>I'm sure somebody will try to claim it's "necessary" to their business to track people and sell everything they possibly can, and I expect European courts to decide that's laughable nonsense.
Who pays the verge for the reporting that you wish to read?
Is this verge reporting on this article made for free, by a volunteer, etc?
Or were they paid?
OK, so the Verge is a business, who has to make money.
How do they make money? Are you paying them to read this article? No?
So they sell advertisements to make money to show you content.
" I'm sure somebody will try to claim it's "necessary" to their business to track people and sell everything they possibly can"
In this case, tracking you through cookies for advertising purposes seems to be a "necessary" part of the verge, as it is literally a core aspect of the monetization strategy to offer free content in exchange for tracked advertising, as they explain in the pop-up.
No ads = no content. I can't see a European court claiming that Europeans have a right to free content in violation of the monetization strategy of the author. At the end of the day, verges servers are private servers and you do have to agree to their terms of use before connecting to their servers. In this case, the terms of use of connecting to a verge server for free articles is advertising tracking.
Good luck suing them, but what would be the end game? Ruin their business model?
> In this case, tracking you through cookies for advertising purposes seems to be a "necessary" part of the verge, as it is literally a core aspect of the monetization strategy to offer free content in exchange for tracked advertising, as they explain in the pop-up.
That is not how GDPR defines "legimitate interest".
Even if it is less effective, you can serve ads without tracking users via cookies. Therefore it isn't legitimate.
True, but this isn't about serving ads or not, but about tracking individuals.
You can serve ads without user profiling, which is what TV stations have been doing since the invention of the TV. You can even infer certain demographics from the content, which should be enough to hit a target. Articles on publications like The Verge emit tons of signals about who their readers are. Consider just the profile of the website. You don't actually have to track individuals.
It's also true that tracking individuals can yield better profits, although I have my doubts about that. It's also true that, due to abuse, ads are less and less effective, but this is a race to the bottom so might as well stop it now, instead of permitting these companies to collect data that can be abused later.
But yes, if there has to be an end game, the end game IMO is for companies that are doing user tracking to fuck off and do something else.
> Good luck suing them, but what would be the end game? Ruin their business model?
Are you another American? We seem to keep having Americans who have this idea that the regulation is about lawsuits. I understand that in the US the law enforcement regime is so broken that you end up with "Sued for wrongful death" rather than "Prosecuted for murder" and "Sued for breach of constitutional rights" rather than "Prosecuted for rape" and so on ad infinitum, but everybody else with the rule of law didn't replace their courts with elected politicians and their cops with a violent gang so they still actually have criminal law.
The GDPR doesn't create a new civil tort or anything like that, its an EU regulation, disobeying is a crime so the relevant government agency could _prosecute_ if they can't get you to obey.
The European courts don't have to decide that Europeans have a "right to free content", only that this business model in which you track people without permission isn't legal.
Suppose I have a great idea for a business, I'm going to set up a stall, I'll sell bottles of Coca-Cola for 10¢ each. Obviously at this price I can't buy them wholesale, but no problem, per your agreement that I have "to make money" I will just take them from the bottling plant. Simple.
The court doesn't care about how I needed "to make money", they care that it's a crime to steal the bottles, and I'll go to jail. Oh my 10¢ Coke bottle stall doesn't work as a business if I have to pay wholesale costs instead of just taking the bottles? Well boo hoo.
Newspapers and magazines have sold advertising without individual reader targeting for years and it continues to be a viable business model. Individually tracking users is not necessary.
>Newspapers and magazines have sold advertising without individual reader targeting for years and it continues to be a viable business model
Newspapers and magazines charges a subscription. Are you suggesting we should now charge Europeans a subscriptions where we do not for others? I'm ok with that. Don't want tracking? Then give me your credit card and subscribe, or there's the door.
Plus, nearly all newspapers are in economic free fall, advertising was completely destroyed by the internet, and there are almost no newspapers which are in the "green" without having an internet product or being owned by a larger corporation.
> Then give me your credit card and subscribe, or there's the door.
I don't understand this type of thinking from some of the posters here on HN, as if GDPR is right now personally affecting you in a negative way. It's a very aggressive way of writing and I've seen a few posters comment in this way.
If you want an example of a company that does non-personalised advertising and is successful: DuckDuckGo.
How do you know I am not personally affected by freeloaders who wish to steal content from me and use laws as justification for their entitlement to free no-strings access to my work?
a) If you were, you would have mentioned it by now. Your name appears all over this thread, it's incredible how much GDPR has aggravated you.
b) If you are running a website and don't wish us 'thieving Europeans', then don't allows traffic from Europe.
This is the perplexing thing about your seemingly apoplectic rage on this topic. There are options available for these companies who still want to track people individually.
If you post content on the web without using a paywall, then people aren't "freeloading" or stealing your content. Just as I don't have to read every word on a website, nor do I have to view every add, run every piece of code, and let myself be tracked. Don't like that? Don't run a website/service without a paywall.
Newspapers and other sources of information ARE having a horrible time and it going to get worse.
BUT the solution to the revenue problem - aka advertising - is now a problem in its own right and driving the creation of content to keep itself going.
All of our major information problems trace back to 3 related things.
1) the makeup of our wetware
2) advertising as a way to subsidize/pay for content
3) the vicious cycle of increasingly louder techniques to grab audience attention, ranging from “sex sells”, partisan news, product placements, and invasive online ads.
Who pays the verge for the reporting that you wish to read?
Is this verge reporting on this article made for free, by a volunteer, etc?
Or were they paid?
OK, so the Verge is a business, who has to make money.
How do they make money? Are you paying them to read this article? No?
So they sell advertisements to make money to show you content.
" I'm sure somebody will try to claim it's "necessary" to their business to track people and sell everything they possibly can"
In this case, tracking you through cookies for advertising purposes seems to be a "necessary" part of the verge, as it is literally a core aspect of the monetization strategy to offer free content in exchange for tracked advertising, as they explain in the pop-up.
No ads = no content. I can't see a European court claiming that Europeans have a right to free content in violation of the monetization strategy of the author. At the end of the day, verges servers are private servers and you do have to agree to their terms of use before connecting to their servers. In this case, the terms of use of connecting to a verge server for free articles is advertising tracking.
Good luck suing them, but what would be the end game? Ruin their business model?