[HN Gopher] TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints acr...
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TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 192 points
Date : 2021-02-16 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I recently spoke with an older brother of a young man, about 13,
| who is heavily addicted to TikTok. His brother told me that he
| has been skipping school to stay on his phone, and that when his
| phone is taken away, he flies into a screaming rage, and runs
| down the street barefoot.
| f430 wrote:
| Is this guy in China by any chance? There seems to be an
| extreme cases of phone/internet/game addiction in the PRC
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Does he get very far?
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Probably not... I think he comes back pretty quick. It's cold
| outside in these parts, and he's still just a kid throwing a
| temper tantrum, after all. I didn't get many details, was
| only a short chat. I was shocked by the story though. I don't
| recall being nearly as attached to anything as a kid.
| sva_ wrote:
| I don't know, but don't you think perhaps there's a reason
| other than being addicted to an app that makes said younger
| brother want to be hooked to his phone all day, avoiding things
| like school? Perhaps it's just an avenue to escape something.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Strangely enough, it's my friends who can't seem to have a good
| time without drugs who've told me how great tik tok is.
|
| In response, I shared some medium form (10-20 min) educational
| video essays on YouTube about whatever I thought they'd be most
| interested in as an example of media I trust. I could tell my
| friend understood the difference, but also was never going to
| admit his tik tok feed wasn't just as productive.
| llacb47 wrote:
| The report on which the BEUC complaint is based:
| https://www.beuc.eu/publications/beuc-x-2021-012_tiktok_with...
| djohnston wrote:
| As I click my 10,000th cookie modal to read this article, I am
| forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience
| better in any way, to which the answer is a resounding no. I
| understand the importance of it, but please prioritise revising
| its shortcomings rather than doubling down on being the most
| tech-hostile region in the developed world.
| AntiImperialist wrote:
| https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
| tester756 wrote:
| Blame sites that show cookie modal even when they use cookies
| only for auth or just tech stuff
|
| Also what if big companies want to make your experience as poor
| as possible in order to make you think that this law sucks?
|
| Maybe using private mode in browser is making your experience
| even worse?
| raverbashing wrote:
| With the cookie modal you start noticing which sites don't have
| it (and there are a couple)
|
| And sites can still provide ads. Google still provides ads to
| me with customizations turned off.
|
| So yeah, I'm pretty bothered by them as well but I know where
| the blame lies
| tushar-r wrote:
| > I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web
| experience better in any way, to which the answer is a
| resounding no.
|
| I actually find myself digging into the settings that are
| offered to click on "Reject All" where possible. I wish my
| region had the same data protections :-/
| yholio wrote:
| Reject third party cookies coupled with session only cookies
| works pretty well though.
| lrem wrote:
| Where's the "reject server-side fingerprinting"?
| y04nn wrote:
| I feel the same, the web is build around standards, and the
| fact that there is no standard for this central "feature" is a
| real pain to deal with everyday. If I had the time I would
| build a auto-reject browser plugin.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The website could have chosen to make your experience better by
| showing you 0 popups. EU isn't involved in the quality
| management of web experiences.
|
| To do that, of course, the website would need stop sending your
| latest ip address, your unique identifier, and the information
| that you're a techie interested in Tiktok to all ad agencies
| and data brokers.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I refuse to click them, and just let them hang there. If I can
| still read the article, great. If not, I leave the page.
| xxs wrote:
| Reader mode
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Here's the thing...
|
| There are a number of ways I can get to that content.
|
| However, I don't think the content is worth it.
|
| I've found a very strong correlation between low-quality
| content and low-quality presentation.
|
| When I see a site which pulls this kind of crap or requires
| several megs worth of JS just to display text, I just
| assume it's low-quality content and move on.
|
| Sometimes there are exceptions, but they're rare.
| quarantine wrote:
| There is work underway to improve the cookie modal situation:
| https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-epriv...
|
| Please also remember that the GDPR is also applicable outside
| the internet, and protects people from IRL data gathering.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| They are reworking the cookie law, it's just a complex piece of
| legislation. They are aware of its shortcomings, and want to
| tackle them through an enforced browser setting.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-epriv...
| csunbird wrote:
| > This will ensure that these popular services (WhatsApp,
| Facebook Messenger and Skype) guarantee the same level of
| confidentiality of communications as traditional telecoms
| operators.
|
| Sounds very ominous, don't law enforcement agencies have
| access to the "traditional telecoms operators" data?
|
| On topic, a Do-Not-Track header setting that automatically
| opts-out of everything and the new "legitimate interest"
| trend, would be awesome.
| hjek wrote:
| Get the Sticky Ducky add-on[0] for hiding fixed overlays, and
| add Fanboy's Cookiemonster list[1] to your adblocker of choice.
|
| [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-
| ducky/
|
| [1]: https://github.com/ryanbr/fanboy-
| adblock/blob/master/fanboy-...
| avianlyric wrote:
| The law wasn't designed to make your web experience better, or
| worse.
|
| It was simply designed to make it easier to exercise your right
| to privacy, by forcing companies (and by extension their
| websites) to get informed consent before they invade your
| privacy.
|
| There's many reasons why we're in our current mess, but I don't
| think making companies get informed consent is "tech-hostile".
| It's privacy invading hostile, and if privacy invasions are now
| synonymous with the tech-industry, then as an industry we need
| to take a long hard look in the mirror and decide if we're
| going to continue enabling this behaviour, or find other
| business models that don't rely on trampling the rights of the
| ignorant or uninformed.
|
| I honestly don't understand why people take such an issue with
| the concept of informed consent. It's one the foundations of a
| free and equal society.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Training older people and non tech literate people to just
| randomly click yes on every website has to be one of the
| greatest fails of the GDPR. I would say that people are even
| less safe now. Cookies, while annoying and privacy-eroding,
| never hacked someone's system like clicking yes to installing
| God knows what malware will do. We had just trained everyone to
| not do that.
| rospaya wrote:
| > I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web
| experience better in any way
|
| Yeah, and women's suffrage caused longer lines at the polls
| because more people vote so you would have to wait longer. It's
| not about the experience, it's about your rights.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The problem isn't the legislation but its lack of enforcement.
| The legislation itself explicitly prohibits annoying/misleading
| consent prompts.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Having to go through a menu of a few dozen items to see &
| choose what you'll allow to track you is annoying, but so
| long as sites are willing to track you in dozens of different
| ways there's really no way around it.
