Slashdot Mirror
Opinion: 5G Has an Exciting Future When It Comes To Dedicated Mobile Apps But Will Do Little To Improve Our General Browsing Experiences. (zdnet.com)
Charlie Osborne, writing for ZDNet: However, there is a problem that no-one is talking about: the conflict between the rapid acceleration of wireless technologies and politics which is, unwittingly, going to render some of these improvements potentially pointless.
In the UK and across Europe, there are two laws of particular interest: the EU's 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the so-called Cookie Law, passed in 2012. Ever heard someone expel a breath and a long list of expletives while they are attempting to look something up, book a service, or fact-check through the Internet on their smartphone? The likelihood is, they've come across both regulations in full force, stirring up annoyance and a rapid, frustrated smashing of fingers to screen as pop-ups scream for consent, T&Cs demand acceptance, and visitors must go through tick-lists of what data they are happy to be collected and in what manner.
The EU's GDPR, which enforced data reform, protection, and collection changes across Europe, has resulted in a plethora of pop-ups which delight in lecturing visitors on data collection practices. Combine these two well-meaning regulations and you have a melting pot of sheer frustration when it comes to mobile browsing. When you are forced to stop and be lectured by pop-ups at every turn which must be manually shut down, one by one, it really doesn't matter how quickly you were brought to the page in the first place.
In the UK and across Europe, there are two laws of particular interest: the EU's 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the so-called Cookie Law, passed in 2012. Ever heard someone expel a breath and a long list of expletives while they are attempting to look something up, book a service, or fact-check through the Internet on their smartphone? The likelihood is, they've come across both regulations in full force, stirring up annoyance and a rapid, frustrated smashing of fingers to screen as pop-ups scream for consent, T&Cs demand acceptance, and visitors must go through tick-lists of what data they are happy to be collected and in what manner.
The EU's GDPR, which enforced data reform, protection, and collection changes across Europe, has resulted in a plethora of pop-ups which delight in lecturing visitors on data collection practices. Combine these two well-meaning regulations and you have a melting pot of sheer frustration when it comes to mobile browsing. When you are forced to stop and be lectured by pop-ups at every turn which must be manually shut down, one by one, it really doesn't matter how quickly you were brought to the page in the first place.
The subject line should include "in the UK/Europe"..... Their regulations may not impact other countries....
Stop collecting my data, assholes.
N/t
Don't collect user data beyond what's absolutely needed for a website or app to work and the need for popups suddenly becomes less of a problem. For example, a taxi hail site or app would actually work fine anonymously, same as calling a taxi service. Payment would be negotiated between the driver and rider, with the driver paying the app authors for referrals. Another example: I recently downloaded a step tracker app that required creation of a cloud account to even start up. Never mind that step tracking can work 100% locally, and that another app I used was purely local.
End "cloud creep" and "data storage creep" and the GDPR becomes much less of a problem. If it makes it harder and more annoying to collect data on customers, it's doing its job.
To me the worst thing that ever happened to the web was all of this "let me go off and do a bunch of stuff while you're typing, that you must wait for me to complete before you can type the next letter" crap. I don't know what the technical voodoo name for that is, but I hate it.
Instead of running one search for what I'm looking for, I must now suffer the wait time of doing 40 searches based on what the ghost in the machine THINKS I might be typing.
All the popups are is a wanton act of malicious compliance. Of course, all that is required for compliance is to NOT COLLECT ANYTHING, but have a link at the bottom of a page that a user can follow to a page where they can enable data collection.
Instead, web hosts are complying with the law in the most obstructive, annoying way possible, so that users will complain about the law and get it overturned, again allowing site hosts to collect data transparently and without the users' knowledge or consent.
When you are forced to stop and be lectured by pop-ups at every turn which must be manually shut down, one by one, it really doesn't matter how quickly you were brought to the page in the first place.
Kind of like being given free health care in a country whose business-unfriendly policies cause lag in contribution to medical knowledge, it doesn't matter much if it's free if it's 20 years behind where it otherwise would be.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
When I view my local newspaper site (nj.com), you get pictures loading after text (forcing the screen to jump around). Hitting back doesn't use cache, so it reloads the whole damn page. You get infinite scroll (which can be nice) but then doesn't work when you hit the back button. You get advertising overlays with tiny little X's to close them, etc.
