[evancoop]

At some point, society will have a broader conversation about respecting the word 'no.' Without mentioning a different context explicitly, we all recognize the grotesque immorality when 'no' must be stated repeatedly (and even then, the requests do not cease).

Google (and other large tech companies) require a level of vigilance from their users in boundary-setting that would be unacceptable in almost any other context.

[tobr]

Yes and, I would add, not just respect the word 'no', but allow it to be expressed in the first place.

Not 'maybe later'. Not 'remind me tomorrow'. Not 'manage options'.

Just 'no'.

[dsnr]

Modern UX:

“ We respect your privacy! Do you agree to the use of cookies by this website?

[x] Yes, all of them, with some extra on top.

[] I would like to manually review and uncheck 859 individual checkboxes or be directed to some other 3rd party website to manage my settings there. Also, I would like these settings to expire after 7 days.

Your personal data matters to us! (In ways you can’t imagine) “

[dessant]

That kind of consent popup is illegal in the EU, please report them to your local DPA. Rejecting data collection must be just as easy as accepting it.

Also watch out for the use of "legitimate interest". I have seen banks trying to deprive customers of their right to refuse data collection, data sharing and marketing messages, claiming legitimate interest.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/02/europe_iab_decision/

[dsnr]

Except they left the “legitimate interest” loophole which gets abused by every website.

[MaxBarraclough]

As I understand it, the law provides reasonable limits on what is covered by its legitimate interest provision. Violation of the law is widespread because everyone knows the enforcement is a joke.

See also a rare exception https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27060609

[toxik]

Funny, I’ve seen this on multiple government agency websites. This is in Sweden.

[Nextgrid]

> please report them to your local DPA

That requires an unreasonable amount of effort, and at least in the UK the DPA is completely useless, corrupt and/or incompetent.

[fsflover]

> our personal data matters to us! (In ways you can’t imagine)

No, "we value your privacy (at a very high price!)".

[pwdisswordfish9]

We value your privacy, that’s why we don’t give it to you for free

[wengo314]

i got even better one.

do you accept your cookie policy ? [ yes | no, customize ]

and after you go through all that :

big green button [ continue with recommended settings ]

smaller gray one [ save my choices ]

guess what the green one does.

[BoxOfRain]

Or the equally obnoxious 'pressing consent is instant, pressing don't consent takes 5+ seconds to process'. This one is plausibly deniable too.

[stanmancan]

What about when you remove yourself from a mailing list. and they inform you it will take 10 business days to take effect?

[fsflover]

> This one is plausibly deniable too.

How can it be? You do nothing for 5+ seconds or you save a ton of cookies instantly.

[BoxOfRain]

I think if it was in a court of law it'd be quite difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it's malicious unless it was literally something as obvious as `Thread.sleep(5000)` rather than the software just being badly written. I managed to introduce a really annoying and very specific timing issue a few weeks ago completely by accident for example, I reckon the accused would just say 'non-consent is processed differently to consent for $legacy_cruft reasons and it's quite slow, we're incompetent but we're not malicious'.

[kawsper]

It just feels like corporate weasel words.

Wes Borg from Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie did a skit called "Internet Helpdesk" that included this bit:

> Thank you for calling, your call is very important to us, please hold!

https://youtu.be/1LLTsSnGWMI

[plebianRube]

Put it in the pile with the other dark patterns.

[sjmm1989]

Not to get too targeted at people here... but I need to get something off my chest on this topic, and your comment serves as a pretty decent launching point.

I'm not going to be saying this to attack people, but I am going to be pretty stern and resolute in my language here. Fair warnings have been given.

------------

Tobr, and anyone concerned...

For this kind of thing to occur, every single one of you out there would need to grow a backbone.(no offense, but its true.) I can't begin to start complaining about how many spineless fuckwits are out there letting these kinds of people like google get away with this all the fucking time, all because no one ever actually stands up for each other. Sure, they'll virtue signal when someone makes a scene, stuff like that.

But when the chips are down and its time to fight, these cowards run. These spineless fuckwits that ruin our society is all of you. All of you who never stand up against your boss. All of you who never tell your teachers off when they are in the wrong. All of you who never tell your families to be better, because they'll just act worse. Or your supposed so called 'friends'.

This problem is much deeper than just Google Tobr and crew reading this. This problem goes straight down to the heart of the reason as to why humanity just can't seem to catch a break in regards to evil people out there.