|
| Sites win because exercising your privacy rights even under
| the GDPR is an inherently annoying thing to do.
| nicbou wrote:
| There's a way around it: uBlock Origin, a few extra filter
| lists, and a block on third party cookies.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Sites win because exercising your privacy rights even
| under the GDPR is an inherently annoying thing to do.
|
| Under GDPR:
|
| - only cookies and data strictly required for the site's
| functionality don't require consent
|
| - collection of any other data requires consent
|
| - pre-ticked boxes, lack of "reject all" button, leading
| the user to click "allow all" and similar dark patterns are
| _not_ consent, and are, strictly speaking, violating the
| law.
|
| See? exercising your privacy rights under the GDPR should
| be extremely easy. Too bad the law isn't enforced
| vigorously enough.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| > The legislation itself explicitly prohibits
| annoying/misleading consent prompts.
|
| What does a non-annoying prompt look like?
| majkinetor wrote:
| There are more or less annoying prompts however. With the
| later kind I could coexist.
|
| Instagram has the most annoying one ever, if I stumble upon
| it by accident I am so annoyed that I need to count to 10.
| And I am not even using it, its just random click
|
| The far less annoying popups are barely noticeable and do
| not block/fade content or have missing options like "NO, I
| don't want cookies, let me in".
| serhatozgel wrote:
| A non-existing one, you go to your settings to enable it so
| they can track you.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| The fact that you need to download a _opt-out_ plugin to
| disable Google Analytics for tracking you is a prime example
| of failing enforcement.
| dfgdghdf wrote:
| Perhaps, but legislation should be designed carefully so that
| it can be enforced in a meaningful way
| kyrra wrote:
| I disagree. Pop-up fatigue causes people to just click the
| button that will get them to their content the fastest. While
| some people might dive into trying to opt out, when you get
| these pop-ups on every other site, many people are going to
| click the easiest button to make it go away. This is a poor
| law because it has to be done on every website.
|
| I think it may be better to have this as a decision the user
| chooses once within their browser, and the browser can then
| pass along the intention to the website. There can maybe also
| be a third option where the user could then choose on each
| site, and the browser would show the choices, rather than the
| website itself. This would standardize the UX around the
| issue.
| benplumley wrote:
| The law is that it needs to be as easy to reject cookies as
| it is to accept them. Ergo, "people are going to click the
| easiest button to make it go away" indicates a failure to
| enforce.
|
| I agree it'd be better handled by the browser than each
| website, though.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| My interpretation of that is that at least two buttons
| are required: a close (or "reject all") button, and an
| "accept all" button. Websites would then be free to add a
| third "customize" button if they wish.
|
| Unfortunately, many websites that I've seen have only
| "customize" and "accept all". And the customize pane then
| contains dozens of preselected checkboxes (which, AFAIK,
| isn't allowed, but I digress). Each checkbox is for a
| separate tracker I need to disable before clicking
| "save".
|
| The problem is _absolutely_ the lack of enforcement.[a]
| If it was being enforced better, these sites would be
| fined until they fix themselves.
|
| [a]: Yes, I'm aware that it is being enforced. I'm
| complaining that it's not enough.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Pop-up fatigue causes people to just click the button
| that will get them to their content the fastest.
|
| And why is that button allowed to be the "Accept
| Everything" button? There should be two buttons, equally
| easy to find and press.
| simion314 wrote:
| GDPR is not only about the browsers , it is applied outside
| of tech too, would be weird for the law to define browser
| standards . desktop apps standards and mobile apps
| standards. Developers should do their job, does w3c guys
| could decide how to handle this and not force politicians
| to decide for them.
|
| Sure some people will click accept but some of them will
| know who is the actual bad guy that sends their data to
| 100+ third parties and what websites are respecting them or
| at least respect the laws.
|
| I agree that browsers could do a better job, maybe
| implement a shit list, put all shitty websites there and
| ask you only once if you want to accept to allow this
| bastards to track and sell your data or if you want to open
| the website in a special container. Then if you decide to
| use the container the browsers should try to do their best
| to limit the tracking, maybe by blocking requests to the
| trackers, clearing caches often, disabling some features
| that could fingerprint you and if it works just disable JS.
|
| But who knows, maybe we will have to pass laws to force the
| popups to use certain fonts, colors and input types because
| the majority of websites are evil.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > This is a poor law because it has to be done on every
| website.
|
| The law doesn't require this, it only requires informed
| consent.
|
| > I think it may be better to have this as a decision the
| user chooses once within their browser, and the browser can
| then pass along the intention to the website. There can
| maybe also be a third option
|
| This is would be an allowable approach under GDPR. Someone
| just needs to build it and make it happen. Unfortunately
| the "do-not-track" debacle shows that ad companies aren't
| interested in playing ball. Hence our current mess.
| wickoff wrote:
| Legislation is problematic too. I can't be bothered to make a
| decision to make a decision about storing cookies every time
| I visit a website, so I click yes every time without reading.
| serhatozgel wrote:
| If the legislation were to be enforced, you would click
| "no" every time without reading.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Or just ignore/hide the banners, which by GDPR, may not
| be interpreted as consent.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| I, sometimes, think we could be a lot more developed(tech-wise)
| without regulation but... we got to the point when they are
| needed, badly.
|
| Dark patterns, web wide tracking, anti-consumer features.
| vendor lock-in, you name it are all over the place and common
| practice and not there to help/protect consumers.
| ploika wrote:
| I'm all for hostility to tech that's unnecessarily invasive and
| privacy-destroying.
| simias wrote:
| I see this mindset a lot but I don't really get it. You'd
| rather blame the legislation for forcing the websites to
| disclose all the tracking that they do instead of blaming the
| websites for tracking you in the first place?
|
| I'm very happy that I can at least click "say no to all" when I
| get to a new website. Hopefully if enough people do that,
| they'll realize that the current approach is counterproductive
| and switch to a different model eventually.
|
| I don't know if you've ever bothered to go through the list of
| "third parties" you can now opt-in to track you, but I'm
| frankly amazed by the sheer number of them. Literally hundreds.
| Before the GDPR I knew that I was tracked online, but honestly
| I underestimated the scale of it all. Apparently hundreds of
| companies around the world used to track my every step online.
| Good riddance.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier to just disable cookies in your browser
| then? And you can re-enable them on a per-site basis if you
| think you need them.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I'm using Enhanced Tracking Protection set to Strict, and I
| still get cookie banners. Is there any difference between
| saying "Allow All" and "Reject All"? Will "Reject All"
| reduce server-side tracking and sharing of information
| among data brokers?
| planb wrote:
| That law is a very bad execution on a very good idea. Simply
| making adherence to a do-not-track header mandatory would have
| solved the same problem without annoying anyone.
| volgar1x wrote:
| Or developers can stop using cookies on their website
| sva_ wrote:
| I think that they should've included something into the law,
| that makes it possible for a browser to automatically signify
| how a user wants their data to be used; for browsers to offer
| some interface to control these choices, and force websites to
| automatically accept these choices. I'm hopeful something like
| that will come around sometime. I think some browser (looking
| at firefox or brave here) needs to perhaps offer such an
| interface first, so that legislators could pick it up and make
| a law that'll make it possible to enforce compliance.
