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Comment by dspillett | Hacker News Reader

As I make sure to uncheck the options including “legitimate interest”¹, that can be far longer than 10s. Though likely not, because unless I really want to read the information on that particular page my time is probably better spent looking for the same information elsewhere².

[1] which really means “we see your preference not to be stalked, but fuck you and your silly preferences”

[2] if I see the admiral³ logo in a consent pop-over my time on the site is ~0.1s as I know my choice is “uncheck literally hundreds of boxes as there is no say-no-to-all single click, accept hundreds of 3rd parties might track me, or leave”.

[3] not an issue with this site, their opt-out seem relatively sane though I did need to click a few times to make sure “legitimate interest” wasn't hidden in nested minimised content.

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Do you really care this much about some bits in a computer that might try to sell you laundry detergent? I always hit Accept All because I find GDPR unconscionable and want to support the sites I use for free.

For me personally, I haven’t figured out whether I care or not about cookie privacy, because I’m too traumatized by the absolute fucking UX catastrophe that is “legally mandated modal/large banner on first visit to any site”. A modal is a pop-up window for the SPA age. We hated pop-ups so much that we took it to court trying to make it illegal, with judges in most jurisdictions settling on something close to “no, pop ups aren’t illegal, unless they’re coercive or misleading”.

And now it’s illegal to not have a popup. Every site is legally obligated to hit every user with one of the all-time most hated UX experiences ever.

They aren't legally obligated to make opting out as painful of a process as possible by presenting you a gazillion individual options and then some kind of loading spinner while they "Process your request" for half a minute as an extra "screw you". When that happens I just bail out as that shows just how little respect the site owner has for their visitors.

> And now it’s illegal to not have a popup.

It absolutely isn't. You, along with many others, are falling for the advertising industries attempts to turn you against privacy regulations by claiming the regulations force them to inconvenience you.

In fact a great many of the pop-us (the vast majority) are actually in breach, deliberately so, because they make it far more work to opt out than to opt in.

If all you track by default is tokens required for correct functioning of the site (session tokens and such) then you do not need a pop-up at all.

I’m not “falling for the advertising industries attempts”. You’re missing my point, which is that the law specifies you must use a particularly atrocious UX pattern.

I am not missing your point. I am asserting that your point is incorrect. Show me where in a law/regulation where anything like that is stipulated.

IIRC all that is stipulated in the EU regs, for instance, WRT cookies and other tracking tech is the ability to opt-out should be as easy as the ability to opt in, it should not be auto-opt-in, you can opt-out later if you do opt-in, and you should be properly informed about what you are opting into.

The bad UX patterns making it time-consuming, confusing, or otherwise unpleasant, to opt-out are actually against the spirit of the law (perhaps even the letter of the law) but unfortunately it is not proving really practical to enforce.

I come from a time when commercial interests couldn't easily stalk me and collect piles of data on my behaviour in order to eek out a few pennies more profit, and yes, do care that things have changed in a direction quite away from that.

The multitude of information stored about us is used for far more than just selling too, as per reports like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35028107 so I also object on principal as well as for selfish comfort reasons. I have nothing to hide in that regard now, so nothing to fear, but I know people who would do if similar law covered where we live, and people who did have things to hide that this sort of thing would have been a danger to when other crappy laws were in force (people who were homosexual when it was still effectively illegal to be for instance), and who is to say some other law might pop up later which means I might want to hide something I now can't because every advertiser on the planet knows it and can be very easily made to reveal it?

> because I find GDPR unconscionable

From this I surmise that you do not understand GDPR and related legislation, and have fallen for the advertising industries attempts to turn you against such regulations by making you believe they are forced by them to inconvenience you.

> I surmise that you do not understand GDPR

I'm familiar with it. I fundamentally disagree with its assumptions on rights.

If you send me a letter, you shouldn't be able to compel me to shred it. If you come into my shop with a clear exoectation of security surveillance, the video should be mine entirely.

If you send my server your IP, that's my information now, and you shouldn't be able to compel me to delete it. But somehow this backwards concept of ownership has gotten popular where every individual is the perpetual tyrant of any information they leave in the world as they go through it. They can tell me to forget something they told me and now various governments will try to punish me if I don't agree to the façade. 1984 comparisons might be a cliché but this fits the memory hole analogy all too well.

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