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But why not force all sites to give you clear information so you are informed. So when I follow some link and land on a "intresting" site I should be informed that continuing navigating means I agree that Google,Facebook, other 20 companies will be informed about me opening this link. If I do not agree I will be forced to leave.

The only work the site owners needs to do is to have a list of all the companies they sell the data too, show that list to you, and save your acceptance in a cookie.

For more complex apps like Facebook that sell more data or mine your private messages/emails,purchases, music and movies you watch they should also display the exact thing they sell or share for free.

My point, the companies would have just to inform, would not be forced to give you access.




You're basically reinventing European cookie law. I'm pointing it out for two reasons - one, for those wondering how this "stupid law" was created, this is how. Two, we ended up needing the GDPR anyway, since just informing is not enough.


The cookie law did not forced the sites to tell you exactly what data they sell/share and to what companies.

The way it was implemented was "This site uses cookies to store your preferences and it can't work without this essential technology".

I suggested this because I see some people here don't want to stop selling the data, at least have this selling transparent to the user. Maybe we get the ad blockers, containers in browser and other related technology adoption rise faster(it won't solve all the problems but would stop tracking at least)


Yes and no. If all you wanted to say was:

> "This site uses cookies to store your preferences and it can't work without this essential technology".

... then you didn't need to display anything at all. You only needed a cookie warning if you were doing tracking and other data collection that was not a technical requirement of the site (and "supporting the business model of selling user data" is not a technical requirement of a site).

Alas, the law was broken enough that everyone could get away with defaulting to show a vague "this site uses cookies for your own good" message.

Where it applies, GDPR doesn't disallow selling data. It just ensures the user explicitly opts into that scheme. That creates extra burden for those who don't mind their data being resold, but that's like a small percentage of users. The ones who desperately don't want to be tracked are another small percentage. The vast majority of users are people who don't know any better and don't even understand the topic, so they will go along with whatever is presented.


Requiring companies have an opt-out version of their sites is essentially the same thing as saying trading personal data for services is not a valid business model. It does seem that fundamentally that is the point of GDPR, it would be a lot simpler if they just came out and said that instead of these confusing obfuscations "you CAN use PII if you absolutely need to and the user agrees and you allow them to use your site as usual if they don't agree".


Probably just saying that would be too vague. A law generally can't just point at something and say "don't do that", because it'll leave enough loopholes for antisocial people to drive a fleet of oil tankers through.




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