[cudder]

That is such a silly stupid thing in the GDPR consent.

- "Please don't track me."

- "But what if we realllly want to?"

A normal response to that would be an even more resounding FCK NO, but somehow the EU came to the completely opposite conclusion.

[indigo945]

Claiming tracking cookies as "necessary" is often illegal under the GDPR. This is an enforcement problem, not a problem with the law itself, or the EU.

"Necessary" means "necessary for fulfilment of the contract". Your name and address are necessary data when you order off Amazon, your clickstream is not.

[lazide]

If the content is free, monetizing you is clearly necessary (/s, kinda)

[skinkestek]

Monetizing is fine with me: There’s nothing stopping creators from showing relevant ads—ones they choose themselves. Sometimes I have even found myself wishing there had been an ad a few months ago for a software conference I just realized I missed.

If someone blogs about woodworking, show static ads for tools they actually use and love. If they're into programming, show JetBrains, cloud providers, or anything dev-adjacent. Totally fine by me.

The problem is that almost everyone defaults to Google Ads—which then serves me wildly irrelevant junk, think brain-melting pay-to-win mobile games or even scammy dating sites that have zero connection to the content I’m reading and zero relevance to my interests.

It’s not just noise, it’s actively degrading the experience.

[spoiler]

Ah I remember the good-old day when people were selling "ad spaces" on their sites that weren't obtrusive. And usually the ads were things the author approved of or even used

[kedean]

I miss the naive days of the million dollar homepage

[mr_toad]

Necessary means necessary to add it to the page for the project manager to collect their annual bonus.

[eitland]

Please show me where GDPR says this.

I think you'll find that GDPR says the opposite and the only reason this continues to happen is because authorities don't have enough resources to go after every at the same time and also because European authorities have a hard time against US companies.

[cudder]

Sure, here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

End of recital (47):

> The processing of personal data for direct marketing purposes may be regarded as carried out for a legitimate interest.

[eitland]

Have my upvote. I have just learned that targeted ads might be considered direct marketing. I always thought it was limited to things that had my name and address (physical, email or other) on it, excluding online ads unless they were part of a "logged in experience" like upsells inside the product I am currently using.

That said, I read the rest of the recital and I think it is rather clear to the degree that such things can be clear that if you didn't expect it, it isn't legal. Here are some quotes:

- "[...]provided that the interests or the fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject are not overriding, taking into consideration the reasonable expectations of data subjects based on their relationship with the controller."

- "At any rate the existence of a legitimate interest would need careful assessment including whether a data subject can reasonably expect at the time and in the context of the collection of the personal data that processing for that purpose may take place."

I can assure you the even after reading this, if I have clicked "necessary only" (as this discussion started with) it is not my reasonable expectation that any data are stored except those that are strictly necessary for the navigation and the user visible features[1] of the site works.

I'll admit that it seems some people think there is an argument that can me made that online ads can be direct marketing, but I would not risk any of my savings to defend that claim in court and I don't think Facebook or Google want to help you either as they seem to trying their best to prevent people from targeting individuals or at least pretending they do. And if it does, it is still covered by the conditions above.

[1]: and yes, that means user features, so unless you are creating an online ad-collection of some kind, that probably does not mean ads