[cgearhart]

It’s hard for me to rate the content. I couldn’t get past the sketchy dark pattern of a site that tracks me and sells my data for marketing with an “accept all cookies” button, while making it much harder to find the process for opting out. At that point it’s easier for me to just opt out of using the site.

It’s too bad because I’d love to read some good technical articles, and this sounds like an interesting topic.

[rendall]

Agreed. I open nearly every HN article from an unknown domain in incognito/private mode. At least half implement this kind of dark pattern.

I find it spectacularly baffling for this kind of content-marketing website, where income presumably does not come from advertising, nor trading in visitor data, but from their DBaaS. Why would such a company risk alienating their visitors like this? It makes me question the decision-making in their unrelated, primary service; their conscientiousness; even their security. Truly mystifying.

[s_fischer]

I think there's a universe where there is no overlap between engineers/PMs who work on the actual DB product and website/content marketing site.

The marketing space is filled with all kinds of "plug and play" SaaS providers which offer detailed customer journey data and sometimes it's just straight up easier to add an "accept all" consent banner than to try and allow for hot loading specific 3rd party libraries based on customized consent options.

Is it the right thing to do? In my opinion, no. But I can also understand a situation where decisions were made on marketing tech before understanding the technical privacy implications. And then the implementation is handled by a team (potentially much smaller) that does not work on the actual product.

[rendall]

Sure. I believe I understand your explanation and appreciate it. It's possible for their core service to be rock solid and their marketing side to be of lesser priority and so not to receive the thought and resources of their core service. It makes sense.

Still, were I to be responsible for evaluating competing services, such choices would definitely be a ding. Not unrecoverable, but it would make me wonder unnecessarily about their corporate culture and customer care. All things being equal, I think it would be wise to go with the service that didn't do that.

[dominotw]

> sells my data for marketing with an “accept all cookies” button

most likely just poorly implemented gdpr.

[bostik]

I used to wear the DPO hat, so this comes from a vantage point of having been in the weeds: ignorance is no excuse for incompetence.

"Doing GDPR" badly because you don't know any better? Then don't even try to walk that tightrope. Don't track. At all. If you use on third parties who don't give you the option to do it right, then dump those third parties.