Comment by tysilva
1 day ago
Wow, finally. This would be a major quality of life update for browsing the web. As others have stated, not all sites merit the same preferences. Hopefully they can adapt a middleground of default settings with the ability to customize site by site.
As long as it's some automated signal, the User-Agent can use any logic it wants to send it without cooperation. The specifics of how to send the signal don't have to be legislated. E.g. Firefox's Tracking Protection has a global default a site-specific overrides, so it's very likely that they would do the same for this or just combine those features.
Comission wanted that, Google lobbied hard to NOT have automatic sigal… go figure…
under what circumstances as user would I want to explicitly agree to have my browsing history sent to tens or hundreds of third party tracking aggregators?
I've seen people argue, with a straight face, that they prefer to get ads that are "relevant to them". Including here on Hacker News.
"I like being manipulated by people who want to extract maximal value from me"
2 replies →
I don't trust anyone who is against "relevant ads," because I always think what they want isn't "irrelevant ads," they want "no ads." But no ads isn't an option.
4 replies →
People want free content online. More than that, they just expect it.
Any future law in regards to this will likely just lead to the companies that already got consent (companies you already have accounts with) becoming even deeper entrenched.
Non targeted ads pay a small percentage of targeted ads.
I don't disagree. The ideal state here is really layers of customation for the defaults. Options like reject all, or strictly necessary would be at the forefront. And then it's really up to the individual how they want to proceed when those options are not available.
If offered something in return, I guess
Ask that question to the 99% of people who click 'Allow All' on cookie banners.
Its the biggest button.
They did not read the text to agree.
It was the fastest way to get the banner to go away. Sometimes they force you to confirm multiple times if you click ”none” or ”minimal”.
Devil's advocate argument: if they were giving you something in return, and that could be cash, but it might also be "you can have this content for free".
In the UK a few news sites have changed cookie banners to "you can accept and see this stuff for free, or you can sign up for a subscription, which would you prefer?". It's the only time I hit accept (and then clear browser history).
If blanket preferences from browser signals became the norm, a segment might open up where you would configure preferences and a data broker would make sure you get something in return for your data. At minimum it might force paywalled publishers to consider that as a "lite" subscription option.
That's been ruled illegal in the EU, but EU sites still do it. Basically, the consent exception only applies if the user isn't coerced into it. Because coerced consent isn't consent.
> but it might also be "you can have this content for free".
ads don't require invasve and pervasive tracking
7 replies →
Sometimes I do it to reward the website for being less shit than most websites.
many will still ask because they want to track you regardless of existing preferences