On Youtube, you're forced to watch ads before you watch a movie trailer (ads before ads). Google News is pretty good except when it's not, and then you're forced to view the original story in the browser anyway.
It doesn't matter if you have a 100 gigs per sec of broadband if the page itself loads like garbage, making 1000 tiny connections and all shifting the DOM around. Maybe I sound like an old man trying to return soup at a deli, but on my phone's 6" screen, do we really need anything more than 10 mps to watch video?
So maybe sites will stop collecting data instead of asking if they can do it with pop ups. Isn't that the point of the GDPR?
...making 1000 tiny connections and all shifting the DOM around. Maybe I sound like an old man trying to return soup at a deli,...
Just had to say that transition really made me laugh. :-)
I totally agree with you on mobile browsing being especially sucky, I swear they load mobile browsers down with even more ads than desktop (and it's also subject to stupid ad hacking where ads on a website can trigger an immediate load of some other entirety different site).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The popups wouldn't be annoying if they loaded first and displayed before any other website assets were loaded from the network and drawn (or were being loaded/drawn async in the background). Some sites take it a step further. They wait until you switched focus to their tab or until they have determined you're looking at the page eg when you move the mouse inside their page to read some text or start scrolling for more info, then there's a sudden freeze and you wait for the popup to draw and for you to dismiss it. Bad user experience.
Really? The biggest annoyance I have is every single site repeatedly demanding to give up my email address so they can send me spam. Usually in the form of full-screen overlays, triggered either by spending more than 5 seconds trying to read some paragraph between the advertisements or due to moving my mouse. As far as cookie and data protection laws are concerned, they are usually just a footnote at the bottom of the screen, literally.
what you say?! Use my smart phone for TALKING!?
Are the wireless companies going to increase your data cap size commensurate with the bandwidth increase? Probably not, I think.
Speaking as someone who has never owned a smartphone, in part because of how hideously wireless companies price-gouge you for an undersized 'data plan', I can't see the advent of '5G' as being anything to get too terribly excited over, at least not while the wireless companies in this country (U.S.) continue to stick to the same business plan they've been using for years and years now: screw the consumer every way they can get away with.
Between this and what a security swisscheese any smartphone is (even iPhones), I continue to see no reason to ever own a smartphone, and I feel sorry for anyone who does and actually pays for a 'data plan' from a U.S. wireless company.
I imagine you prostate orgasming, clenching your tight sphincter on your anal dildo, shaped and painted to resemble Trump in a orange prison jumpsuit. Keep fucking that dildo. That's a close as you'll ever get.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
You need to download the Brave browser if you want a better browsing experience.
That little pop-up from European regulations saying "this site uses cookies" is not even a flea bite compared to what the ad-networks do to the browsing experience.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Those people are the ones looking to collect your data and capitalize on it.
However, there is a problem that no-one is talking about: the conflict between the rapid acceleration of wireless technologies and politics which is, unwittingly, going to render some of these improvements potentially pointless.
This is not a problem, it is by design to stop the rampant collection of user data and destruction of privacy so that we may take a moment to actually debate what level of control do we want these corporations to have over our lives. Any one who has a minor interest in history can tell you what lies down the dark roads of extreme data collection as history has taught us that lesson several times. The only difference in modern day is that we are talking about a new technology and history has shown us that it is right to take a pause and figure out how that tool should be used.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The EU is collectively the world's largest economy and it is the world's largest single market.
I guess it depends on to what extent the cost of translation into multiple languages affects your product or service. A video game might need to be subtitled and dubbed into multiple languages, and social platforms might end up self-segregating on language lines. China and the United States are larger single-language markets.
It's worse than that, some sites (including small local news websites) are blocking EU users rather than spend the money and effort to comply with the absurd GDPR. This, accompanied with the "Right to be Forgotten", is turning parts of the web dark all over Europe.
For example, a taxi hail site or app would actually work fine anonymously, same as calling a taxi service. Payment would be negotiated between the driver and rider, with the driver paying the app authors for referrals.
I admire the philosophy you are putting forth, but I don't think that is a good example of how to apply it.
Ride sharing is an example where both sides really need to be sure of who the other is to have the whole thing be safe. If both drivers and riders are anonymous, you are really asking for criminals to spend an evening robbing as many people as they can by pretending to be a real driver, and taking them out somewhere to be mugged or raped. In fact, you had mentioned how this was similar to a taxi service - that very issue is a big problem with taxi services in smaller countries.
