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Comment by chefandy | Hacker News Reader

Reading on a new device I haven’t set up yet: man, that is one seriously obnoxious cookie rejection workflow. I’ll read about it somewhere else.

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I think, you just killed a journalist or something :/

You see, tracking your every behavior for targeted advertisement is really important for producing articles from copy-pasted dpa releases, Reddit sourced reports, and AI written rage-bait - a valuable and vital force in your very democracy. In face of such great responsibility, bending the laws a bit to gain your consent regardless of willingness, is of course morally mandated.

XOXO The Fourth Estate

I ticked every rejection box I could tick, and still somehow managed to press a poorly — or rather very smartly — positioned button to accept all cookies. Only to find out that the article was in German, because I couldn’t even see it in the first place due to a full-screen cookie banner /shrug/

It's also very much illegal. First, there's no way to actually opt-out of tracking, which is a complete disregard of GDPR basics, since almost all tracking options, including highly invasive options, are marked as mandatory. Secondly, the law requires that opting-out is as easy as opt-ing in -- since you can opt-in with one click you are also legally required to be able to opt-out with one click.

Filing a report with the German data protection authority.

No, they're in the clear. There is a very easy way to opt-out: you need to pay for a subscription to Spiegel. It's on the first page of their cookie dialog, you "just" have to log in. And give them your credit card number, if you haven't done so already.

The GDPR explicitly allows for this. Practically all of the old-school EU news orgs work like that nowadays.

The GDPR does not allow for paying to opt-out.

>First, there's no way to actually opt-out of tracking

You can just close the tab. You are not entitled to a website's contents.

"Accept all tracking we throw at you or close the tab" is not a viable GDPR compliance strategy.

This is not consistent with the law.

If you have a plugin that lets your turn off JS per website then that works 99% of the time. It's a nuisance and often unnecessary when you're reading what is essentially just text.

seriously! nested menus on nested menus! There must be literally thousands of third party vendors. Good heavens... I'm pretty sure GDPR explicitly specified it should be as easy to reject consent as give it, and it must be in a reject-by-default state. Sad that courts seem to not feel like enforcing the law at all.

They managed to force Google into offering a friendly "reject all", so I doubt others will be able to keep up their dark pattern shenanigans much longer.

The current evasion trend seems to be offering the "choice" between an outrageously expensive subscription and "free with tracking". That tactic needs to be legally challenged still, I think. I doubt it's legal, as there is no real option not to be tracked.

They have every right to paywall their stuff completely, but then I don't want their click-bait content teased in my feeds or search results, ever.

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