<story><title>No cookie consent walls, scrolling isn’t consent, says EU data protection body</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/06/no-cookie-consent-walls-and-no-scrolling-isnt-consent-says-eu-data-protection-body/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pembrook</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re starting with a false premise.&lt;p&gt;The basis of your argument is: &lt;i&gt;All data collection is bad.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, in your model of the world, an evil conspiracy of bad actors are looking to strategically undermine the law with various dastardly convoluted schemes. I understand why you&amp;#x27;re arguing that, given the premise you&amp;#x27;re starting with.&lt;p&gt;However, the majority of business on the internet are not doing evil things with your data. They simply want to better target their offerings to their customers, allow for you to keep items in a shopping cart, etc. If they are providing better services to their customers, they make more money and the customers are happier. It&amp;#x27;s a win win for everybody involved.&lt;p&gt;Could it simply be that, most businesses put cookie popups on their sites because they don&amp;#x27;t want to get fined? Not because they are embroiled in an elaborate scheme to undermine the law?&lt;p&gt;Could it be that the EU should have created a smarter law that would actually help people be more aware of data tracking? Instead of stupid popups?</text></item><item><author>mrweasel</author><text>The law has stupid unintended consequences because it would kill the business of the tracking companies it targets, if they where to follow the intention of the law.&lt;p&gt;The same companies have their customers convinced that they need data collection to turn a profit.&lt;p&gt;As a result we see all kinds of stupid attempt to circumvent the law because an entire industry of shady data collectors and brokers have convinced businesses that the only way of making money online is by tracking people.</text></item><item><author>pembrook</author><text>&amp;gt; Let&amp;#x27;s imagine...the car builders all decides to just cut the engine if you go over the limit.&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t need to imagine a world like that, because it has nothing to do with what we are talking about.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s stick to the real world. The EU implemented a law. Everybody is scared of the power of the government, so they implemented what they &lt;i&gt;thought&lt;/i&gt; was the intention of the law, to avoid prosecution. The mom-and-pop flower shop down the street could care less about making troll political statements about technical internet topics.&lt;p&gt;Turns out, the law had stupid unintended consequences. Was the person who designed it stupid? Or is the &lt;i&gt;entire world&lt;/i&gt; stupid?&lt;p&gt;If your answer is &amp;quot;the entire world is stupid,&amp;quot; then I&amp;#x27;d argue you don&amp;#x27;t understand how the field of design is supposed to work.</text></item><item><author>Rexxar</author><text>The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody try to apply it in the worst possible way.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s imagine a world where a government force car builder to add speed limiter to cars. The car builders all decides to just cut the engine if you go over the limit. Will you say the law is bad or that car makers are trolling everybody ?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the same for this law. But curiously everybody is prompt to say that the law is bad. The reality is that a majority of internet actors are bad and are just trolling us.</text></item><item><author>cactus2093</author><text>The EU cookie legislation is still mind blowing to me. In terms of widely used protocols with terrible designs it&amp;#x27;s up there with US payment card processing (want to make a $5 payment? Hand over the secret that gives the other party the ability to take an unlimited amount of money from you at any time in the next 4 years, and hope they don&amp;#x27;t misuse it).&lt;p&gt;Did no one involved in the cookie legislation think to run the idea by a technical expert before passing it? Why wouldn&amp;#x27;t they have done something like introduce an X-Allow-Tracking header in the http spec, and make the law require that sites respect that header instead of every site making their own cookie popup. Browsers could make that privacy setting as detailed as they want as far as which requests they included it with, and the EU could strongly recommend that everyone use browsers that they&amp;#x27;ve approved as supporting that setting (or even force it in various ways, like require any OEM browser that ships with a device in the EU support that setting).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saagarjha</author><text>&amp;gt; However, the majority of business on the internet are not doing evil things with your data. They simply want to better target their offerings to their customers, allow for you to keep items in a shopping cart, etc. If they are providing better services to their customers, they make more money and the customers are happier. It&amp;#x27;s a win win for everybody involved.&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be so sure. There aren&amp;#x27;t that many advertising and analytics companies, but they make products that are widely used (and clearly misused) everywhere. The websites using such tools were never told that they could avoid having the banner if they just didn&amp;#x27;t have tracking cookies.</text></comment>