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Privacy conscious" need not be "tech hostile".
|
| Personally I feel the problem arose from trying to write
| extremely generalist legislation in the GDPR without actually
| addressing the economic incentives _OR_ mandating a technical
| solution.
|
| Mandating a technical solution such as "respect the DNT header"
| would have the disadvantage of limiting innovation, but would
| have forced a clear division of websites into "you can't browse
| here without turning DNT off" and ones that actually worked
| properly.
|
| Alternatively, just straight up banning the browser-targeted
| advertising practice would take away the economic incentive to
| do this kind of nonsense. That would force the "how do we get
| paid" question again, which remains awkward.
| schmorptron wrote:
| In ublock origin, there are optional annoyance filters that are
| not enabled by default, those get rid of a lot of the cookie
| banners for me.
| nicbou wrote:
| Since this law came in effect, I'm allowed to opt out of
| tracking, download my data, and request its deletion. If that
| wasn't the case, that data would still be held hostage by
| various services.
| tjoff wrote:
| As clear as can be yes.
|
| Now you know which websites are willing to absolutely ruin your
| experience just to abuse you. The implications can be seen
| pretty much everywhere in society, it is a momentous step in
| the right direction.
| iFreilicht wrote:
| Exactly, this just brings to light how little most companies
| care about their customers.
|
| Not saying the legislation couldn't be improved, though.
| unicornporn wrote:
| What would you improve?
|
| I think what happened when brexit went into full effect was
| pretty telling. Both Facebook and Google were on their toes
| to get back to abusing the data of UK citizens. There's
| much to be gained.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/15/facebook
| -...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-privacy-eu-
| exclusi...
| bzb6 wrote:
| > Now you know which websites are willing to absolutely ruin
| your experience just to abuse you.
|
| Which is absolutely all of them. I guess the legislators
| wanted the popups to be annoying so publishers would be
| forced not to import their party scripts. Turns out
| publishers can't stay open without the ads that pay their
| bills which means popups are the new normal, to the point
| where when I see a website that doesn't have popups I suppose
| they are just in violation of the law. Thanks EU!
| avianlyric wrote:
| > I guess the legislators wanted the popups to be annoying
| so publishers would be forced not to import their party
| scripts.
|
| Nope, GDPR is pretty clear on this point. All they want is
| informed consent. GDPR doesn't care how you get it.
| [deleted]
| piva00 wrote:
| No, the legislators didn't want the pop-ups to be annoying.
| They didn't even require pop-ups.
|
| Who wants the pop-ups to be annoying and riddled with dark
| patterns are the ones implementing it, exactly to cause
| this kind of reaction on you so you start hating the law,
| not the ones who are trying their best to skirt around it,
| to find the loopholes and abuse them. To make your
| experience as poor as possible while being _compliant_ so
| you will focus your hatred on the ones who wrote the laws.
|
| This is part of their game, make the experience miserable
| to people start getting angry at politicians.
|
| Don't fall for that.
| bzb6 wrote:
| I know the law and how bloody stupid it is. Third party
| cookies and ad blockers are configurable in your browser,
| if you don't configure them then it's your fault.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I know the law and how bloody stupid it is.
|
| If you knew the law, you wouldn't say it was stupid
|
| > Third party cookies and ad blockers are configurable in
| your browser, if you don't configure them then it's your
| fault.
|
| Ah, the victim-blaming begins. No, it's not my fault that
| ad companies willy-nilly collect any and all information
| and sell it to the highest bidder.
| vincnetas wrote:
| This sounds like victim blaming to me.
| piva00 wrote:
| If you knew the law then you wouldn't say how bloody
| stupid it is.
|
| It isn't perfect, at all, but no laws are. This is a
| major milestone for the discussion of data privacy and
| pushed the world into that, it needs to be worked, of
| course, but that's how laws work, they take time to
| evolve.
|
| As someone who has had to work on several GDPR compliance
| initiatives I don't think it's bloody stupid at all, no
| matter how much more workload it has created for all the
| teams I helped to implement it. It has quirks but it's in
| no way _bloody stupid_.
|
| I'd prefer if you can list your arguments for being
| bloody stupid as just stating that does not develop any
| kind of healthy discussion, it's your opinion and
| judgment of value, with no supporting argument. Good luck
| with that, victim-blaming is corporate-bootlicking.
| jariel wrote:
| "No, the legislators didn't want the pop-ups to be
| annoying. They didn't even require pop-ups."
|
| This is the point: the legislators were exceedingly
| naive, and created a bad outcome.
|
| 'National Geographic' is not evil, they are struggling
| and most of these sites are not giant entities with well-
| staffed experts.
|
| It's a good example of poorly designed legislation.
|
| "This is part of their game, make the experience
| miserable to people start getting angry at politicians."
|
| This is completely false and conspiratorial, almost
| disturbingly so.
|
| These are normal companies, with normal people, pragmatic
| policies.
|
| The legislation has unconditionally failed at least in
| this specific way - all we have now are constant popups.
| That's the reality of the change.
| piva00 wrote:
| The spirit of the law dictates that:
|
| - The default option of consent is opt-out.
|
| - Opt-in and opt-out should be equally easy and
| accessible.
|
| Tell me how a company who would be trying to be ethical
| and follow this spirit would come up with the current
| pop-ups.
|
| Don't blame the legislation for allowing dark patterns to
| be used due to loopholes or failure of prediction all
| possible clever tricks to circumvent the spirit described
| above.
|
| It hasn't unconditionally failed, the pop-ups are still
| there and I opt-out of every single one of them.
