This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It would be nice if, unlike GDPR, some veteran UX leaders would be consulted before this legislation was drawn up.
GDPR was well intentioned, but many of the pop experiences are littered with dark UI patterns, and most of those pop up experiences are annoying as hell.
An amendment has changed the rules on that. They need to be as easy to reject as to accept. Lots of websites atm are breaking the law on this still.
My hot take is that GDPR, CCPA, etc. should require sites to go through a standard user experience native to the browser’s chrome. Kind of like how Android and iOS handle tracking permissions for Play and App Store apps.
That seems like it would be way easier to audit / govern, and it would be a better overall experience for end users.
The issue with that is that there are so many different apps that process data in so many different ways.
A phone has a bunch of physical features. Letting a website/app know what's available and request access is a small extension of the hardware APIs with clear defined purposes.
But a financial app is going to have widely different data interests and processing than a workout app, which will be different from a video game, a calculator, a forum etc.
I don't know how it can be normalised into something programmatic.
I guess it's why law and courts are so complex. Sure, laws are written down, it should be easy... but they are regularly challenged and tested.
It's a difficult problem to solve.
The ideal way would be to cut the legalese bullshit in the privacy policy.
However, that's a legal document, so it needs the legalese.
It actually needs an honest human readable summary that sums up what's collected, why it's used etc.
Oh, I'd noticed that a lot of sites now seemed a lot better. It's so frustrating when a site has you jump through 4 delays to reject, but accept keeps working fine. As soon as there is a delay now, I'm out of there.
It'll be nice when we have the settings built into your browser and the sites need to comply so it's on them not you to verify your preferences.
It’s worth re-mentioning this whenever it pops up.
The GDPR does not mandate the cookie pop-up. The GDPR just says that companies cannot gather personal information about you without your consent,
If companies weren’t trying to build a profile about you all the time, they don’t need a banner in the first place. The GDPR is amazing because it makes it immediately obvious which rare companies actually respect you and your right to privacy, due to not needing cookie banners in the first place
As someone from the UX side of the fence, I can assure you that there are a lot of legitimate convenience and or fraud protection reasons for why a company might store PII server side for the user’s convenience. Targeted marketing isn’t the only reason to store identifying information.
Fraud prevention is a legitimate interest and does not need a consent request.
I'm pretty sure that is specifically called out in GDPR. Certainly ICO (UK) has loads of articles on it.
However legitimate interests are often difficult to demonstrate compliance, so it can be easier to rely on consent.
Imagine if fraud prevention mechanisms were ineffective if you do not consent to targeted advertising.
Black Hat: Darts! These darks patterns got me again, I accidentally consented, now I won't be able to bypass the captcha!
Others have said it already but... That shitty UX experience is the website's own fault. I suspect many of them make it especially shitty just to spite the legislation.
That shitty UX experience is the website's own fault.
It was a predictable outcome that politicians should have foreseen.
You shouldn't assume the contents of the GDPR based on what most companies are doing. It's not legally consent, if it was not given freely. So, no dark patterns, no coercion, no inaccurate descriptions, nothing. You need to inform the user as accurately as possible and ensure that they choose what suits their interest. Then it's consent.
Didn’t Windows used to have a browser selection screen already? What happened?
If you have use the one in windows 10/11 its a bit of a nightmare. You have to manually change the default browser for all file types from edge to your new browser. And there are about 20 options you have to manually change over.
Edge does a lot of things to annoy me on Windows, but this is not one. I do not think I had to change the default browser for every file type. Also the normal user would never notice this problem, as they rarely open HTML files directly.
In 11 changing the default browser does not change all the filetypes the broswer can open. Setting an alternate browser as the default only sets the new browser to open a few filetypes. Its why I see confused illiterates at my workplace with Chrome, Adobe, and Edge open.
The latest trick is they ignore the default choice completely and open all links in Outlook in edge anyhow, also they are sending notifications saying to use edge or get less battery time.
