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shadowgovt 7 months ago

I'm still extremely skeptical of it because in practice it basically added a cookie banner to every every website I visit infrequently with no particular benefit to me.

I'm just going to click "yes," stop asking.

Aeolun 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

The cookie banner is only there because the website in question uses non-functional cookies (e.g. targeted advertising)

KennyBlanken 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

The cookie banner is there to punish people who have cookies turned off or set to be deleted upon browser/tab close - and generally annoy everyone else.

Think about how obsessive companies are about "UX" and how disruptive the banner is. Bitch-slapping people for fighting against tracking is more important to them than the user being able to access or use the site at all.

Aloisius 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's gotten entirely out of hand.

Most EU national government websites have cookie banners. Even the European Commission website has a cookie banner!

This should have been implemented at the browser level. Let the browser generate a nice consistent UI to nag EU users when visiting websites about accepting cookies and let the rest of us opt out.

brookst 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Or if the legal department is concerned that someone could claim a cookie is non-functional, so to save the uncertainty and expense they advise always showing the banner. Especially since everyone else does.

It seems like there should be a parallel to “tragedy of the commons” that talks about how a good idea coupled with extreme penalties can lead to a bad outcome by making any risk calculation result in “jesus we just can’t take any chances here”.

mola 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No,.all the companies running the sites chose to add a cookie banner. And you choose to keep going there

shadowgovt 7 months ago | parent [-]

Yes, and my life world be more convenient if this banner would go away or I could declare a universal preference.

I miss the old Internet where nobody cared about their privacy.

samtheprogram 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I click no to all of them, but it would be really nice if the Do-Not-Track header essentially let you pick in advance — for you (0) or for me (1)

rurban 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

Not just "really nice". It must be mandatory to respect it.

d3VwsX 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

The only hope I still have is for some kind of fully local LLM-driven "agent" browser that does the browsing for me, navigating search engines, cookie banners and showing me what it found, nothing else.

Unfortunately entire businesses are built around preventing people from using bots, for obvious reasons, so the only obvious way forward to make browsing the web a better experience will also mean ending up on the wrong side of that battle.

blooalien 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> ... "it basically added a cookie banner to every every website I visit" ...

Yeah, no. Hostile advertising companies added that cookie banner as a form of "malicious compliance" with the law purely to annoy everyone like a buncha spoil't little brats who didn't get their way, so now they're gonna make everyone suffer... If we get a similar law in the USA, you can expect to see annoyances just like it (and probably worse) on sites hosted here, too.

chrismorgan 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

The worst part is that it wasn’t even malicious compliance: the cookie banners they added seldom even satisfied law, in ways completely obvious if you just read the law (which is pretty easy reading, only a few thousand words for the relevant parts). I don’t understand why relevant commissions didn’t make more noise about that, because it was obvious that major players were deliberately poisoning public perception.

shadowgovt 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That heavily incentivizes me to advocate against any such law.

thfuran 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not if we ban third-party ads.

brookst 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you source your claim? Because it seems like it would create a competitive advantage for a non-hostile advertising company. Websites aren’t any happier about cookie banners than users are. If it’s just an emotional, spiteful reaction, the grownups should be able to make a fortune.

shadowgovt 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

And if the regulators didn't predict such compliance they should be replaced with competent actors in their jobs.

That was the obvious outcome. What did people predict: site owners leaving money on the table? Who pays for operating the sites then?

account42 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good job rewarding those companies for adding the nag screen. I'm sure that will get them to stop.

shadowgovt 7 months ago | parent [-]

If by 'companies' you mean https://commission.europa.eu/ then sure.

badgersnake 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cookie banners are malicious compliance and the failure to do anything about them is indicative as to how much the EU cares about privacy vs how much they want to be seen to be caring about privacy.

adra 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Clearly you don't have a browser plugin that simply opts out of all cookie banners. Ultimately, the webs ites have a financial interest in malicious compliance, so you either work within the system as given or throw your hands in the air and let every and all sites rape your data.

shadowgovt 7 months ago | parent [-]

Yes, the second one. I don't really care; it's not "my" data. It's data about me.

When I walk down the street and sometime sees me go by, those aren't my photons they caught. By analogy, same with my browsing history.

dcsommer 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

ePD in 2002 mandated cookie banners well before GDPR in 2018. But yes, point taken that well intentioned regulation can be poorly implemented and have negative repercussions.

lolc 7 months ago | parent [-]

I know of no regulation that mandated cookie banners. I just know a lot of sites who chose to use banners because the operators are somewhere between weasely and malicous.

pjc50 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem is GDPR isn't prescriptive enough. That makes it ripe for "technically correct but really annoying" solutions.

It also failed to actually ban ad tracking.

moritonal 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Key to note that the cookie banner fiasco wasn't GDPR, it was a separate policy that should be changed.