|
| Except one: schneidersladen.de - they follow exactly the
| spirit of the law, I put the bar there.
| dkersten wrote:
| > 'National Geographic' is not evil, they are struggling
| and most of these sites are not giant entities with well-
| staffed experts.
|
| There's a very simple solution: respect my privacy and
| don't store or sell data about me. If you only use
| cookies necessary for running the site, then you don't
| need to do anything.
|
| If you must track me, then do as sibling commenter said.
| If you store privacy-invading data about me, then you
| damn well better know the laws and if you don't, then
| sorry, you can't track me on your website.
| Shivetya wrote:
| ignoring the fact the vast majority of users never noticed ,
| never cared, and still don't care but not robotic like click
| away the warnings.
|
| I am not dismissing the need to let consumers know how their
| habits and information are used I am merely stating that many
| here overreact on behalf of people who really could care
| less, they just want their content
| newswasboring wrote:
| Whenever I read such comments I'm reminded of the fact that
| many indians did not want independence from British Raj.
| Many people actually made similar arguments, that indians
| don't really care, but I'm glad those people didn't win the
| idea war.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Many sites ruin your experience because they don't know any
| better. GDPR is perceived as a Sword of Damocles by many
| smaller and medium sized companies and they will annoy you
| with elaborate consent solution for which they are paying a
| ton of money even if they most probably wouldn't need to do
| it.
|
| For the big players it is easy. They often don't annoy you
| with consent banners because:
|
| - they have legal departments that understand GDPR and
| protect them (e.g. GitHub)
|
| - they require your login and therefore have your consent
| anyway (e.g. Facebook)
|
| - they can afford to skip Cookies because they have elaborate
| fingerprinting solutions
|
| - they just ignore the law and risk be sued (e.g. Germany's
| Spiegel Online)
| frenchy wrote:
| > - they can afford to skip Cookies because they have
| elaborate fingerprinting solutions
|
| This is really just a special case of your last point. As
| far as I know, there is nothing cookie specific in the
| GDPR.
| Fradow wrote:
| That's because the "Cookie Law", which real name is the
| ePrivacy directive, is separate (and predates) from the
| GDPR.
|
| This directive defines in (24) [1] : So-called spyware,
| web bugs, hidden identifiers and other similar devices
| can enter the user's terminal without their knowledge in
| order to gain access to information, to store hidden
| information or to trace the activities of the user and
| may seriously intrude upon the privacy of these users.
|
| The definition is broad. Does server-side fingerprinting
| solutions fits into it? Maybe not in the letter of the
| law, but at least in the spirit. Until a court decide
| either way, we won't know for sure.
|
| [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
| Xylakant wrote:
| > they have legal departments that understand GDPR and
| protect them (e.g. GitHub)
|
| Funny coincidence that you picked GitHub since pretty much
| to the day two month ago that they removed all non-
| essential cookies https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-
| for-you/
|
| No cookie banner is required for session cookies etc.
| hrktb wrote:
| > they don't know any better
|
| There is a ton of literature about how it should be done,
| there has been enough press for anyone to be aware that
| it's a serious subject that needs to be studied, and small
| companies will often consult with external legal advisors
| because they can't afford to get on the wrong side of the
| law on this aspect.
|
| I've participated to a ton of these discussions in small
| and big entities, basically everytime a new service is
| launched or significantly changed.
|
| In my opinion it's pretty close to handling your finances:
| you don't go through all the hoops to pass you holiday
| rental as expenses just because you didn't know better.
| weinzierl wrote:
| > _There is a ton of literature about how it should be
| done, there has been enough press for anyone to be aware
| that it 's a serious subject that needs to be studied,
| and small companies will often consult with external
| legal advisors because they can't afford to get on the
| wrong side of the law on this aspect._
|
| Companies relying on information from literature, the
| press and from external advisors is part of the problem.
|
| All these parties often have motivations that are not
| necessarily 100% aligned with their clients. In the best
| case they are just overcautious because they don't enjoy
| the same protection as lawyers. In the worst case they
| sell GDPR products or profit indirectly from the sale of
| these products.
|
| All that most companies need is advice from a lawyer that
| understands GDPR and acts in their best interest. That
| alone would kill a good deal of cookie banners.
| leesalminen wrote:
| > because they can't afford to get on the wrong side of
| the law on this aspect.
|
| Conversely, some can't afford to get on the right side of
| the law on this aspect. In our case, we had ~15 customers
| in the EU (out of ~2000), totaling $2,000/mo MRR. After
| talking with our legal counsel, we decided to exit the EU
| market entirely. Our business model was a simple niche
| B2B SaaS. We never sold, shared, or traded any data of
| any kind.
|
| When we fired our EU customers, they were very upset!
| They assumed we were doing something "shady", which
| wasn't the case at all. The regulatory burden simply
| wasn't worth the relatively small MRR. The quotes
| provided for a third-party DPO was higher than our
| revenue in the market, and the only other option was for
| me (an overworked founder) to take on that role, and I
| valued my time higher than that MRR.
|
| Those customers lost out, because after we exited, so did
| every other player in our niche. Nobody wanted to deal
| with it.
| newswasboring wrote:
| Is there no open source effort to make this easy? Or is
| it one of those instances where people want to do it but
| don't want to take the legal stands (which is completely
| understandable).
|
| Edit: Also if you are not selling/using this data, why
| can't you remove everything but session cookies? Please
| note I'm not a web developer so the answer can just be
| because it's too much work.
| leesalminen wrote:
| For us, the issue wasn't a technical one. It was a human
| one. Our lawyers said we had to appoint a "Data
| Protection Officer" who's job it is to respond to
| requests from EU persons to delete their data. We were a
| small company and everyone had enough on their plate as
| it was. Adding more work to keep <1% of revenue wasn't
| worth it.
| lol768 wrote:
| I think I can count on one hand the number of right-to-
| be-forgotten requests the team I work with has ever
| received in the last three years (with 15x the users).
| We've had a couple more subject access requests than
| that, but we'd already shipped pretty comprehensive self-
| service tools for retrieving data that met the vast
| majority of our user's needs. This doesn't seem like an
| unreasonable thing to expect a service to offer, IMO.
|
| I would argue that the duties of a DPO is not more work
| than a small company could handle and indeed, it's
| slightly odd to me that a small company would think that
| a small handful of data erasure requests or subject
| access requests are a) somehow difficult to do given 30
| days notice and b) somehow consume more time than the
| profit left over on $24k revenue buys?
