[xp84]

It's wild to me that anyone thinks that would be a reasonable law (whether or not it is law, I have no clue, I don't live in UK or EU).

If you made a website and you said "To view the private content on my website, you have to either pay me, or sign a name, any name you wish, in my guestbook" what business is it of the government to say "No, this random person refuses to pay or sign the book, but Thom, you have to let them see all your articles anyway."

Note that I used "sign any name" as the metaphor, not "show ID," since it is trivial to not allow any important information exchange if you simply delete the cookies yourself, which is easy to configure a browser to do. The end-user has the choice, if it's so important to them, to configure their browser. Even Chrome can be configured for which sites to allow cookies, which to disallow, and which to clear when the browser closes (the smart choice, since accepting them and throwing them away soon after is the undetectable option that accomplishes your main aim).

[thom]

Allowing bad actors to act badly against all but the most sophisticated users is exactly where lawmakers should be stepping in. Sorry you find that controversial.

[ApolloFortyNine]

YouTube is a site that pretty much everyone has an account already for (and therefore have already consented), but say you make YouTube 2, you can only make money if people allow personalized ads (they pay 10-20x untargeted ads). 90% less revenue means your business model doesn't work. The government in the area has decided you can't refuse service to customers that cost you money (people who don't consent).

You simply will have to go out of business.

This is also why you see many large companies fighting for more regulation. It's harder for a competitor to emerge if they have to navigate mountains of red tape.

[kalleboo]

What if I want to start a restaurant that can only make money if I use expired ingredients, run the fridge at a higher temperature to save on electricity, and don't waste my employee's time by washing their hands? These food safety laws mean my business model doesn't work.

I simply will have to go out of business.

[ApolloFortyNine]

This is just a strawman, these aren't equivalent and I'm not going to waste time pretending they are. Might as well just compare ads to nuclear weapons at this point.

[kalleboo]

There are enough libertarians out there that believe that the government should not be involved in food safety inspections to establish that regulations like this ARE on a related spectrum. Do you have a right to trust that food you buy is safe or should you get to choose to buy raw milk? Do you have a right to consume online services while retaining privacy? It's a debate society constantly has, and the EU electorate has chosen the side of privacy over a specific business model, just like most developed societies have chosen food safety.

[xp84]

> Do you have a right to consume online services while retaining privacy?

This is the part I don't understand. I'm actually all for regulations like being able to demand they delete the saved data they have on you, restrictions on transferring data to the control of third parties without disclosure/permission, etc.

But if your definition of "privacy" extends to not wanting cookies to work like they were designed to, why can't it be your responsibility to use a browser (a User-Agent) that carries out your intentions?

With services that are mandatory for all of us to use (e.g. government), I can see how being stringent makes sense because the users have no choice. But I can't understand applying the same burdensome requirements to things that people can simply choose to use or not use, such as a restaurant or some random guy's blog. I could be convinced that large platforms (tough to define properly, but things like Amazon, Uber or Meta) may be subjected to additional rules, but the tough rules being applied to even tiny one-person startups does nothing but advantage the giant platforms who have hundreds of lawyers and can devote entire dev teams to building complicated compliance features.

[xp84]

We ask more sophistication of drivers to understand the rules of right of way than we would be asking of users to hit Settings -> Privacy and Cookies and read the plain language there.

Sorry that you need the government to "help" people in this way, by forcing other people to give them free things.

[kalleboo]

Are you proposing a licensing scheme to use the internet?

[xp84]

No, I'm just saying that it's okay to burden humans with the responsibility to learn a few basic ideas about how to operate their own computers if they want to control their data privacy.

Simple, easy tools are already there, such as the Clear Browsing Data menu item in Chrome, Edge, and Safari. For more complicated intents, the browser settings are no more complicated to navigate than the actual customization UI in the CMPs, anyway.

[kalleboo]

Then I don't understand the driver analogy. Drivers are forced to take lessons and get licensed for the precise reason that we know people can't take the responsibility on their own.

Clearing browser data is anything but easy for people who aren't certain what is "browser data". Is this going to delete all my google sheets? Those are in the browser. And it's not a bad question, some apps actually use IndexedDB or whatever to store user data.

[xp84]

One more thing re: my potentially distracting analogy.

> Drivers are forced to take lessons and get licensed for the precise reason that we know people can't take the responsibility on their own.

Ok, I see what you mean here, but I'd argue that the licensing requirement is only acceptable because the risk is both grave and impossible to limit to just yourself.

We don't require a license or training to use a table saw at home even though table saws are also dangerous unless used very wisely. That's because the risk is mainly limited to the user and at worst, someone who chooses to be nearby that table saw.

