How cookies affect you

My most recent research focused on understanding how website cookie notifications are used in the United States. to create friction and influence user behavior.

To do this research, I looked into the concept of blind conformity, an idea made infamous by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram’s experiments– now seen as a radical violation of research ethics – asked participants to administer electric shocks to other study participants to test their obedience to authority.

Milgram’s research has shown that people often consent to a request from an authority without first deliberating whether it is the right thing to do. In a much more common case, I suspected this was also what happened with website cookies.

I conducted a large, nationally representative experiment that presented users with a boilerplate browser cookie pop-up message, similar to the one you may have encountered while reading this article.

I assessed whether the cookie message triggered an emotional response, either anger or fear, both of which are expected responses to online friction. And then I assessed how these cookie notifications influenced people’s willingness to express themselves online.

Online expression is at the heart of democratic life, and various types of internet surveillance are known to suppress it.

The results showed that cookie notifications triggered strong feelings of anger and fear, suggesting that website cookies are no longer perceived as the useful online tool for which they were designed. Instead, they are a barrier to accessing information and making informed decisions about privacy permissions.

And, as suspected, cookie notifications also reduced people’s stated desire to express opinions, seek information, and challenge the status quo.

Cookie Solutions

Legislation regulating cookie notices such as EU General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act were designed with the public in mind. But the online tracking notification creates an unintended boomerang effect.

There are three design choices that might help. First, make cookie consent more conscious, so people know better what data will be collected and how it will be used. This will involve changing the default value of website cookies from opt-out to opt-in so that people who want to use cookies to improve their experience can do so voluntarily.

Second, cookie permissions change regularly, and the data requested and how it will be used should be front and center.

And third, American Internet users should have the right to be forgotten, or the right to have online information about them deleted that is harmful or not used for its original intent, including data collected by tracking cookies. . This is a provision granted in the General Data Protection Regulation but does not extend to US internet users.

In the meantime, I recommend people read the cookie terms and conditions and only accept what is necessary.

Elizabeth Stoycheff is an associate professor of communication at Wayne State University.