
When setting up my website, I went out of my way to avoid doing anything that would either require me to collect data from you or place cookies on your computer. Hopefully this is not only self-evident but appreciated by the casual visitor. Today I got a marketing email informing me “It’s Time to Say Goodbye to Cookies”. The company sending the mail informs me that Google, Apple, and Mozilla have plans to eliminate cookies in 2024. This prompts a number of snarky thoughts from me, but I’ll let that rest.
What is happening is we are finally getting past all the ridiculous scare-mongering (and the equal and opposite pendulum swing) to address real concerns. We are approaching the point where people understand what is happening with their devices. People have become thoughtful about what is meaningful to share and what they likely want to hold back.
I find the practice of carefully considering what you are taking from the visitor or user to be a form of respect for that user. People don’t have time to go over every agreement and every hidden action taken by technological applications on their devices. Life is already to complex to look for every cookie and identify if it is relevant to current interests and try to correlate it back to whatever agreement referenced that particular piece of information. Users interact with too many different things for any one thing to be relevant at all. Third parties are an even further layer of abstraction that users need to sift through and figure out. People who place cookies on machines get paid to consider and examine them. People who receive cookies are not paid for that.
I have not seen any argument to the contrary that doesn’t expose an arrogance towards the wishes and intelligence of the people who use technology. I take objection to that attitude.