this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
100 points (95.5% liked)

Technology

2597 readers
956 users here now

Which posts fit here?

Anything that is at least tangentially connected to the technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.


Rules

1. English onlyTitle and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original linkPost URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communicationAll communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. InclusivityEveryone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacksAny kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangentsStay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may applyIf something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.


Companion communities

!globalnews@lemmy.zip
!interestingshare@lemmy.zip


Icon attribution | Banner attribution


If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Coming to a website near you this summer: the European Commission is close to a ‘solution’ that could force people to use their government-issued ID to get online. EDRi and EFF’s concerns about threats to everyone’s privacy and data protection, a chilling effect on access to information, and digital exclusion – harming the already most marginalised in society - remain unsolved.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] wwb4itcgas@lemm.ee 36 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Hey EU? Do you remember when you forced every website to ask for permission to store cookies and made the entire web immeasurably worse to use without in any way having a positive impact on people's right to some fucking privacy?

Yeah.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The problem with the cookie law wasn't the concept of it, it was the EU's failure to crack down on malicious compliance.

They should've revised the law to make it opt-out by default.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

If you make it opt out by default, They could just design the software to not let you enter the page unless you opt in. Often get the page opt out get a nice advertisement for the service.

Even using cookies to help with load balancing is a pain in the ass these days. There's a fuck ton of legitimate reasons to use cookies, If you want to stop tracking, Make it illegal to track people and sell advertising data based on it.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 points 23 hours ago

A massive number of people would just not engage with the website if that happened, and they'd give in very fast.

[–] wwb4itcgas@lemm.ee 1 points 23 hours ago

Agreed. The sentiment was fine, the execution terrible.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 28 points 1 day ago (2 children)

you've never had to ask for permission to store cookies that are required for your site to work. you have to ask for permission for third party trackers to store cookies when people use your site. it's just that web developers either can't read or can't live without letting google track their users' every move.

[–] goodeye8@fedia.io 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's also not entirely correct.

you've never had to ask for permission to store cookies that are required for your site to work

You don't need to ask permission for cookies that are strictly necessary for your site to work. They can contain personally identifiable information (PII) but only to the extent that is strictly required for the functionality to work. If your "required" cookie does anything more than what is strictly necessary (such as collecting more PII than it needs or has built in tracking) you need to ask consent.

you have to ask for permission for third party trackers to store cookies when people use your site.

If you're using something like on premise tracking, like Matomo, then you still have to ask permission. There are some exceptions like if you don't use cookies and you don't track PII.

And just for extra clarification, if you are collecting PII (for example into logs) you need to ask permission even when you're not storing any cookies.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

yeah but that's gdpr, not the cookie law.

[–] goodeye8@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My bad. For some reason I associate all the consent pop-ups with GDPR as I don't remember any pop-ups prior to GDPR.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 4 points 1 day ago

yeah the cookie law was way earlier, like 2010. gdpr was 2016.

[–] KelvarIW@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago

we both know it's the second one :P

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

What’s wrong with being able to opt out of cookies? This does not seem comparable at all.

[–] wwb4itcgas@lemm.ee 1 points 23 hours ago

The following:

If companies are indulging in abusive use of cookies (or index DB, local storage, plugins or other things) then ban those abusive use of cookies and fine companies that transgress until they stop. The EU essentially caves to industry pressure and put the burden on the individual visitor, which just allowed the companies to make it very, very annoying to opt out. Have you noticed how 'allow all' is always a single click, but allow none isn't, if the option exists at all? Regardless, those settings? Guess where they're stored: Cookies. Which means that those of us who were already preventing local storage of data are now having to deal with those lovely "choices" over, and over and over. Every visit to youtube, every newspaper article we try to read.

This was not an improvement in my quality of life. And I doubt the practical efficacy to boot. Can't track user behavior and Internet usage patterns by way of cookies anymore? Fingerprinting to the rescue.