I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services
neilzone.co.uk848 points by speckx 9 hours ago
848 points by speckx 9 hours ago
I was sitting in a room the other day with a young adult, we were searching for additional algorithm learning materials. They searched in Google, and accept the cookies. They clicked on a website, and accepted those cookies too. They then started entering their email address to access another service. I was completely taken aback.
I'm the sort of person that either rejects the cookies, or will use another site entirely to avoid some weird dark-pattern cookie trickery. I don't like the idea of any particular service getting more information than they should.
Siting there I realized, we were not the real target. It is the young people that are growing up conditioned to press accept, enter any details asked of them, and to not value their personal data. Sadly, the damage is already done.
I am in my mid forties, been working as a professional software developer for over 20 years.
I click “accept the cookies” almost every time. I just personally don’t feel it’s worth the effort and cost to try to avoid it.
What “dark pattern cookie trick” are you worried about? I just can’t come up with a scenario where it will actually harm me in any way. All the examples I have heard are either completely implausible, don’t actually seem that bad to me, or are things that are trivially easy to do even without any cookies.
Now, I am not going around giving my real email out to random sites, though, although even that doesn’t strike me as particularly dangerous. I already get infinite spam, and I am sure there are millions of other ways to get my email address… it is supposed to be something you give out, after all.
I just don’t think it is something that is worth stressing out about and fighting against. Maybe I am actually naive, but I just have not yet been convinced I should actually care.
First of all, if you don't practice any tracking limitation, you're almost certainly giving additional parties (directly or otherwise) access to your personal information. This is marketing data brokerage, this is the whole ballgame.
To your point about the actual harm, I've come to see it as a kind of ecological problem. Wasting energy and sending more trash to a landfill doesn't harm me individually, at least not immediately. But it does harm in aggregate, and it is probably directly related to other general harms, like overall health outcomes, efficiency, energy costs, etc.
No, accepting cookies by itself may not do much to me, but the broader surveillance and attention economy that relies on such apathy certainly has.
Sadly, this still doesn't do anything to show me that I should opt out.
I, as an individual, am not going to have any effect on a business if I opt out or not. No business decision is going to be made because I opt out.
You might argue that it will matter if enough of us do it. Sure, that is true... but again, it won't matter if I do it or not. If N number of people opting out is enough to ruin the business model, then N-1 is surely enough as well. There is a 0% chance that I am the one who finally causes the system to collapse.
I do use an ad blocker, and never click on ads. I feel like that action has a bigger return on investment than no clicking the cookie banner.
If having more information about me allows the website to charge more to show me an ad, and I never click any ads, then I am hopefully helping decrease the return advertisers get by using personal information.
This is the exact same logic as opting to not go through the hassle of registering to and casting your vote in your national elections (unless that physically isn't an option where you live) -- yes, your government isn't going to make a decision one way or another based on your vote alone. But will you affect the sociopolitical trends by whatever fraction of societal opinion you represent?
It may be you don't believe in democracy at all, and that's fair, but consumer action is the only way you can affect business decisions, by joining the decision-cohort you agree with more. Joining the opposite cohort because it's less work represents that you're okay with things continuing in that direction.
That said, I agree with the work it takes to navigate cookie banners being excessive (hence dark pattern), which is why my default browser config = ublock + consent-o-matic [1]
Yes, the Paradox of Voting is the exact same situation [1]. My decision to vote is not rational, but I know if all the rational people don't vote that is bad, and so I focus on the other parts of voting, like civic pride and the little sticker that says "I voted"
> It may be you don't believe in democracy at all, and that's fair, but consumer action is the only way you can affect business decisions, by joining the decision-cohort you agree with more. Joining the opposite cohort because it's less work represents that you're okay with things continuing in that direction.
I actually believe even less in 'voting with your wallet' than in actual voting, for all the same reasons except the cost of 'voting' in this case is even higher (choosing an individually suboptimal option with my wallet hurts me directly even more than the cost of voting in an election does... e.g. choosing to pay more to avoid major corporations costs me every time I shop) I personally think the only way to avoid companies destroying the common good for profit is to price in the destruction to make it explicit (e.g. carbon taxes, pollution taxes, etc).
You have to use something more like updateless decision theory rather than EDT or CDT: consider the similarity of your thought processes and decisionmaking to all the other people in a similar situation and act so as to further your goals given that a substantial fraction of similar people will ultimately make the same decision as you.
If I ever decide that it is no longer worth voting then I will probably leave the country under the expectation that other people like me giving up on voting are doing it for roughly the same reasons.
> choosing an individually suboptimal option with my wallet hurts me
That may be true, particularly in the short term, but you might be hurting everyone else including yourself in the long term. Opening your wallet sends a signal to the receiving business to keep doing what they're doing, even if we all know it's bad.
There's also a cultural aspect to consider. It's normalized to not think of anything other than cost. That's why we have CAFOs, toxic plastic children's toys, landfills full of junk, etc... Pricing in the destruction might help, but at some point our culture needs to change. Outside of the occasional voting, we're all pretty powerless to enact top-down change like taxes and regulations, but we can all build culture.
