Hacker News

Canada, better the 28th EU member than the 51st US state

20 points by u1hcw9nx ago | 6 comments

PaulHoule |next [-]

They’ll have to get rid of those cookie banners first.

u1hcw9nx |root |parent [-]

Cookie banners are completely voluntary for all companies in the EU.

If you don't track people you don't need to show the banner. You can use cookies for keep people logged in etc.

Cookie banner = we ask a permission to track you.

PaulHoule |root |parent [-]

They could have made it as simple as "if you don't respect DNT you go to jail" instead they were bribed by American corporations to adopt the American-style legalism we suffer from here.

There is another interpretation of privacy which is "freedom from harassment" and American internet companies want nothing less than the right to harass you and interrupt you from cradle to grave: if they want to build dossiers, it is to harass more profitably.

Until GDPR web professionals fought tooth and nail to keep modal dialogs out of web applications, mostly successfully. Since the GDPR makes the first interaction you have with a web site harassment it breaks the dam for further harassment. Now the average blog pops up three modal dialogs asking for your email address before you can even read anything, often one modal dialog makes it impossible to close the others.

No wonder the world is overrun with right-wing populism. Thanks, EU.

pornel |root |parent |next [-]

Trillion-dollar surveillance advertising companies will not go down without a fight.

Obviously nobody wants the stupid banners. But if adtech companies can't track invisibly, the next best thing for them is to argue "but what about user choice!?!?", use malicious compliance to make a mess, and enjoy how pro-privacy lawmakers get blamed for the fruits of their lobbying.

47282847 |root |parent |previous [-]

> Until GDPR web professionals fought tooth and nail to keep modal dialogs out of web applications, mostly successfully.

Like the comment above rightfully states, GDPR does not require banners at all. It’s up to the site to decide if they want to (ab)use collected data for other purposes than what is required. If it was the goal of “web professionals” to avoid modals like you say, it could perfectly well be achieved also today. Also, don’t you remember all the popup dialogs and modal ads and “in your face subscribe to our newsletter before you can even see our content” that sites had, well before GDPR? So many that browsers had to basically disable popups? So much for “tooth and nail”.

None of the sites I’ve ever built require any cookie banners. Never have. I would refuse to build something that does, because the use cases that require them are unethical, unnecessary, and a cancer for society. Very simple.

metalman |previous [-]

wellllll, Canada has whooped the Americans AND the French before, Germans too. The Americans will just kill us, but the euros will snide and sneer bit by bit slowly disolving anything recognisably Canadian under the impossible weight of there beurocracys, and then get back to good old neocolonialist plundering of resources, which will all be dutifly stamped "sustainable"