I'm pretty sure that is no longer the case.
I haven't had any trouble switching my default browser around recently, at least.
That said, they still tried and showed the lows they're willing to stoop to.
I installed a brand new Windows 11 on Friday and it's still the case.
You can change the default browser with two clicks, but if you go to the default file type associations you'll find a ton of shit still associated with edge, so that Windows can force-open it if you dare to click on anything remotely link-esque anywhere in the Windows Explorer.
Edge is ingrained into the OS like a virus that launches itself all the bloody time.
To add to that, even once you have a different browser fully set as default, links within Windows itself (Search, Weather, etc.) still open with Edge
This no longer happens in the latest Insider Dev/Canary builds to an extent, but I make the point anyway to show how anti consumer Microsoft truly is.
It was made as result of an EU settlement that only lasted about 5 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu
I have absolutely no idea why they figured 5 years would be good enough.
Obviously, the multinational billion dollar company would see the error of their ways in that period of time
The idea is it gives enough time for competition to establish and then everyone completes on an even footing without fettering the original monopoly after it's no longer a monopoly in that space... arguably it worked as Chrome took over but all that's happened it it made a new monopoly 🤷🏻♂️
We don't need AMP links on Lemmy. Please try to avoid them by posting links to the real article. We (mostly, I'd think) have ad blockers, so it won't be a problem.
We should have Lemmy auto translate these links to non amp versions, or just outright refuse those links
Sorry for that, but I don't actually understand what you mean...
EDIT OK I've googled it and it seems to be a page that is sponsored by Google but I use Firefox and it worked fine with that - so is the problem that it doesn't work with certain browsers?
Not only sponsored, but owned by Google.
AMP links are basically Google repackaging other people's articles. It prevents the actual owner from getting a pageview and let's Google track you more invasively.
How is that legal?
Basically AMP is a copy of the website content hosted by Google for a "speedier load" but there are privacy, longevity, and general decentralization concerns with the "protocol."
I don't really care what the ui is, I just want some ui that isn't just reset "accidentally" an an os update or is bypassed by a company (cough microsoft) just tailoring their applications so they always open in edge in flagrant disregard for open standards.
This is one of those things that is great in theory, but proper execution is going to be hard
Why? In windows you already have a dozen selection screens during installation, just adding one for the browser would be a huge deal.
OEMs could just install every popular browser.
What determines a popular browser?
Would smaller browsers like LibreWolf make the cut? What is the prerequisite? Should every small fork of a few dozen users be shown?
Should security patch speed and security defense be shown? What about number if CVE's
Which order are they shown in?
Do they have descriptions, and how do you accurately describe the difference in web browsers in a short description?
Should Firefox mention they're the only non-Chromium browser engine, and should it be grouped by browser engines instead?
Is it really diverse if they're all just Chromium skins?
If Firefox is going to be buried at the bottom of the list, is that really as fair as the first one in the list?
What about if they unfairly resize their Edge browser as half the screen and preselect it as a default, while making the alternatives smaller and harder to see at a glance for people that just want to go quickly through the options.
How do you accurately describe what the browser defines "private" as?
At what point is the user too informed or too little informed? You don't want to information overload.
This is why it's more complicated then just "show every popular browser".
There's not really much here that isn't pretty easily solved. Alphabetical order, descriptions yes, written by each vendor. Yes Firefox would be required to be listed since it's one of the handful not based on chromium. Design literally is just solving these exact kinds of problems and it happens every day, no need to make it a harder problem than it is.
I can't wait to start using Aardvark browser.
Can’t read the article (Cloudflare blockade).
In principle there needs to be pushback on the power of defaults for sure. Yes, all the options are shit anyway, but that’s in part due to the #powerOfDefaults.
amp page;DR
We were here before when Internet Explorer 6 was the dominant browser.
It didn't reduce the usage of IE. People just pick what they know in those screens.