> Opening your wallet sends a signal to the receiving business to keep doing what they're doing, even if we all know it's bad.
That is exactly my point, though. The signal from my personal transactions isn't going to be enough to change anything. It will be drowned out by everyone else.
Of course, you are right that if enough people closed their wallet, then the business would have to change. However, that is STILL true even if I keep my wallet open. If N people stopping their shopping at a store would cause it to close/change its practices, then surely N-1 people stopping their shopping would also cause it to change. I could still keep shopping their, get the benefits while they last, and then switch once it finally goes out of business.
Of course, you might reasonably say, "Well, if everyone thought like you, then the change would never happen!" True, but my decision does not change anyone else's decision. The other people won't even know my choice, it isn't going to make other people boycott.
You could argue that people will listen to what I say, and I could influence them. That is true, but that is again independent of whether I actually 'vote with my wallet' or not. The influence I have on other people is the same whether I tell them not to shop there and I also don't shop there, or if I tell them not to shop there but secretly shop there myself.
Obviously there is some other morality at play here, but it isn't as simple as invoking the direct signal I am sending by choosing to shop somewhere or not.
> My decision to vote is not rational
And I think this is great. Often our convictions aren't, and those are what make us interesting! I also think it's interesting how/why we rationalize our irrational behaviors! For example, I generally feel the same way as you about voting, but I don't like living as (in my mind, at least) a defeatist. Also, I feel that if I didn't vote then I have no right to complain or have an opinion about the things I didn't vote on. So I go vote for those reasons.
I mean, I do actually vote in every election, for the same reasons you are talking about. There are social reasons I do it, and there is something communal and bonding about the process of elections.
But it isn't because my individual vote actually matters.
It is pretty paradoxical and got me thinking. I don't know how to measure the value of my vote. I feel like the immediate value is less than the effort, but on the other hand, I don't think it's so simple. As you said, if no "rational" people vote, that's catastrophic and so I'm helping to maintain a larger system. Maybe a culture. Movements can have collective power no individual can have, but they can't exist without individuals. It's hard to measure the value or effects of a culture as they are often not clearly visible or direct. The effects can play out over a long time too.
About voting with your wallet, I agree that it'd be best if companies actually had to pay for those externalities you mentioned. If you have spare money to spend, you can view not choosing the cheapest option as supporting or donating. That's what I sometimes do when e.g. buying locally instead of ordering from somewhere far for cheaper. I can get local faster and it's more convenient, so there's lazyness, but thinking about it as supporting helps me rationalize it further (and it is true). I don't think it really hurts me more than buying something else that I don't strictly need. I see indirect value in trying to uphold things I like.
It's not paradoxical and the attitude expressed by GP that it's not "rational" is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to rationality getting a bad name.
Cooperation to the detriment of the individual in the animal world is exactly the same phenomenon in a much simpler system. That is widely and repeatedly evolved so we know for a fact that the game theory works out in a vacuum (ie without human cultural factors).
Any high trust cultural behavior is similar.
What happened to being part of a community?
I do not think this should be analysed from the perspective of an individual but from the perspective of being part of a collective.
Individually we are pathetic naked monkeys, collectively we are mighty
> consumer action is the only way you can affect business decisions
I mean, insomuch as any action I take is a consumer action, because I am a consumer, this is true. That's why Luigi'ing is a consumer action.
But 'vote with your wallet' is an illusion; you have no way of informing an entity why you are rejecting their service if you simply don't patronize them. On a ballot you're actively choosing another over them. As a consumer, you're otherwise 'invisible' to them.
Walking past Target out of rejection of their politics, for example, is no different to them than the person next to you walking by because they don't need anything from them at that moment (and realistically, they would probably prefer to just switch you for said politically/privacy-un-conscious person). It's still good to stick to your morals, but that alone isn't actually 'consumer action' in the way you mean it.
It requires a coordinated, public messaging campaign that a group is boycotting actively to have any impact on a business. Your individual action of not clicking on Accept Cookies does nothing to influence businesses.
Not spending money at Target is not voting with your wallet. Voting with your wallet is the spending you do at a business that isn't Target instead.
However voting is different. We don't vote for a policy (although that is a common misconception.) The collective power of voting is often voting against a person/party : voting them out.
We spent money on goods/services we choose, and receiving money is a very strong signal to a business. Not spending money is an extremely weak signal.
Opposites.
Sadly, there will be no signals at all, until it's too late. ICE has used online advertisement tracking to find their targets. They won't tell you anything about this, until they're already at your door with handcuffs. https://www.404media.co/cbp-tapped-into-the-online-advertisi...
This is the real answer. Palantir aggregates massive amounts of data, and they are not stupid enough to not use online ad profiles. They track everything. I mean, sexuality, race, age group, mental and physical illnesses, income, job/industry, living address, work address, frequent travel destinations (in and out of your city), shopping habits, eating habits, the list goes on and on and on. Any possible days point they can get, they will.
