4 ms·

The funny thing about legislation is that you're responsible for the unintended consequences of your laws too.

gostsamo 3y ago
No, people cannot escape responsibility by saying "the law made me be belligerent toward my users". It is intentional choice to use cookies and to make it unpleasant for people.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  And use of cookies themswlves don't demand these banners, nor that they be so obstructive. Just don't collect unnecessary cookies or PII, or put in a prominent banner that doesn't overlap the site purpose.
- Diggsey 3y ago
  > No, people cannot escape responsibility by saying "the law made me be belligerent toward my users". Correction: people should not be able to escape responsibility by saying this. The problem is that right now people do escape responsibility for saying this because the EU is not properly enforcing these new laws. Introducing a law and then not enforcing it has consequences, and those consequences should have been foreseen. Either the law is unenforceable due to practical constraints, in which case it's a bad law, or the EU is failing to enforce it due to inability. Hopefully the EU starts putting more focus on enforcing its existing laws rather than creating new ones.
Avamander 3y ago
It's impossible to foresee everything, including the amount of malicious compliance. In the end we are better off with this legislation and its future iterations and additions than we are without it. The extent to which people's data is misused is simply ridiculous.
- mgoetzke 3y ago
  Though this was 100% predictable
- piker 3y ago
  So perhaps that suggests caution be taken in meddling…
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Meddling in what way? 'Meddling' causing citizens to lose visibility and corporations to gain more power over data?
isodev 3y ago
You mean the EU should have foreseen that people in tech have no conscience and sensitivity for right or wrong?
- SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
  To be fair, completely foreseeable.
  - moomin 3y ago
    Yeah, I’m not sure legislators should be on the hook for malicious compliance, though.
    - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
      Of course not, I was just having a laff at tech's expense.
  - isodev 3y ago
    As a reminder, it's the same people in tech we're trusting to build things like chat bots, "AI", cars that try to drive themselves and rockets that try to land themselves... etc. You have to admit that if these same people can't be trusted to follow a simple "do not track" directive, humanity is in big trouble.
    - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
      Sadly, we are. I didn't ever think of myself as an optimist until I realised just how pessimistic it is possible to become, as I've learned in the last 5 or so years. Now I realise I was quite an optimistic person, at least by comparison with my present self.
    - crabmusket 3y ago
      I mean, humanity is and always has been in big trouble. That's why history is full of disasters, mass death etc. But I don't think it's that developers "can't" follow a DNT cookie. It's that they won't because it doesn't benefit their employer's financial interests. Making a rocket that lands, on the other hand, does directly correspond to SpaceX's financial interests.
nicce 3y ago
In this case, it is just showing that most companies are collecting more data than they need. You don’t need a banner for the data that is necessary for the service to work at minimum level. There is no role for the consent since the site won’t work otherwise.
- poszlem 3y ago
  It also shows that most people don't care and just want to get on with their day. We know that companies are collecting more data. Now what?
  - leononame 3y ago
    How does it show that? Most people I know are annoyed by this and click on "reject" (if they can find it), but for a lot of non-technical people these banners are just a given because they don't even understand the problem. Doesn't mean they don't care
    - oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
      > if they can find it If it even exists!
    - poszlem 3y ago
      How many "normies" do you know that stopped visiting websites that track them? I don't know anybody who isn't in my tech bubble who cares, and very few normies who would rather pay money than to give access to their data.
      - leononame 3y ago
        None. That doesn't mean they don't care. As I said, most people I know are annoyed by this but take these banners and tracking as a given because they don't understand enough about technology and see them everywhere. And let's be honest here, if you were to stop visiting sites that track you, you could just stop using more or less the whole internet. It's not about stopping to use these sites, it's about stopping those sites from tracking you, which almost everyone I talk to is ok with. The only people I see that defend the amount of tracking happening on the web are commenters online (here, on reddit, etc.). That leads me to believe it's mostly corporate accounts. To the point: Not using a site is not the point of it. Insert "yet you participate in society" meme
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
On the one hand when murders go up because you make using a gun in a crime an automatic 5 year prison term you should have foreseen that possible situation, on the other hand the real bad guy is the one shooting the witnesses.
leononame 3y ago
Yes and no? To some extent, sure. As an example: But if companies or people went out of their way to comply with a law that is clearly not complying with the spirit of the law, just the letter of it, are you really responsible for that? Or are they because they're doing everything to not comply? Let's say you make a law to reduce working hours from 40 to 37 hours except in "emergency situations". Now a company will force employees to sign off on "emergency situations" every week or they'll be fired. They're clearly not complying to the spirit of the law? Is it really your fault when you make a law like that? I'd say only to some degree, the people trying to abuse every loop hole are much more responsible in this case. Companies using dark patterns, hiding the "reject all" option behind an additional click (which even is illegal) and even trying to collect all data possible are much more responsible than the EU's law. Oftentimes they are collecting data just because, not even thinking about it, because they'll add GA to their WordPress site without even looking at it or whatever. That cookie banners have become the standard around the web is sad because it just shows how much everyone is trying to track you.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Bonus points if you can convince folks to call it the annoying Sign Off law.
casperb 3y ago
I would expect that most companies would be ashamed to publicly state that they sell your data to hundreds(!) of data providers and they would fix this before they had to disclose it. But nope, apparently the money is too good. And blaming the government is more convenient.
crabmusket 3y ago
I guess PG's original tweet assumes that cookie banners are a) bad, b) the fault of the EU, and C) unanticipated and unintended by the EU, thereby demonstrating their incompetence. I can't really comment on what the lawmakers foresaw or intended, but I'd argue that cookie banners are actually a) good, and b) the fault of companies who can't imagine a better way to treat their users. The reason I think they're good is that they cause a psychological nuisance to users of software which doesn't go out of their way to do them well or avoid their necessity. Over time I hope this will tend to cause an association in users minds that sites with cookie banners are somehow seedy or unscrupulous, like pop-up ads.
pron 3y ago
I would put it another way. Any legislation against doing something is almost always motivated by someone's desire to do that very thing. Legislation is usually a battle of interests where the legislator, ideally, wants to protect the overall interests of the public when they conflict with narrower private interests. When the narrower interests belong to powerful groups, you often expect to see some struggle, and if the private interests have a way of making the regulation seem more intrusive and annoying than the harm it's intended to cause, they would take advantage of that to sway the public in their favour. So legislators do expect such a struggle, and the shape it takes may be partly their fault, but it's clearly not all their fault. The more power the private interests have, the more likely they are to find some way to fight the regulation. They will certainly do everything they can to convince the public that the legislators are bad at regulation. In this particular case, however, websites showing banners are also harming themselves as their competitors now have an interest in not showing banners and offering a better experience -- i.e. the regulation makes it worthwhile not to display banners in competitive situations. So we'll see how this all turns out.
sham1 3y ago
The thing is, the consequences seem to be very much intended. The consequences of forcing companies to be transparent about tracking, and hopefully letting the users start voting with their wallets as they get annoyed by the omnipresent "We Value Your Privacy"-popups (which is very ironic considering all the dark patterns et al that are used to have users get tracked). If nothing else, at least now people know just how much they've been tracked. One can only hope that this increased consciousness would help people to choose services that don't track people. For example Hacker News doesn't need tracking cookies nor a cookie popup, and it seems to be doing just fine, even in terms of the law ;)