|
| Most companies here in the UK just take it in their
| stride and have no problems complying.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Unsure of how you extrapolated the total number of users
| from my previous statements. We were a B2B SaaS where our
| customers each served 10,000s of end users, who also had
| access to our platform with their data stored within. In
| aggregate we're talking 25mm+ total users in my case.
|
| At the time, being that the DPO role was new we didn't
| know how many requests to expect. And while the law may
| allow for 30 days, our customers wouldn't take it well if
| it took us longer than a couple days (our customer
| service SLA was 24 hr first resolution time). Their
| customers would complain to our customer who in turn
| would complain to us. If we make our customers look bad,
| we hear about it loudly and clearly.
|
| To each their own, I suppose. From my perspective as an
| overworked founder, with a small team, growing at
| >200%/yr, we didn't see the need to take on additional
| work just to maintain a very small revenue stream
|
| I don't fault companies for wanting to remain in the EU
| market, but for us, it didn't make much sense at the time
| as our real growth opportunity lay in the Us/Canada
| (mostly due to consumer habits in the region).
|
| I have no issue with the spirit of GDPR, and as a human,
| I support it personally. But, for my business at that
| point in time, it didn't make economic sense to comply,
| so we left.
| trulyme wrote:
| Cool! Care to share the niche?
|
| P.S.: no opportunity is lost. There is always someone
| else who seizes it. :)
| jariel wrote:
| "P.S.: no opportunity is lost. There is always someone
| else who seizes it. :)"
|
| I'm sure these corporations want a random person in HN to
| provide service to 12 customers?
|
| It's false to suggest that material barriers to providing
| services are only contextually relevant. It's a permanent
| tax and it's real.
| dkersten wrote:
| > they require your login and therefore have your consent
| anyway (e.g. Facebook)
|
| Requiring you to login doesn't automatically mean consent.
| In fact, the laws state that you cannot make consent a
| requirement for using the service. You can do login without
| needing any consent, as cookies needed for functioning of
| the site are exempt, but even if it wasn't the case, opting
| into some doesn't automatically opt you in to all.
|
| > they can afford to skip Cookies because they have
| elaborate fingerprinting solutions
|
| The law isn't actually about cookies at all and rather
| about tracking/storing. Things like localstorage are
| counted the same as cookies. I'd have to check the exact
| language, but I wouldn't be surprised if fingerprinting
| isn't against the cookie law too.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I agree, I think it's better to just leave and spend my time
| reading a different website.
| qwertox wrote:
| It's also interesting to see how Google has reacted to this.
| Them being the owner of Chrome, they could have implemented a
| new API in no time which would allow advertisers to use an
| alternative to cookies. An API where I as a user can define
| my preferences regarding targeted advertising, and the site
| owner can query these preferences.
|
| An API where advertisers can also store advertising-ids and
| more site-specific, tracking-related settings into (if the
| user grants this permission), giving them the possibility to
| move away from the use of cookies for this purpose. Then it
| should become obligatory to not use cookies for tracking and
| ad-related purposes.
|
| There are cases where 3rd-party cookies are important, and
| I'm a bit afraid that Google wants to remove them altogether.
|
| I personally don't care about non-personalized ads. If the
| advertisers see that it makes no sense to offer me a random
| ad, they may start looking at the context of the page where
| they are serving there ads, in order to serve me a bit more
| relevant ads. Then again, there are others who absolutely
| love personalized ads. So this solution would be a fair
| offering to the advertisement industry.
|
| This API could even be so advertiser-friendly that the user
| could even specify categories of interest so that the
| advertiser doesn't have to guess through tracking.
| dkersten wrote:
| I assume the key aspect here isn't to provide an
| alternative storage mechanism (since the cookie laws aren't
| actually about cookies themselves, but rather storage), but
| rather to provide a mechanism with clear and centralised
| user control. Users must opt-in, so its good in the eyes of
| the laws, but the advertisers get the benefit of easy
| legally-compliant tracking when a user allows it.
| jefftk wrote:
| It sounds like you're describing
| https://github.com/WICG/turtledove, which Google is
| definitely working on.
|
| (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, including the seller-
| side of Turtledove. Speaking only for myself.)
| curiousllama wrote:
| Didn't they try, and got hit for antitrust?
|
| ETA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26018928
| sn_master wrote:
| How so? Almost every single one uses cookies and I press I
| agree anyway because otherwise I'll be off more than half the
| internet.
| iso1631 wrote:
| HN doesn't seem to have a problem, thus showing sites in
| general don't need to have a problem
| dkersten wrote:
| I'm slowly starting to stop using these sites because it
| turns out that half of the internet is clickbait
| misinformation trash run by people who do not care about my
| privacy and who want to suck up as much data about me as
| possible. Its difficult sometimes, mentally, but I feel
| like my life is better without these garbage sites anyway.
| I now spend more time playing guitar, that I used to spend
| on the internet.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| But the worst offenders just have a simple "we use cookies"
| banner; the ones that give you the most choice are often more
| intrusive.
| newswasboring wrote:
| The best are ones which just give reject all cookies option
| (of course they still use strictly functional cookies). And
| I always thought that is how it should be, both extremes
| should be equally easy to choose.
| dheera wrote:
| Most of those "strictly functional" cookies aren't
| strictly functional either.
|
| I block ALL cookies and many of those sites with
| "strictly functional" cookies still function, which means
| that those cookies aren't necessary.
| wyre wrote:
| My favorite was a record label with language like "I
| don't want this" or something similar.
| iso1631 wrote:
| The best ones are the ones that only use functional
| cookies until you do something active (like check
| "remember me" on a login page), thus negating any need
| for popups etc at all.
| EtienneK wrote:
| This is the correct answer. Non essential cookies should
| just be turned off by default and should only be enabled
| via normal navigation through a website. Your 'remember
| me' example is a good one. Thus, no banners are required,
| ever. This is the exact approach Github went with.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| The best ones are the ones _without_ a cookie banner
| because they only use cookies that don 't _need_ consent,
| i.e. the strictly functional ones.
|
| One issue I do see with GDPR (or its consequences) is
| that a market participant that only sets those strictly
| necessary cookies actually now gets viewed by _some_ as
| iffy, because they don 't ask for consent.
|
| Basically, the industry standard of treating users
| (paying or not) like shit has normalized this sort of
| abuse/harassment so much that "the good ones" stick out
| in a bad way.