<story><title>No cookie consent walls, scrolling isn’t consent, says EU data protection body</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/06/no-cookie-consent-walls-and-no-scrolling-isnt-consent-says-eu-data-protection-body/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pembrook</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re starting with a false premise.&lt;p&gt;The basis of your argument is: &lt;i&gt;All data collection is bad.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, in your model of the world, an evil conspiracy of bad actors are looking to strategically undermine the law with various dastardly convoluted schemes. I understand why you&amp;#x27;re arguing that, given the premise you&amp;#x27;re starting with.&lt;p&gt;However, the majority of business on the internet are not doing evil things with your data. They simply want to better target their offerings to their customers, allow for you to keep items in a shopping cart, etc. If they are providing better services to their customers, they make more money and the customers are happier. It&amp;#x27;s a win win for everybody involved.&lt;p&gt;Could it simply be that, most businesses put cookie popups on their sites because they don&amp;#x27;t want to get fined? Not because they are embroiled in an elaborate scheme to undermine the law?&lt;p&gt;Could it be that the EU should have created a smarter law that would actually help people be more aware of data tracking? Instead of stupid popups?</text></item><item><author>mrweasel</author><text>The law has stupid unintended consequences because it would kill the business of the tracking companies it targets, if they where to follow the intention of the law.&lt;p&gt;The same companies have their customers convinced that they need data collection to turn a profit.&lt;p&gt;As a result we see all kinds of stupid attempt to circumvent the law because an entire industry of shady data collectors and brokers have convinced businesses that the only way of making money online is by tracking people.</text></item><item><author>pembrook</author><text>&amp;gt; Let&amp;#x27;s imagine...the car builders all decides to just cut the engine if you go over the limit.&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t need to imagine a world like that, because it has nothing to do with what we are talking about.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s stick to the real world. The EU implemented a law. Everybody is scared of the power of the government, so they implemented what they &lt;i&gt;thought&lt;/i&gt; was the intention of the law, to avoid prosecution. The mom-and-pop flower shop down the street could care less about making troll political statements about technical internet topics.&lt;p&gt;Turns out, the law had stupid unintended consequences. Was the person who designed it stupid? Or is the &lt;i&gt;entire world&lt;/i&gt; stupid?&lt;p&gt;If your answer is &amp;quot;the entire world is stupid,&amp;quot; then I&amp;#x27;d argue you don&amp;#x27;t understand how the field of design is supposed to work.</text></item><item><author>Rexxar</author><text>The law itself is perfectly sane. The problem is that everybody try to apply it in the worst possible way.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s imagine a world where a government force car builder to add speed limiter to cars. The car builders all decides to just cut the engine if you go over the limit. Will you say the law is bad or that car makers are trolling everybody ?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the same for this law. But curiously everybody is prompt to say that the law is bad. The reality is that a majority of internet actors are bad and are just trolling us.</text></item><item><author>cactus2093</author><text>The EU cookie legislation is still mind blowing to me. In terms of widely used protocols with terrible designs it&amp;#x27;s up there with US payment card processing (want to make a $5 payment? Hand over the secret that gives the other party the ability to take an unlimited amount of money from you at any time in the next 4 years, and hope they don&amp;#x27;t misuse it).&lt;p&gt;Did no one involved in the cookie legislation think to run the idea by a technical expert before passing it? Why wouldn&amp;#x27;t they have done something like introduce an X-Allow-Tracking header in the http spec, and make the law require that sites respect that header instead of every site making their own cookie popup. Browsers could make that privacy setting as detailed as they want as far as which requests they included it with, and the EU could strongly recommend that everyone use browsers that they&amp;#x27;ve approved as supporting that setting (or even force it in various ways, like require any OEM browser that ships with a device in the EU support that setting).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcelerier</author><text>&amp;gt; They simply want to better target their offerings to their customers,&lt;p&gt;As a user I don&amp;#x27;t want anyone to &amp;quot;better target me&amp;quot; - no single exception. Gosh I miss the time where we just burned the McDonald&amp;#x27;s...</text></comment>