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

(nednex.com)
583 points SweetSoftPillow | 11 comments | 22 Oct 25 12:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.216s | source | bottom
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tbrownaw ◴[22 Oct 25 12:50 UTC] No.45668288[source]▶
> Your browser becomes your personal privacy enforcer, and the law would require it to act on your behalf. Based on your one-time choice, it would be responsible for allowing or declining cookies from every site you visit. If a website tries to use a cookie with an unclear or undeclared purpose?

Browsers are something the end-user installs. Inserting the government into that doesn't make sense.

This sounds like the idea is for the site to add extra metadata that's not there now, about what each cookie does. Which would still involve mandating site owners to do things.

.

Also, both private mode and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... are a thing already, without government meddling.

replies(2): >>45668335 #>>45668366 #
crazygringo ◴[22 Oct 25 12:57 UTC] No.45668366[source]▶
> Inserting the government into that doesn't make sense.

On what basis? What difference is there between regulating website code and browser code? How a website functions and how a browser functions?

replies(1): >>45670086 #
1. msla ◴[22 Oct 25 14:55 UTC] No.45670086[source]▶
Because a browser is not always a commercial product, whereas a website often is.

I should not need to follow a ridiculous law to give away some software.

replies(1): >>45670795 #
2. crazygringo ◴[22 Oct 25 15:40 UTC] No.45670795[source]▶
That distinction doesn't make sense. You could just as easily say websites are not always commercials products, whereas browsers often are made by for-profit corporations.

You seem to be anti-regulation period.

replies(2): >>45671102 #>>45671577 #
3. janwl ◴[22 Oct 25 15:57 UTC] No.45671102[source]▶
People throw “Anti-regulation” around in HN as if it were a slur.
4. msla ◴[22 Oct 25 16:28 UTC] No.45671577[source]▶
A website is non-commercial when it isn't doing commerce.

A browser doesn't have that simple test. It can be used to do anything.

Therefore, the commercial website made by someone who chose to make it commercial needs to be regulated, as opposed to trying to regulate every browser.

(As an aside, you likely don't know how many browsers exist.)

replies(1): >>45672206 #
5. crazygringo ◴[22 Oct 25 17:16 UTC] No.45672206{3}[source]▶
> A website is non-commercial when it isn't doing commerce.

So Chrome is non-commercial? Edge is non-commercial?

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Those browsers exist specifically for the commercial advantage they bring the corporations that create them.

And please don't make asides that make assumptions about my knowledge. You might want to take a look at the HN guidelines.

replies(2): >>45675416 #>>45676896 #
6. freehorse ◴[22 Oct 25 21:30 UTC] No.45675416{4}[source]▶
Websites that collect personal data on their servers are data controllers. They have to ask for consent for this reason. Browsers also need to ask for consent if they collect personal data but that is indepedent from the data websites collect. Being commercial or not is irrelevant. The point is collecting and processing personal data. Furthermore, a browser runs on your machine. Unless they send data to some server, any data processing on the browser is happening on your machine.
replies(1): >>45675536 #
7. crazygringo ◴[22 Oct 25 21:43 UTC] No.45675536{5}[source]▶
That doesn't have anything to do with this conversation.

This conversation is about making it mandatory for browsers to automatically communicate consent so that we're not bombarded with visual requests for consent.

replies(1): >>45675855 #
8. freehorse ◴[22 Oct 25 22:16 UTC] No.45675855{6}[source]▶
And the counterargument is that it is responsibility of websites to ask for consent because they are the ones collecting and controlling the data, not the browsers. Browsers can send DNT and whatever headers all they want. It is websites that should respect them and abide to them. "Targeting browsers" is pointless.
replies(1): >>45677543 #
9. msla ◴[23 Oct 25 00:36 UTC] No.45676896{4}[source]▶
So Lagrange has to bend to the bizarre laws? w3m? lynx?

You prove you have no idea how many browsers exist.

replies(1): >>45677551 #
10. crazygringo ◴[23 Oct 25 02:32 UTC] No.45677543{7}[source]▶
> "Targeting browsers" is pointless.

Well, there's little for websites to respect if we don't ensure popular commercial browsers have the capability to send the necessary headers, and that these headers actually reflect user choices, even if the corporations behind them don't want to.

So it's not pointless at all. It's rather quite an important half of the equation. How is it going to work at all without that?

11. crazygringo ◴[23 Oct 25 02:33 UTC] No.45677551{5}[source]▶
Your idea of proof is a strange one...