No, people cannot escape responsibility by saying "the law made me be belligerent toward my users". It is intentional choice to use cookies and to make it unpleasant for people.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
And use of cookies themswlves don't demand these banners, nor that they be so obstructive. Just don't collect unnecessary cookies or PII, or put in a prominent banner that doesn't overlap the site purpose.
Diggsey 3y ago
> No, people cannot escape responsibility by saying "the law made me be belligerent toward my users". Correction: people should not be able to escape responsibility by saying this. The problem is that right now people do escape responsibility for saying this because the EU is not properly enforcing these new laws. Introducing a law and then not enforcing it has consequences, and those consequences should have been foreseen. Either the law is unenforceable due to practical constraints, in which case it's a bad law, or the EU is failing to enforce it due to inability. Hopefully the EU starts putting more focus on enforcing its existing laws rather than creating new ones.

Avamander 3y ago

It's impossible to foresee everything, including the amount of malicious compliance. In the end we are better off with this legislation and its future iterations and additions than we are without it. The extent to which people's data is misused is simply ridiculous.

mgoetzke 3y ago
Though this was 100% predictable
piker 3y ago
So perhaps that suggests caution be taken in meddling…
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Meddling in what way? 'Meddling' causing citizens to lose visibility and corporations to gain more power over data?

isodev 3y ago

You mean the EU should have foreseen that people in tech have no conscience and sensitivity for right or wrong?

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
To be fair, completely foreseeable.
- moomin 3y ago
  Yeah, I’m not sure legislators should be on the hook for malicious compliance, though.
  - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
    Of course not, I was just having a laff at tech's expense.
- isodev 3y ago
  As a reminder, it's the same people in tech we're trusting to build things like chat bots, "AI", cars that try to drive themselves and rockets that try to land themselves... etc. You have to admit that if these same people can't be trusted to follow a simple "do not track" directive, humanity is in big trouble.
  - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
    Sadly, we are. I didn't ever think of myself as an optimist until I realised just how pessimistic it is possible to become, as I've learned in the last 5 or so years. Now I realise I was quite an optimistic person, at least by comparison with my present self.
  - crabmusket 3y ago
    I mean, humanity is and always has been in big trouble. That's why history is full of disasters, mass death etc. But I don't think it's that developers "can't" follow a DNT cookie. It's that they won't because it doesn't benefit their employer's financial interests. Making a rocket that lands, on the other hand, does directly correspond to SpaceX's financial interests.