If you aren't worried about the US government having this, it's a sign of significant privilege and safety a lot of others don't have.
It's not possible to be a ghost, but it is possible to reduce your surface area in these systems, which is what I focus on. Denying tracking cookies is a single tool in this quite large toolbox.
You could use exactly the same argument for not bothering about doing things that pollute, generate landfill, or generally make things worse for society.
Its highly unlikely your vote will swing an election.
If you want easy things to do use cookie blocking extensions.
I could make that exact same argument, and people have been for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
These are all related to the collective action problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem). This is why we have regulations and rules and laws about things like pollution, because we CAN'T rely on everyone wanting to live in a clean world to make everyone not pollute.
> You could use exactly the same argument for not bothering about doing things that pollute, generate landfill, or generally make things worse for society.
Which is why those things need laws to create any meaningful change.
> I do use an ad blocker, and never click on ads. I feel like that action has a bigger return on investment than no clicking the cookie banner.
Right, but this is not solely about cookies or blocking ads. You also leave behind data which helps create a profile. AI is mass-creating profiles of everyone. Not everyone will have the same pattern, but information space is finite and they get more and more data about you over time. You may think this is not relevant for your use cases, but can you make this as prediction in the future?
The future of myself and my son does not depend on nor benefit from my anonymity.
I'm not a revolutionary taking up arms I'm a voter and a citizen in disagreement. Unless I am seen and counted, then being any of those things is worthless as well.
There is no value in hiding from the system while the system goes to hell and attacks everyone else.
While I have no idea of the actual outcome, I’ll muddle through the extra step + thinking to opt-out where possible.
My own personal bend is that I do not want to be sold anything and I want anonymity where possible. We’re constantly being advertised to. Anything small action that I can take to deter that, or make the ads less personalized/interesting/distracting to me, is worth it. Even if I also will never knowingly click an ad.
It’s probably largely a control thing psychologically. With cookie banners specifically, I also don’t want to concede to dark patterns which make accepting easier than rejecting.
> My own personal bend is that I do not want to be sold anything
You can always choose this no matter what ads they show you. In some ways, choosing to not be sold AFTER being shown ads might be more effective at shutting down that behavior than simply avoiding the ads entirely; forcing the company to pay to show you the ad that you ignore is costlier to them than simply not being able to show you the ad at all.
Why do you think you have a 5 day work week? Because collective action fought for it. Same goes for the Civil Rights movement in the US and strong union protections for the Boomers that helped them build out a healthy middle class (that they're in the process of squeezing dry after pulling up the ladder, because Millennials and Gen Z won't do collective action to enact change, but that's a separate discussion).
Saying you don't see an individual motive here to do anything just says that you don't see how interconnected everyone is in modern society.
Your ad blocker probably has a setting for cookie blocking too
If not then install EFF Privacy Badger and Decentraleyes extensions.
uBlock is enough for all of that. I would minimize the number of extensions used, possibly to one (uBlock only).
Potential real-world consequences, while they do exist, are simply too subtle to realize. Some actual examples of cookies being used against people:
- CBP has admitted to buying location/advertising data from brokers to use in helping locate people to arrest
- Phishing and identity theft can be made easier due to cookies... security researchers have even demonstrated 2FA bypass techniques based on it
- Price discrimination - Consumer Reports found that flight prices can fluctuate based on your cookies. Sometimes they would even raise the price if you kept searching for routes, as an indication that you were in a hurry, thus likely willing to pay extra.
- Healthcare discrimination - Companies have been found to raise healthcare prices or deny coverage due to cookie data aggregated via brokers where external sites tracked a person's health conditions based on what pages they visited (examples: fertility, cancer and mental health support groups)
- AI models or automated systems using cookie data to predict housing stability, creditworthiness, and employment risk without ever seeing your resume or credit report directly
- ProPublica found that Facebook was allowing advertisers to target their housing ads based on specific age/race groups stored in cookies
- Some recruiting firms have used cookies to infer personality traits and political leanings. Your employment application could be rejected or deprioritized based on that
- Based on the previous examples, I think it is not a far-fetched idea that websites and services could deny you access altogether based on data revealed by a combination of things like your browser fingerprint + brokered cookie data, such as political affiliation, estimated income, race/gender, health situation, etc. Imagine for example, not being able to order pizza because you badmouthed their favorite president online.
It's also harder to change your mind later and go delete a bunch of specific cookies to opt out when you could have just said no from the beginning.
I appreciate the list of potential harms. I'm curious about your last point though. Isn't it trivially easy to wipe cookies from your browser?
You should always configure your browser to automatically wipe all data on exit. The Arkenfox user.js user profile does this and more to mitigate fingerprinting.
I am logged into way too many sites to do that unfortunately. I do use a password manager with a browser plugin to make it easier, but it's still a lot of manual work to re-login to all the sites I use on a normal basis, for both work and home, every time I restart my browser.
Would be nice if there was some other solution, like maybe encrypting the browser profile and then requiring a pin/password/biometric/something to unlock it on each start.
It shouldn't take more than one second to log into a website using the Firefox password manager.