To bring it back to my point, I'm not discussing the licensing part, I'm saying rather that we don't make excuses for people who refuse to learn the rules of the road, or how to safely use a table saw, and we don't say that it's the job of wood manufacturers to somehow secure the table saws of ignorant DIYers. The responsibility is on the user of the car, the table saw, or the browser. If the user chooses to never learn the basic operation of their tool, they might get hurt. And if we do have to regulate something, we should regulate the saw, and give it clearly-labeled safety features. Not regulate all pieces of wood.

And in my opinion, the 'danger' from cookies is so trivial compared to any real dangers (mainly the danger of seeing ads that are "too good"), that I am not convinced anyone needs to be protected from it by a third party.

[xp84]

> some apps actually use IndexedDB or whatever to store user data.

Not any notable apps used by noobs though. Unsophisticated users don't include Local Storage in their mental model - they simply believe that "When I log into Gmail, Google Docs, or Slack on a fresh computer, my stuff will be as I left it on my other computer." Webapps which subvert this by not persisting things outside of Local Storage would be taking wild and unnecessary data-loss risks with user data.

> people who aren't certain what is "browser data".

This I agree with you on. Everyone including EU legislators are trying to regulate something that none of them actually know or agree on what it even is.

The common person has basically only one single concern that relates to cookies: They don't like retargeting ads. That's it, that's the whole beef. They feel offended that by some mysterious (to them) means, they see ads 'around the Web' for things they've browsed before. Of course, those ads exist because they're incredibly effective. But they are annoyed that it, in their opinion, manipulates them into spending money. These ads are "too good."

This is a technical problem with a technical solution, and if the EU (and US) regulators weren't technically illiterate they would recognize this and issue clear requirements aimed at browsers[1] instead of the stupid ones we have today which are basically just rely on the honor system, meaning compliance will be patchy at best, and it relies on costly enforcement actions and complaints, is subject to litigation, and has so many gray areas - "If the CMP didn't work right and cookies were stored, is MY company liable? We tried!").

There is a second concern, but it has little to do with cookies, it's just that we ideally want to stop companies from keeping and exchanging dossiers on our behavior and preferences (and a dispute on whether anonymized data is ok, or whether it's unethical because if detailed enough it can be deanonymized). That is bigger than cookies, and applies just as much to offline companies.

[1] Here's an imaginary scheme, just for example:

1. Segment cookies storage by the domain in the address bar - the same way the memory/disk cache works today. This is really functionally the same as turning off third-party cookies, but if anything "needs" them, this sandboxing would nerf it so that a Facebook Like Button on a webpage can't be aware of a facebook session you created on a different domain.

2. Big switch in the browser's UI that defaults to "Temporary" - if you leave it alone, all cookies and storage are evicted 2 hours after last tab is closed, or you switch it to "Permanent" (preference stored per top domain) to have the current behavior where expiry can be longer.

Regardless of the specifics, a browser-side solution would solve the problems of "compliance" as it pertains to cookies and other client-side tracking (they can't abuse data the browser simply won't persist for them), and level the playing field between the tech giants and upstart competitors.

[kalleboo]

You're fooling yourself if you think clearing cookies does anything. Everyone is doing browser fingerprinting instead these days.

[ben_w]

> If you made a website and you said "To view the private content on my website, you have to either pay me, or sign a name, any name you wish, in my guestbook" what business is it of the government to say "No, this random person refuses to pay or sign the book, but Thom, you have to let them see all your articles anyway."

More: "To view the private content on my website, you have to either pay me, or let more businesses connect the dots between this content and the rest of your internet browsing habits, than there were students and teachers combined in your high school."

Yes, it is technically possible to fake this content, or to auto-delete it.

But https://xkcd.com/2501/ applies. "It's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the privacy settings for Safari and one or two Chromium derivatives."

(Real world user familiarity with software is much, much worse; this is an old survey now, but look at the chart near the bottom: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/)

[xp84]

I'm in agreement with you that most computer users haven't bothered to learn anything about how to use their browser or computer.

But still, let's say I agree that there's even an important problem to be solved.

We can (A) regulate the browser to dumb this down for these ignorant people, and have the problem guaranteed solved, or (B) we can burden every single company that operates a website, and rely on enforcement since otherwise it's all honor-system.

The EU and so far multiple US states, have chosen the stupid option B.

[ben_w]

Option A is insufficient, as cookies are a mere implementation detail about how tracking is done, and the tracking is the concern.

[tripzilch]

This is a false analogy. The cookie banner stuff is explicitly about sharing data with third parties. If that were the case in your example, it'd be a different thing, right.