|
| None of which is meant to discredit GDPR though. If
| anything, I'm looking forward to more case law like from
| last year in Germany, where a dark-patterned cookie
| banner was ruled to be so misleading that it didn't
| constitute informed consent anymore.
|
| The GDPR is lacking enforcement, if anything.
| jamaicahest wrote:
| How is this relevant to the article?
| dspillett wrote:
| _> I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web
| experience better in any way_
|
| If it were as hard to opt-in as it is to fully opt-out, or as
| easy to accidentally (and permanently) opt-out as it is to
| accidentally (and permanently) opt-in, then there might be a
| case for something other than the sites and/or their partners
| being the problem.
|
| The legislation does not in any way force sites or their
| partners to make your browsing so inconvenient if you don't
| want to just click "accept all from all without or without
| lube". They _could_ implement a small non-modal active-opt-in
| option, they instead _chose_ to implement labyrinthine modal
| hunt-the-231st-opt-out adventure games.
| simplerman wrote:
| At least, now you know. Companies can choose better user
| experience if they want. What's your opinion about Apple vs
| Facebook?
| indeyets wrote:
| Well... if GitHub could fix their cookies so that they do not
| need to show any more modals, some of those 10,000 could too.
|
| https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/
| retSava wrote:
| Well, it _is_ better, since I assume that you don 't click
| "yes, allow". If you would, you would likely have a cookie
| saying "he/she is ours" with a lifetime longer than the
| heatdeath of the universe. If you dare to click no, that's when
| you get 10k options and optouts and have to send fax to
| someones grandma.
|
| The root cause of your experience being worse is not the
| legislation, it's that the site doesn't follow the
| intent/purpose of the law. They want to annoy you until you
| click "yes".
|
| They could simply present you with a yes/no modal once and be
| done with it, but they choose not to, hoping that they will
| break you down with time.
| XCSme wrote:
| > They could simply present you with a yes/no modal once and
| be done with it
|
| Any extra modal, as simple as it might be, leads to a really
| bad user experience and wasted time.
| slavak wrote:
| Then don't place cookies that aren't necessary for the
| delivery of your service. There, problem solved!
|
| If invading your users' privacy is more important than your
| site's user experience, then the blame is on you, not the
| legislation.
| stale2002 wrote:
| No, legislators don't get to ignore the unintended
| consequences of the laws that they implement.
|
| This applies to all laws that are passed. It is a
| frequent criticism and problem, of laws, is that there
| are often unintended consequences. And that is the fault
| of the law, that they did not consider the unintended
| consequences.
| XCSme wrote:
| I agree, don't publish a law that you can't or don't know
| how to enforce.
|
| What they should have done is made a public tool that
| checks your website and says: yes this site is GDPR
| compliant or no, it is not because A,B,C.
| indeyets wrote:
| Clubhouse is next? Their ToS doesn't look EU-compliant either
| Zenst wrote:
| Title wrong as it's EU - not Europe, but many confuse and
| transpose them - even though they are not verbatim.
|
| EDIT Add - Europe is composed of 44 countries and the EU is
| composed of 27 from those.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| > Europe is composed of 44 countries and the EU is composed of
| 27 from those.
|
| And the BEUC is composed out of 32 of those.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Title wrong as it 's EU - not Europe, but many confuse and
| transpose them - even though they are not verbatim._
|
| No different than European publications seeing something
| happening in a small town in a small county in a rural part of
| Texas and writing "Look what's happening in America!"
| headlines.
| danielscrubs wrote:
| Two wrongs don't make a right.
|
| Even so here is the "across" definition by Oxford Languages:
| from one side to the other of (a place, area, etc.).
|
| Doubtful it's even correct if we replace it with EU.
| tokai wrote:
| The complaints are coming from BEUC, which is not only composed
| of EU countries. So writing EU would be wrong.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| being Europe a superset of the EU the title is still
| technically valid, it's "across [some] Europe [countries]"
| Firebrand wrote:
| How does TikTok moderate their content anyway? Do they just have
| a massive amount of people scrolling through user reported videos
| looking for violations?
|
| Being primarily video based and having the lowest barrier to
| upload seems like it would be a recipe for disaster.
| GrantZvolsky wrote:
| Video upload may be instant but the video doesn't get indexed
| without a review.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I have always promised myself that if I become a billionare, I
| will simply stop providing services to municipalities or
| countries that create arbitrary laws that make it hard or
| difficult to do business in. Honestly Google should have just
| boycotted Europe for a week and seen how well everyone handles
| not having gmail, google, or anything.
|
| California is particularly onerous about all sorts of stuff like
| labelling everything as cancerous even though you'll probably
| need to spend 60 years licking the plastic bag labelled as such,
| or GDPR which required thousands and thousands of man hours at my
| last job when we weren't in Europe, the law was legally unclear,
| etc. Or the stupid cookie banners which guess what - do nothing.
|
| edit: another example was at working at a cigar shop where we
| could happily sell individual cigars and ship them, we could sell
| boxes of cigars, but we couldn't sell pre-packaged mix and match
| bags since, well you know, they weren't individually recognized
| and regulated skus (even though their contents were) and we just
| decided to drop that program. It's a shame, mix and matching
| cigars is great. PROP 65 Warning: smoking kills you.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > the law was legally unclear
|
| That's a feature! Gives more power to the bureaucrats (fully
| paid by the taxpayer and with large retirements) to enforce
| legislation as they please!
|
| More fine for these large companies means an ever increasing
| numbers of bureaucrats to investigates arbitrary violations!
|
| If you can't innovate, time to regulate!
| vptr wrote:
| First, I hope you become a billionaire!
|
| However, I don't agree with what you're saying. Are the laws
| perfect? No. But I do think we need something in place to
| balance things out so that companies are less predatory with
| our data. All these laws bring awareness to normal people, even
| if they click "accept all".
| eunos wrote:
| Side note: Can we just not heavily blur post that (maybe)
| downvoted heavily? I can't even read the post that I quoted
| atm.
| tester756 wrote:
| You better weight your dreams, because I believe that it's
| definitely possible that EU would just say fuck yourself to
| Google, started using Bing meanwhile creating viable Search
| Engine and US' competitive advantage would be gone
| speedgoose wrote:
| I dream about the FAANG leaving the European market. It would
| be so many nice opportunities to finally develop our
| technologies locally like China or Russia are doing.
