It would be nice if the options weren’t like “Enable all cookies” and “navigate 4 menus that try to convince you to enable all cookies.”
It would be better if you could set your preference on the browser once and never have to mess with it again unless you want to have exceptions for specific sites
In theory this is done. There is a Do Not Track (DNT) header that is browser defined. Does anyone use it? Do they fuck.
I use it and the browser kindly explained to me that the feature is mostly useless because sites don’t give a shit about it.
AFAIK the regulation already says that the “only necessary” should be available with one click. I think the issue is that it’s difficult to go after all the small pages that are breaking the law. The big ones like YT of Google already have the ‘disable all’ button on top, I’m guessing because EU complained.
It doesn’t say that it should be available with one click.
It says that accepting should be just as easy as declining. Which also includes things like not being allowed to have a “greyed out” button to reject while the accept button is big and sparkly.
Just make it illegal to sell user data to “data partners”, and use cross site tracking.
Nobody actually “consents” to this shit. They just don’t read.
I really wish we had a simulated world sandbox to try these ideas out in. I suspect this might lead to the end of most free websites.
TV never targeted commercials directly at “Dave Smith, likes fishing and interracial porn, lives in Chesterfield, searched for new cameras recently”, but they still operated.
Sure, but also beside the point? I’m talking about the effects of changing an underlying mechanism of a live system, not of comparing two different systems that developed over time.
Here are my guesses: sites that have enough unique visitor count and data to work directly with advertisers may not fall. Small sites that rely on Adsense networks for revenue would no longer have revenue. A small (though non-zero) number of people/groups would continue on and seek alternative funding. Without ad networks, many tech companies fall.
I’m not saying that I’m against any of this, either. In my view, there’s a large chance that nothing of real value (to a society) would be lost. Maybe we can bring web rings back.
Which free websites? The modern web is just:
- (Quasi-)monopolistic platforms (meta, google, xitter, etc.)
- Newspapers
- SEO filler
- Webshops
- Free sites already operating out of the goodwill of some random admin and making single-digit ad revenue anyway <– you are here
- Porn aggregators
- SEO filler
- SEO filler
- Wikipedia
- End of list
The only ones whose business model would truly be threatened and whose loss would be problematic are newspapers.
OTOH newspapers accidentally cornering themselves in a “freemium” business model has fucked journalism over so bad I’m not sure how it could even be worse.
Free websites like the ones we are on barely exist anymore anyway, because how the fuck do you “compete” in the “free marketplace of search indexing” when some russian troll is burying you to page 5 of google’s search results and you can’t reach anyone via facebook or twitter without paying thousands?
Craigslist struck the first blow against newspapers by taking away classified ad revenue. The death blow came when Silicon Valley taught people that “information wants to be free,” which meant that no one wanted to pay for local news anymore. That led most local newspapers to collapse, while the few that managed to survive --apart from a handful of “legacy” papers-- mostly did so at the cost of turning into click-bait sites or outrage machines.
We have to bring back the idea that people should be happy to pay for local news.
They can just run ads without all the tracking bullshit and data collection like they do on every other medium with free ad supported content like radio and television. Somehow I can watch TV and listen to the radio for free and they manage to stay running without monitoring my every move.
Might be less profitable for them but so be it. Just because tracking helps their business doesn’t mean it is justified.
I’m not a fan of the cookie consent popups, but I do appreciate the EU actually trying to do something to protect people’s privacy. Seemingly the only major entity to do so right now.
A better solution would be to force sites to care about the Do Not Track browser setting that currently does nothing as told by the browsers themselves.
Just add 2 things:
- Cookie settings are possible to set in the browser for all pages.
- There’s a reject all button on every cookie banner.
- There’s a reject all button on every cookie banner.
Most importantly, those banners should be streamiled to look the same at the very least. No highlighing “ACCEPT ALL” while graying out “reject all” nonsense. No swapping the buttons left and right, top to bottom trickery. I’d prefer if the browser takes care of it all, though. I’m already using a plugin for that, though it comes with draw backs.
I am using „I still don‘t care about cookies“ for Firefox. It basically auto-selects the least required cookies possible. Though some sites don‘t offer opt-out so it will automatically accept those cookies. Not perfect, but I really can‘t be bothered to do a cookie captcha every time I open a private tab for example.
No, just ban the collection of user data and selling to 3rd parties. Enormous fines for anyone still doing it. Destroy this entire industry please.
The EU is primarily pro-business, but that also means being against anti-competitive and underhanded business practices
The browser thing sounds like a good solution (although there must be a reason why DNT headers weren’t made legally binding, potentially as they wanted to allow people to pick and choose what cookies they allow based on what they thought was “too far” or something but that’s conjecture), however disallowing all user data will likely lead to companies not being able to advertise to people who are interested in their products, something which the EU will see as a negative and would also cause an uptick in scams and misinformation as you see in low quality advertising space at the moment
This comment got to me really late, probably to Lemmy’s distributed nature.
But I still want to add: of course business will make more money if you allow more practices, but selling personal data just has too many negative consequences.
Also low quality advertising? You mean like billboards and in the newspaper? You mean regular advertising?
- No there most definitely is not. Most banners have a big yes button, and you need to scroll to a settings button and then do five more things to not get cookies.
So true. And then you have Schibsted, Norways biggest media conglomerate; the only way to reject cookies is that you have to log in in order to reject it! According to the cookie law (no idea what it’s called), it’s illegal. It’s been reported to the EU and Norwegian government numerous times, but nothing happens. Fuck Schibsted!!
In my experience a lot of italian (particularly “news”) websites basically say “accept cookies or sign up for our paid subscription”
But even if you reject all, you still allow them to track you through the legitimate interest cookies
The reject all is already a thing. (Well is not all all, but reject all except necessary but those doesn’t matter much, they are not tracking).
That said usually is not called this way as obvious, sometimes is just “reject” without the all, “accept only necessary”, “decline”, etc or you have to close the banner etc or they use some other confusing pattern.