Similarly the same is true of riders, there's no way I would drive for a service where the service I am working for does not at least have identities of riders to the level of payment info, along with ratings from other drivers knowing the potential riders are not going to trash or steal my car. Again, taxi drivers get robbed quite often from random fares.
Not to mention if you are always having to negotiate payment info with each rider before you arrive, I (as a driver) have lost any incentive to actually go out to any place even slightly far away because it could be a compete waste of time if they are not willing to pay enough. Even taxi services have fixed rates for rides and sometimes you get charged more on top.
Maybe a variant where a central company verified identity of riders and driver but names were otherwise kept anonymous, and the rider has the ability to offer up an escrowed amount of money for a trip they wanted to take... I could see that being pretty interesting. The rider still needs enough info to know where the driver is and what kind of car they can expect though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Methinks Charlie Osborne is in the pocket of the ad industry.
Hey, heard about this cool new technology? It's pretty much unrelated to my point that your browsing experience sucks because my corporate overlords have to ask for permission before they spy on you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only reason for all the popups is that the website you're reading wants to do a load of bullshit with the data they gather about you.
If you only use personal data to fulfil user's requests, there's no need to ask for consent.
I wish to remain anomalous
THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error:
The only problem is that it requires Javascript to show contact info, so it doen't work well in text-mode browsers for the blind or disabled.
You mean it doesn't work in obsolete text-mode browsers for the blind or disabled. Modern assistive browsers execute script, as demonstrated in Karl Groves's "Mother Effing Tool Confuser".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is that I'll be able to get broadband from someone other than Comcast.
Most websites would rather you download their app. After all, they cannot keep running their snooping software on your phone when you leave the page, but the app is always there.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
"Data miners are protesting the GDPR rules on gathering users' data by annoying the hell out of their users." -- There I fixed the headline for you.
I wonder how long they'll keep this up before websites start losing traffic, dropping the data mining, & going with content-based targeted advertising, i.e. People who read articles about Star Trek might want to buy Star Trek & other SciFi paraphernalia. Google & Facebook probably wouldn't like it though.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
A smaller site with very little relevant traffic from the Union might not be able to afford the $2,700 per year (source: VeraSafe) to comply with the letter of article 27 of the GDPR.
(If you claim that an entity outside the Union selling to customers in the Union or serving ads to viewers in the Union does not need to hire a representative in the Union pursuant to article 27, please begin by explaining how EU courts are likely to define "occasional" for purposes of article 27.)
No one is talking about is how 5g will further help balkanize the Internet and stsrt to move us further towards a CableTV experience. At least here in the states.
Want to watch Netflix? Well your home 5g Internet is a mobile service and it will cost you as part of your monthly data cap. No worries though your ISPs video service will not count towards that.
5g is the solution for bypassing regulations on ISP services.
5G is simply to replace last mile copper and fiber.
North of San Francisco the City of Mill Valley said ' Hell No' to the antennas, the radiation and frequency load in their community and their schools for the sake of young developing minds. Doubt they'll be the last.
I know that 4G had this great super low latency, high speed 'handshake' I saw articles on it. When you first request a packet, it's way quicker than 3G was (not just bandwidth)
However, ever switched your phone into airplane mode entirely? MAN does the battery last a long time.
I just got the new Huawei Mate 20 and man oh man, it's well reviewed for battery but with the SIM disabled, it's out of this world. Was going to last a full week (was backing up old phone)
Hopefully 5G continues to be efficient in this regard.
T&Cs demand acceptance, and visitors must go through tick-lists of what data they are happy to be collected and in what manner.
This is nonsense. I frequently get a popup asking my consent before proceeding with a web page, but it is a simply Accept / Deny choice. No tick-lists, no further questions. But pause, click, continue. No big deal.
When you are forced to stop and be lectured by pop-ups at every turn which must be manually shut down, one by one
Again, simply not my experience. I have no doubt that if site access became as annoying or onerous as this person suggests, there would soon be a browser extension or add-on that would do the job for people.
This piece seems to be intent on creating misinformation and stress, simply to attract an audience
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
don't be lame and you need no waivers for your shittiness...