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Comment by zinekeller | Hacker News Reader

> For example, say I want to embed an instagram post on my website.

In that case, you could:

a) get a license (your suggestion),

b) link but not embed Instagram pages, or

c) embed in such a way that it shows a user-controlled notification that opening the embed will connect to Instagram and as a consequence sends data to Meta.

And indeed, some websites use c) without any problem, they even integrate it into the cookie popup. BBC even steps it up: all of their Twitter citations are screencapped and linked instead of other websites just embedding Twitter (in their defense, they can say that this is to preserve the context in case that the user subsequently deleted the post).

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> c) embed in such a way that it shows a user-controlled notification that opening the embed will connect to Instagram and as a consequence sends data to Meta.

This is how we arrive at cookie popups and annoying "you're leaving our website" notifications. I posit that perhaps both of these could be a feature of HTTP protocol and the browsers - i.e. a browser could just display a small standard icon in its UI notifying user that he's consenting to cookies, and another one notifying him that he's being redirected outside of the domain he's in, The user could then configure the browser to auto-accept or auto-deny such attempts, review all the consents he's given earlier etc. - all in all, it would result in much better UX.

Google has probably not proposed and implemented something like this in Chrome already only because it would actually improve privacy and that's obviously not in their interest. Which proves that de facto giving up Web standards to the commercial entity was never a good idea. If the EU was better at execution, they would mandate something like this as the law, instead of the current requirements which can be met by just spamming users with popups no one reads.

The "annoying" popups is also how you end up with businesses like plausible analytics that provide analytics, but don't require the popup, because they dont store the information that causes the popup to be required.

So, working as intended I think.

Have you browsed the internet recently?

We were better off 15 years ago

We were not better off 15 years ago. We were just blissfully unaware of the problem of large-scale PII collection that was already metastasizing in the shadows.

Imagine a kind of decision square. Rows are "consciously" and "unconsciously", Columns are PII collection, and privacy (no PII collection) .

This gives us a list of 4 possible scenarios (from least to most desirable). 1. unconscious privacy, 2. unconscious PII collection , 3. conscious PII collection, 4. conscious privacy

In detail (least to most desirable situation)

Box 1: Early internet everyone had unconscious privacy. No one was collecting PII, and no one was aware of it.

Box 2: Early 21st century, people started collecting PII at an ever increasing (and frankly alarming) rate. You may have encountered tall tales where people got sent baby advertisements before they themselves even knew they were pregnant.

Box 3: The goal of the GDPR, shine a light on the situation and make everyone conscious that there is a problem; and unveil the extent.

Box 4 (future): fix the underlying problem.

GDPR already addresses box 4 a little bit. Just by shining a light on these practices, some of the slightly shady bits at the edges are already solved.

Now that the situation is visible and known, we can take further political steps at mitigation.

> Early 21st century, people started collecting PII at an ever increasing (and frankly alarming) rate. You may have encountered tall tales where people got sent baby advertisements before they themselves even knew they were pregnant.

What's disheartening is that in physical stores, this already started happening in the '90s, mainly for analysis of loyalty programs' data.

> i.e. a browser could just display a small standard icon in its UI notifying user that he's consenting to cookies

If you need to notify the user that he is "giving consent" then there is no consent.

> and another one notifying him that he's being redirected outside of the domain he's in

There is rarely a reason to redirect to other domains. The most common case is making outbound links go through a redirect for tracking purposes - and that I won't miss.

>> and another one notifying him that he's being redirected outside of the domain he's in

> There is rarely a reason to redirect to other domains. The most common case is making outbound links go through a redirect for tracking purposes - and that I won't miss.

You misunderstand this part, which is forgivable if you're outside Germany. This is about the mandatory "You're leaving X, we do not have control on their data collection or endorse this site's contents. Do you want to continue?" you'll see on German-language website because a court in Hamburg says that they're implicitly liable if they didn't state that.

c) is very popular among various German websites I frequent. Instead of the embedded content there is a blank area and you can consent with one click to send your data to $service which will then load the embedded content. Sometimes it also includes a direct link so you can open the embedded content in whichever way you like. I don't find this to intrusive or annoying, especially since the website can save your choice for later and can choose to never ask you again.

> they can say that this is to preserve the context in case that the user subsequently deleted the post).

And this is how it should be done, otherwise you read the article a few years latter and see a strange mess with empty holes.

Or in Instagram’s case for me, you read the article and see a strange mess with empty holes today, because your IP address hasn’t logged into any Meta properties in the past year and so Instagram won’t serve you embeds anymore.

Option c is how the Danish BBC-equivalent does it, and I deeply appreciate that kind of care for their users.

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