| tiagod wrote:
| Those companies are operating globally, not locally. There's
| great benefits to this (more customers), but you also need to
| deal with the local laws of all the countries you want to do
| business in if you want to make money there.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| > Honestly Google should have just boycotted Europe for a week
| and seen how well everyone handles not having gmail, google, or
| anything.
|
| I think the EU would have loved that. There are perfectly
| viable alternatives to pretty much everything that Google
| offers, some of which created in Europe. They just never gain
| any traction because it's convenient to just use Google for
| everything.
|
| I still use Gmail and Google Calendar at the moment, but that's
| primarily out of inertia. The biggest thing I'd miss would
| probably be search, but even for that there are reasonable
| alternatives.
| bzb6 wrote:
| It seems you don't see the value in having one integrated
| provider for everything. Other people clearly do.
|
| Also if there were GOOD European alternatives to those google
| service people would use them, but there simply aren't. Low
| salaries and terrible regulations are to blame.
| jariel wrote:
| I don't think regulations are holding people back.
|
| Low salaries, yes, but that's a failure of leadership, but
| also a systematic problem of companies inability to make
| tons of money.
|
| It's a long laundry list and it can't be boiled down just
| to a few things, they are so intertwined it's hard to
| separate the issues.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| I'm not sure many people go upload on youtube because they
| already had a gmail, and a small enterprise loosing all
| their documents because they got their home made ads
| copystriked by drive by DMCA trolls also doesn't sound like
| a great integration feature...
|
| Honestly, what, beyond the account infrastructure, is
| integrated in googles consumer products?
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| > I think the EU would have loved that.
|
| "The EU" entirely depended on Google not doing that. And by
| that I mean the bureaucracy and other apparatjik - not the
| people.
|
| Had Google literally banned Europe the backlash would be
| large, large, large against 'the EU' from people who live
| there and were trying to live and do their day to day online
| activities.
|
| Yeah, it'd be Evil, but sometimes companies should really
| swing back at heavy handed regulations.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| I'm not sure if Google would have much support after
| blocking users and refusing to follow laws that exist to
| protect users.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure. Google is an American company, and
| there could well be an element of nationalism in the
| response, i.e., a sentiment that "stupid imperialist
| Americans are trying to force us to change our national
| laws." Furthermore, a monopoly operator that objects to new
| regulation isn't the kind of entity that typically elicits
| a lot of sympathy.
| abellerose wrote:
| I highly doubt any young person would think that way.
| Maybe older than 40 would.
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what are the European alternatives to
| GSuite?
| GrantZvolsky wrote:
| LibreOffice, to some extent. But more pertinently, the
| Czech search engine Seznam[1], founded in 1996, was the
| most used search engine in the Czech Republic until Google
| took over in 2014 due to the influence of Android. Seznam
| is well diversified and it shouldn't be difficult for it to
| expand into other markets given the opportunity. It is a
| major regional player in search, maps, email, news, real
| estate, jobs, ecommerce, video streaming, advertising, and
| probably more. Its portfolio, which includes a chromium-
| based web browser, is quite impressive given that the Czech
| market consists of some 11 million people.
|
| [1]: https://seznam.cz
| smoldesu wrote:
| Spinning up a Nextcloud instance for $5 a month will
| replace almost everything that Google did in your life, as
| well as giving you a lot more granular control over your
| data.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| The biggest competitors are obviously not European (eg. MS,
| Fastmail) but there are smaller companies like mailbox.org
| that offer less polished but functional alternatives. I'm
| not saying that those would be a perfect replacement for
| everything that Google offers, but they get close enough
| that they might do the trick for a large number of people
| (which would then give them the income to make further
| improvements to their platform).
| jariel wrote:
| There's nothing, not even close and it's obviously a
| problem.
|
| The reason a lot of this antagonism exists is because the
| EU is not able to compete in a lot of these areas.
|
| While there's a lot of good impetus is privacy legislation,
| there should be 10x more effort into gearing themselves to
| be more competitive.
|
| Edit: Europe's inability to materially face this problem is
| by far the #1 issue. There definitely is an acceptance, on
| some level, behind closed doors certainly there is
| discussion and some action, but much more energy seems to
| be devoted to punishing foreign, successful companies.
|
| It's a bad position to be in to try to legislate foreign
| behemoths than to have your own, and be worried about how
| foreign nations may be regulating your own behemoths.
|
| Edit 2: I've made a similar comment a few times and it's
| guaranteed to be down-voted (again, that's fine, I don't
| mind it's not a personal issue I have no problem with
| votes) - but assuming that this is more than likely
| Europeans down-voting as a rough measure of disagreement,
| it's really quite a disturbing sentiment that at least
| popularly, there's difficulty in accepting the obvious lack
| of competitiveness in these areas. This is why I say it's
| the #1 challenge - until there is acceptance, there will no
| progress.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Complaining about regulations on an article protecting children
| <13 years and giving an example about tobacco ( and trying to
| dodge them probably) seems a good reason to me for having such
| regulations...
|
| What comes to mind in your example is that tobacco may not
| advertise/give discounts. Bundling them with something else
| should have the same result. Not being able to bundle them has
| the same end-result.
|
| If you want to sell in a certain market, you need to consider
| local rules that could differ from your own.
|
| Eg. US meat is not allowed in Europe because of the excessive
| use of hormones in most of their meat.
| m12k wrote:
| I'd love for Google to give the EU a solid reason to encourage
| homegrown (and tax-paying) alternatives to big US tech (much
| like China has managed to do with Baidu, WeChat and Alibaba).
| Breaking big tech monopolies is hard, so I can only pray for
| them to get the ball rolling with a massive mistake like that.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I'd love for Google to give the EU a solid reason to
| encourage homegrown (and tax-paying) alternatives to big US
| tech
|
| Big tech pays it's taxes in Europe, via Luxemburg and Ireland
| in a 100% legal way. If Europeans countries are serious about
| collecting tax revenues they claim should be theirs, all they
| have to do is simply write it in the tax code.
|
| If Europe wants to compete, the first thing it has to do is
| fix it's talent retention problem. Build more and pay more.
|
| Easy to whine about these "evil foreign tech giants", harder
| to tackle the real issues! Will paying coders more get
| bureaucrats re-elected? Will going after large corporations
| using the same laws as the tech giants help them getting re-
| elected?
