Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw_a_grenade | Hacker News Reader

No, this wrong. The law says that by default you can't process personal data, unless the user gave consent. That setting matched both the expectation of users and the default as specified by the law.

The story that advertisers don't know what users selected and that somehow allows them to track the user is disingenous.

View on HN

It doesn't allow them to track, but it does allow them to more convincingly argue that they can nag them about it (I think some regulators in some EU countries have rejected this, but I don't think this is universal). i.e. it makes it ineffective as a means of stopping the annoying pop-ups. Because the companies are basically belligerent about it there needs to be a clear declaration of 'if this header is set you may not track _and_ you may not bug the user about it'

How are they supposed to ask for consent then?

If the user has already indicated that they don't consent by setting the header, you don't ask. If they want to change, make it available as a setting.

(and frankly, the number of users that actively want to consent to this is essentially zero)

What if the user doesn't know they have that setting enabled. Or they enabled it to block some other company than your own.

I always constent to cookie popups so the number can not be 0.

Hence why I think the default hurt the initiative. And the header could be set on a per-domain basis, if you wanted that for some reason. I'm curious, why do you consent on such pop-ups?

I always consent as well. They can show much more relevant ads when you consent to cookies. If I block cookies I get generic ads about stuff I don't care about.

Ah, I can't think of any level of relevance that would make me want to see ads, and in areas where I do want to see something, like recommendation systems, I've found that they are better when they are only based on the content I am currently looking at as opposed to based on some profile based on my whole history.

The popup never lets you choose to see fewer ads. It's a common misconception by lay people that you will see fewer ads if you block cookies, but that's not happening of course. So you may as well get relevant ones.

> It's a common misconception by lay people that you will see fewer ads if you block cookies, but that's not happening of course.

It absolutely will happen if you install uBlock Origin.

So essentially you prefer the psychological manipulation inflicted on you to be more effective? Yeah, that's not a good idea bro.

Just today I got an ad for a new theater show in town I'd like to see, I might have missed that if it wasn't for the targeted ad. Did they "manipulate" me into seeing it? I guess so. Do I mind? No, I'm capable enough to decide for myself.

Because it offers a better experience. The cookies are not pointless to the experience and you need all of them to have the full experience. The legal definition about what cookies are needed does not match reality.

What parts of the experience do you feel are missing if you do not consent to tracking? I have seen one or two cases of malicious compliance where rejecting tracking results in no state being kept, including having rejected it. Keep in mind that the legal definition is based on things that would not be reasonably expected to be kept or distributed in order to provide the service that the user is getting, you can do basically everything except targeted ads or selling user data under that definition, even if people who want to do the above are trying to pretend otherwise.

Targeted ads are part of the experience. They directly affect user satisfaction of the product. Relevant ads can increase user engagement. You may find it strange, but people prefer products with relevant ads.

Lol no one that doesn't work in ads thinks that way.

People prefer products without ads at all. Ads are noise. People's brains literally learn how to filter them out via banner blindness.

People always comment that the internet is "so much nicer" after I install uBlock Origin on their browsers. It's just better, they can't explain why. They don't need to. I know why.

The fact is nobody wants this crap. Ads are nothing but noise in our signal. They're spam. They're content we did not ask for, forced upon us without consent. They do not improve the "experience", at best its impact is minimized.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com