life on the post-GDPR internet

Ever since GDPR landed, there has been an explosion of websites with full-page privacy flashes on the way in, redirects to unescapable permissions pages and from some providers, denial pages, either subtle (cookie-enforced trap-pages that cannot be passed), deniable (go to my plain-text version!!!!) or outright ("we have decided not to serve users within the European Union").

None of this is coming across as protecting the user, particularly as all those "solutions" bar the outright denial involve granting the sites more rights and permissions than they were previously exercising while withdrawing service to a larger or greater extent. So added to all the sites behind browser-buggering levels of advertising, undismissable startup flashes and paywalls, we now have to add all the sites that got into a strop over GDPR, and in their excitement let their legal and advertising staff trample over their UX and content workers in their rush to smack their users round the head repeatedly while yelling "look what you made us do!!!!!".

Because this is what it feels like. Come on, the world. Plenty of providers were able to look at GDPR, shrug and carry on, because that was what was being done already. No need to go off on a hysterical tizzy, guys - particularly as the horse has bolted here. My data is spattered through your servers, and no amount of privacy notices is going to change that, not now, not tomorrow and not for the future. particularly as I am a fully signed up Google-tithed, LJ-using, open Twitter account carrying, eyes-open-on-Instagram member of the open web.

It's not even shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, It's more like repeatedly slamming the barn door in my face while all my stuff is already strewn all over the grass outside.

Just. Stop it.

don't deny them their data points

So I was at some training again yesterday and there was the usual chat about how much people online know abut you, and how bad it is that, that the government and the private companies all know where you are and what you're doing and I was back suddenly to five years ago and writing a paper about how a culture shift was needed, because so many people felt they were protecting people by not recording things about them. The fear their details would be stored up and used against them later, the desire to protect them from the judgement of others was overwhelming.

The urge comes from a good place, but I feel it is fundamentally misguided.

Recording people's information accurately, respectfully and securely is an act of true respect for that individual. Every time you squirrel, omit or conceal a person's data points you are denying them recorded reality. You are making yourself adjudicator, gatekeeper. You are asserting privilege, and denying others their rights.

Each data point changes the world. Those of us lucky enough to be purchasing, paying, buying, reproducing, shaping, constructing and changing are constantly creating data-casts around us. Those whose data gets squirrelled and forgotten are often the damaged, disenfranchised and disengaged.

Don't deny them their data points.