Remember, google's only good advice ever, they screwed up. "Don't be Evil."

They are evil, because all of you are gullible cowards; with only a few exceptions existing and not as a rule.

And to those who figure "You're wrong!"

PROVE IT. Get out there and do something useful for once in regards to this problem. I might believe you then.

[ethbr0]

The only thing that's going to make that happen is legally enshrining the permanence of "No" in law, as I believe parts of the GDPR do.

Otherwise, if companies can covert >0% of users and therefore make >$0 with every re-ask, they'll just ask again.

Large scale tech companies are predators when they want something. And they aren't going to magically stop being predators absent legal repercussions.

[nopenopenopeno]

The only way that’s going to happen with an empirical world order (the United States) is either by full-fledged political revolution or war with a competing power.

The American state prioritizes corporate interests by design. This is how industrial capitalism works and always has worked. And the EU is a dependent of the US, not an alternative to it.

The Western neoliberal consensus of the past half-century has caused people to forget how power works, and nowhere is that more clear than in these utopian calls for regulation on Hacker News.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Capitalism or a society. Pick one.

[ethbr0]

Without derailing too far, how would you explain the existence of work hour limits and workplace protection regulations?

[nopenopenopeno]

All of them were won by fierce mass labor movements, which were then aggressively suppressed and wiped from the curriculums during the McCarthyist era, prior to the neoliberal era. And those hard-won protections have been eroding ever since. These things don’t just fall from the sky.

Since you mention “work hour limits”, look up the Haymarket Strike in Chicago that won the 40 hour work week for private employees in the US, but not before police shot and killed 4 peacefully striking workers.

[ethbr0]

Yes. That's what the rough and tumble reality of freedom in a democracy looks like.

> You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Capitalism or a society. Pick one.

You can have both. It just comes with people giving a shit and putting their lives and careers on the line in an organized fashion.

Which seems like a bargain, given the only alternatives have collapsed into "neither."

[nicoburns]

> The Western neoliberal consensus of the past half-century > You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Capitalism or a society. Pick one.

I think what we're seeing here is the breakdown of the neo-liberal consensus, and at least the specific form of capitalism that comes with it. We see this on both the left and the right (consider that neither Trump nor Sanders support neo-liberalism). It's still the status quo for now, but even amongst the mainstream of the mainstream I'm seeing a waning of support. That hasn't been followed by actions yet, but I think it's only a matter of time.

There seems to be broad recognition that these companies have too much control on our lives, and I expect a wave of regulation of things like consent for tracking, interoperability between services and right to repair to come through soon. Probably first in the EU with the US following. The GDPR has shown that it's possible, and already completely changed the conversation around data retention.

[nopenopenopeno]

How is that regulation going to happen? What mechanisms of power are going to oversee such a thing? With all due respect, I think you have everything right except for this. I think you’re dreaming. These kinds of blessings don’t just fall from the sky.

[pid-1]

If I had one dollar for each time I clicked "unsubscribe" and $ONLINE_STORE decided to forget about that one month later...

I kinda solved that with fast mail + masked addresses, but still super annoying.

[eloisius]

I have a rule in my email account. If it includes the word “unsubscribe” it gets sorted into a folder that gets deleted after 14 days. I manually review that folder every now and then to explicitly mark all of them spam. I would never sign up for any kind of email list to begin with, so it’s spam.

[hyperman1]

Ali express sometimes gives interesting stuff, so I accept their ad mails, even if they are daily. A few days ago, they somehow decided I should speak french, which annoyed me enough to unsubscribe.

3 days later, the mails spontaneously reactivated themselves, but the french reverted to dutch. Which is what I want, so I presume it all worked out in the end.

[2Gkashmiri]

how you turn off "play protect" on android and the on every app install the OS asks you to "why dont you protect yourself by turning on play protect".

if you enable it once, it will never ask you if you want to turn it off

[shadowgovt]

In this context, the user never said 'no.' Some other party said no on their behalf and the user never got a say.

[falcolas]

If its a corporate account, paid for by the corporation, the party who said no is absolutely a concerned party who should be able to say no to tracking on behalf of its employees while they're at work.

[shadowgovt]

I, for one, appreciate my employer will no longer be able to turn off auto-search-completion on my behalf.

Pain in my ass when that feature's disabled because my employer has skewed paranoia dials (so they don't trust Google with search history, but we're using Workspaces, so they trust them with... every corporate document stored in Drive? Wat?)