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Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites

(nednex.com)
583 points SweetSoftPillow | 9 comments | 22 Oct 25 12:12 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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rustc ◴[22 Oct 25 12:29 UTC] No.45668037[source]▶
Or just ban this kind of data collection. Is there any reason anyone would willingly click "Accept" when a website asks to share your data with 500+ partner sites?
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regentbowerbird ◴[22 Oct 25 12:55 UTC] No.45668342[source]▶
The same could be said with all advertising and surveillance.

No one wants to be advertised to, but powerful lobbies argue that ending ads will lower consumption and thus harm the economy; and no politician wants to lower GDP.

No one wants to be spied on, but powerful lobbies argue tracking people allow better security; and no politician wants to be soft on crime and terrorism.

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1. Workaccount2 ◴[22 Oct 25 13:57 UTC] No.45669258[source]▶
The single most powerful lobby, by far, to the point that it is essentially the only lobby, is the enormous mass of people who refuse to pay money for content. Absolutely refuse.

Even when you give them the option to pay, with no ads or tracking, the conversion rate is still around 0.5-1%.

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2. DangitBobby ◴[22 Oct 25 14:13 UTC] No.45669482[source]▶
This is a false dichotomy. You can have ads without tracking.
3. regentbowerbird ◴[22 Oct 25 14:20 UTC] No.45669571[source]▶
People are willing to pay for things they value. Those people who "refuse to pay money for content" probably go to the cinema, perhaps purchase magazines, purchase drinks with friends, etc.

We should however make it easier to pay for content online; let's implement HTTP 402 and integrate it into the users' browser and internet bill to reduce friction. Who wants to create an account and enter their credit card details to read a single article or watch a single video?

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4. BeFlatXIII ◴[22 Oct 25 15:35 UTC] No.45670724[source]▶
Micropayments and judging the value of content before viewing it remain unsolved problems.
5. MangoToupe ◴[22 Oct 25 16:01 UTC] No.45671157[source]▶
Eh. I've not seen any convincing arguments about this, especially because the quality of said content was dragged down specifically to support ad revenue and SEO. We really never saw the potential of an internet with microtransactions, largely because Google explicitly decided to force people to use ads.
6. Workaccount2 ◴[22 Oct 25 16:06 UTC] No.45671238[source]▶
>People are willing to pay for things they value

No, they overwhelmingly are not. When given the opportunity to not pay, and do so anonymously (no social shame), the actual pay rates drop to the 1-5% range.

This is a clear trend from thousands of creators who give simple payment options to those who wish to support them directly. The conversion rates from "ad-supported (but blocked)" to "paying member" are usually around 5% of the active audience.

The numbers are atrocious despite the deafening virtue signalling of comment sections ("I always pay creators to support them!")

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7. regentbowerbird ◴[22 Oct 25 16:10 UTC] No.45671306{3}[source]▶
You just assert "no" to my suggestion that people don't pay for these things because they just don't value them enough to pay for them, which doesn't really move the conversation forward. There's loadsa stuff more important in life than youtube videos so it's unsurprising the conversion rate is low.
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8. Workaccount2 ◴[22 Oct 25 16:48 UTC] No.45671842{4}[source]▶
My point is that the value prop breaks when people can shamelessly be dishonest.

If people actually didn't value the content, they wouldn't devote their time to it. I don't know anyone who regularly devotes hours a day to something they get zero value from...

9. babypuncher ◴[22 Oct 25 22:09 UTC] No.45675780[source]▶
I think this is a pricing and billing problem more than a "people only want free shit" problem.

All the paywalled news agencies want a monthly subscription. But I, as someone who doesn't like getting all their news from a single source, am not interested in signing up for news subscriptions because the cost would pile up fast, and to be honest I don't read that many news articles in a given month.

I think we need some kind of usage based billing system where participating outlets can set a price per article, and users can agree to be billed for that article when they go to view it.