nicce 3y ago

In this case, it is just showing that most companies are collecting more data than they need. You don’t need a banner for the data that is necessary for the service to work at minimum level. There is no role for the consent since the site won’t work otherwise.

poszlem 3y ago
It also shows that most people don't care and just want to get on with their day. We know that companies are collecting more data. Now what?
- leononame 3y ago
  How does it show that? Most people I know are annoyed by this and click on "reject" (if they can find it), but for a lot of non-technical people these banners are just a given because they don't even understand the problem. Doesn't mean they don't care
  - oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
    > if they can find it If it even exists!
  - poszlem 3y ago
    How many "normies" do you know that stopped visiting websites that track them? I don't know anybody who isn't in my tech bubble who cares, and very few normies who would rather pay money than to give access to their data.
    - leononame 3y ago
      None. That doesn't mean they don't care. As I said, most people I know are annoyed by this but take these banners and tracking as a given because they don't understand enough about technology and see them everywhere. And let's be honest here, if you were to stop visiting sites that track you, you could just stop using more or less the whole internet. It's not about stopping to use these sites, it's about stopping those sites from tracking you, which almost everyone I talk to is ok with. The only people I see that defend the amount of tracking happening on the web are commenters online (here, on reddit, etc.). That leads me to believe it's mostly corporate accounts. To the point: Not using a site is not the point of it. Insert "yet you participate in society" meme

bryanrasmussen 3y ago

On the one hand when murders go up because you make using a gun in a crime an automatic 5 year prison term you should have foreseen that possible situation, on the other hand the real bad guy is the one shooting the witnesses.

leononame 3y ago

Yes and no? To some extent, sure. As an example: But if companies or people went out of their way to comply with a law that is clearly not complying with the spirit of the law, just the letter of it, are you really responsible for that? Or are they because they're doing everything to not comply? Let's say you make a law to reduce working hours from 40 to 37 hours except in "emergency situations". Now a company will force employees to sign off on "emergency situations" every week or they'll be fired. They're clearly not complying to the spirit of the law? Is it really your fault when you make a law like that? I'd say only to some degree, the people trying to abuse every loop hole are much more responsible in this case. Companies using dark patterns, hiding the "reject all" option behind an additional click (which even is illegal) and even trying to collect all data possible are much more responsible than the EU's law. Oftentimes they are collecting data just because, not even thinking about it, because they'll add GA to their WordPress site without even looking at it or whatever. That cookie banners have become the standard around the web is sad because it just shows how much everyone is trying to track you.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
Bonus points if you can convince folks to call it the annoying Sign Off law.

casperb 3y ago

I would expect that most companies would be ashamed to publicly state that they sell your data to hundreds(!) of data providers and they would fix this before they had to disclose it. But nope, apparently the money is too good. And blaming the government is more convenient.

crabmusket 3y ago

I guess PG's original tweet assumes that cookie banners are a) bad, b) the fault of the EU, and C) unanticipated and unintended by the EU, thereby demonstrating their incompetence. I can't really comment on what the lawmakers foresaw or intended, but I'd argue that cookie banners are actually a) good, and b) the fault of companies who can't imagine a better way to treat their users. The reason I think they're good is that they cause a psychological nuisance to users of software which doesn't go out of their way to do them well or avoid their necessity. Over time I hope this will tend to cause an association in users minds that sites with cookie banners are somehow seedy or unscrupulous, like pop-up ads.

pron 3y ago

I would put it another way. Any legislation against doing something is almost always motivated by someone's desire to do that very thing. Legislation is usually a battle of interests where the legislator, ideally, wants to protect the overall interests of the public when they conflict with narrower private interests. When the narrower interests belong to powerful groups, you often expect to see some struggle, and if the private interests have a way of making the regulation seem more intrusive and annoying than the harm it's intended to cause, they would take advantage of that to sway the public in their favour. So legislators do expect such a struggle, and the shape it takes may be partly their fault, but it's clearly not all their fault. The more power the private interests have, the more likely they are to find some way to fight the regulation. They will certainly do everything they can to convince the public that the legislators are bad at regulation. In this particular case, however, websites showing banners are also harming themselves as their competitors now have an interest in not showing banners and offering a better experience -- i.e. the regulation makes it worthwhile not to display banners in competitive situations. So we'll see how this all turns out.

sham1 3y ago

The thing is, the consequences seem to be very much intended. The consequences of forcing companies to be transparent about tracking, and hopefully letting the users start voting with their wallets as they get annoyed by the omnipresent "We Value Your Privacy"-popups (which is very ironic considering all the dark patterns et al that are used to have users get tracked). If nothing else, at least now people know just how much they've been tracked. One can only hope that this increased consciousness would help people to choose services that don't track people. For example Hacker News doesn't need tracking cookies nor a cookie popup, and it seems to be doing just fine, even in terms of the law ;)