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| The moment your argument for paying 0.01% taxes is "it's
| legal", you've fallen pretty low for the quality of your
| arguments.
| filoleg wrote:
| They are paying no more than what they are legally
| required to, just like everyone else.
|
| Would I want to see Google pay more? Yes. Do I expect
| them to be charitable and suddenly start paying more than
| the law requires them? No, this is unreasonable. What I
| expect is for lawmakers to make changes to the tax code,
| so that those tech giants end up paying more. Until that
| moment happens, that's fully on those lawmakers, not on
| Google or anyone else.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Why even have the argument when a simple well written tax
| code could make the issue not happen in the first place?
| actuator wrote:
| But he is right. Why not just fix this at a policy level?
|
| While paying low tax seems morally wrong, the job of a
| company is to do good for itself, because they all are
| responsible to their shareholders.
|
| Google left China on moral grounds in 2000s. Did that
| make other companies follow suit? No. Apple had no
| problem censoring or using workers in exploitative
| conditions to eke out more profits. Did Apple's products
| get boycotted because of it? No. So, even the users don't
| care.
|
| So why would a company try to uphold some weird moral
| standard at the cost of profit when its users and
| shareholders both don't care?
| opsy2 wrote:
| Viewing a company as responsible only to it's
| shareholders is perspective only proposed and adopted in
| the last 50/60 years (maybe less), and I believe, a
| flawed one.
|
| Historically, businesses were understood to also have
| responsibility to their communities and customers. Also
| their workers, though perhaps that began to shed somewhat
| less recently.
|
| In my view, any person or entity is morally responsible
| for their impacts on others.
|
| So, I believe companies should, indeed, have moral
| standards.
|
| ...
|
| That said yes this is a cultural shift so by no means any
| kind of immediate solution, and there will always be bad
| actors, so yes totally agree, fix the policy!
|
| But let's not support a business culture where being a
| bad actor is cool- it makes the already very difficult
| job of appropriate regulation that much harder.
| actuator wrote:
| > But let's not support a business culture where being a
| bad actor is cool-
|
| Agreed but what can few individuals even do when masses
| don't even care? We can try to use our privacy sensitive
| platforms and modular phones with open OSs but that will
| not really change anything. If my past experience has
| anything to go by, all it will do is, we will get shafted
| by overpaying for substandard experience.
|
| I hate to sound defeatist but unless there can be a
| change in mainstream consciousness about it, it is mostly
| a lost cause.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Why not just fix this at a policy level?
|
| Because the "Big evil foreign tech giants" aren't the
| only ones to use these clauses in the tax code. But it's
| fashionable to bash on them. So you keep the votes and
| your corporate friends.
| actuator wrote:
| Yeah, I really doubt European companies themselves are
| not using these rules to get out of paying more.
| tchalla wrote:
| > I have always promised myself that if I become a billionare,
| I will simply stop providing services to municipalities or
| countries that create arbitrary laws that make it hard or
| difficult to do business in.
|
| Do you believe that a society should ONLY maximise metrics
| towards "ease of business"?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I have always promised myself that if I become a billionare, I
| will simply stop providing services to municipalities or
| countries that create arbitrary laws that make it hard or
| difficult to do business in._
|
| So you've decided to limit yourself to not doing business on
| planet Earth, or becoming a Bond villain. Interesting choice.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| A giant submarine lair would be rather cool, I suppose.
|
| Turns out the real 'Bond Villians' in our world prefer to get
| stuff done through legal and boring channels like market
| manipulation (MSFT), breaking the law and using their lawyers
| to do so (uber), to pay off politicians through lobbying
| (what would not it in this parenthesis).
| duxup wrote:
| Does that makes sense if you want to be a Billionaire? Just
| leave Europe / money on the table and let some competitor take
| that space?
|
| Some of these laws are ineffective, wonky, and probably
| annoying, but they're existential threats to doing business.
| iFreilicht wrote:
| > Honestly Google should have just boycotted Europe for a week
| and seen how well everyone handles not having gmail, google, or
| anything.
|
| So we'd all be using outlook.com, bing and other alternatives
| now. Would've been a really bad move to just forfeit a market
| like that.
|
| The cookie banners do actually help a lot, as they bring
| awareness about privacy issues to the broader public and allow
| to choose which sites to use based on how hard they make it to
| opt-out.
|
| Laws like this are important because they make companies design
| for the benefit of the consumer as opposed to just for their
| own. And I'm gald the EU is pushing for this with the power
| they have while no other legal entity of similar size seems to
| bother.
| slavak wrote:
| I really wish people like you who _are_ billionaires would stop
| making threats and just do it already. Taking your ball and
| going home because you can't play nice doesn't work in grade
| school, and won't work in adult life; but maybe there would be
| a lot less background noise from all the rich people shaking
| their fists and threatening to do things we know damn well they
| never will.
| opsy2 wrote:
| Because they know the sneaky secret too, that businesses will
| still function and even be profitable (wow), despite also
| protecting consumers.
|
| The business would work and billionaires don't become
| billionaires by turning down business.
| unionpivo wrote:
| Don't let the door hit you on your way out.
|
| Sincerely, EU citizen
| j1elo wrote:
| Say there is this new law that forbids to smoke inside public
| places (read: restaurants, bars, pubs). For the sake of the
| metaphor, say these places received some benefit from tobacco
| companies from having people smoke, so naturally they react to
| this law by remembering in the most annoying ways how you cannot
| smoke inside _because of_ those pesky lawmakers (and not because
| people really voted in favor of less smoking in public places).
| For example, by creating smoke-friendly spaces where allowed,
| leaving less and more cluttered space for the smoke-free tables;
| and giving priority to the orders that come from smoker areas.
|
| This is the cookie modal. It's the pages that show obtuse cookie
| modals the ones choosing to follow an aggressive anti-user
| approach. The fact that seemingly ALL of them are aggressive or
| use obscure techniques only shows how ingrained this smoking
| problem was all around.
|
| EDIT -- the thing about this comparison is that those things
| happened when they implemented the anti-smoking laws in my
| country. You would see smoke-preferential areas, or in most
| places which didn't make the cut to have one, customers were all
| angry because they weren't able to smoke a cigarette after their
| lunch. But give it time, and years later most if not all
| restaurants and customers have accepted the new situation,
| offering an overall better experience for everybody involved. And
| I think that's what will eventually happen with the cookie law
| now that the GDPR has made more obvious and annoying the whole
| process.
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