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582 points SweetSoftPillow | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
1. charles_f ◴[] No.45670209[source]
> Imagine if every time you got into your car, you had to manually approve the engine's use of oil, the tires' use of air, and the radio's use of electricity

Metaphor is incorrect. Tracking you is not essential to the function of the website. A more appropriate one would be:

> Imagine if everytime you got into your car, you had to approve or reject GM tracking your trip, the number of people in the car, recording your conversations, and sharing all of that with 500 indiscriminate partners including your insurance, law enforcement, supermarkets in the area, and why not your spouse or partner.

Or better even

> imagine if every time you entered a physical store they asked for your id and made you sign a contract that allows them to track you and sell that information

The proposal in that article sets a default tracking preference, it's trying to fix a UX issue with more UX. What it's missing is that there's no EU mandated UX. You don't have to show a banner if your cookies are not used to track random people on your website. The reason why it's bad UX is that it's bad on purpose, skimming the line of legality by deploying as many dark patterns as possible to trick you into consenting to your soul and your children's, in a desperate attempt to make that god awful banner go away and finally access your shot of endorphins.

Websites could very well decide to use only non tracking storage by default, and not show you a banner. Or have everything checked off with a single click to make the banner go away. Sending you to a separate page full of checkboxes and legalese is a choice, and a nefarious one, because most people don't want to be tracked.

If anything I think the law should be strengthened: make tracking default-off, and allow users to consent to more if they so wish. Not consenting should be a single, obvious click (or no click at all), rather than a sub menu. Your information should not be shared or sold by default, or even better, not sellable at all.