective either. I mean you'll read about the guru's with 90% conversion rate at 0.50c per click or some garbage like that but when you run them yourself, with what is considered a normal company (not a unicorn) you somehow find yourself with a They are crazy cheap though and essentially act like a TV/Radio ad. It's about getting repeated exposure, even if it's not a direct con…
really excited for more popup policies to approve
They've lobbied hard to water down tracking bans to be "user choice", and then used dark patterns/malicious compliance to make not agreeing a horrible experience to wear people down, so that people just give up on privacy.