Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jacquesm 2822 days ago
> Complaining how rational actors work around roadblocks has no practical effect.

I'm not sure I agree with the 'rational'. If you are so short-sighted as a company that your main course of action boils down to 'piss off the user' while doing everything you can to skirt the law then you deserve to suffer the longer term consequences. Rationality should operate on all time-frames simultaneously.
2 comments
kodablah 2822 days ago
I very much wish incentives were aligned this way. However, as the ad tech sector has shown, consumer apathy is pervasive enough that you can push the envelope quite hard against them before the costs near the benefits. Couple that with the uncertainty of an ever-changing tech landscape (especially considering impending government interference), and optimizing for short term profits is "rational". That's "rational" about money only, morality and sustainability be damned.
link
jacquesm 2822 days ago
Hence the GDPR, which sort of makes this go full circle. These 'rational actors' are now trying with all their might to do an end-run around the law. It is interesting to see which companies 'get it' and which really don't get it. I suspect - and hope - that five years from now or so the ones that didn't get it will either have changed tack or will no longer be around.
link
kodablah 2822 days ago
Although they are doing an end-run around the law, I'm not sure they are trying that hard. I suspect the law will become largely ignored (or massively paid lip service just to avoid being the tiniest rare case that is punished), and hope that alternative tech overcomes the entrenched.
link
vsl 2821 days ago
Everybody has to do it, so not pissing your users is not an advantage. The other options for them are: block EU visitors (that pisses me even more) or go out of business (because they need the tracking to make at least some ad money from the freeloaders who want to read their content but won’t pay a dime).

Saying “just don’t track” is magical thinking. They ARE rational in doing the minimally revenue harming thing to comply in their less lucrative market.

The only ones suffering any consequences are people like us who have to click through so much crap to read something because of the bloody GDPR we didn’t ask for. (Like we didn’t ask for Netflix to have 30% of crappy EU content. That’s EU’s next disaster in making.)

link