You just perfectly highlighted why over-regulation in tech is troublesome. This is why I've always been against European tech regulations which gave us the cookie prompt. Politicians shouldn't be product designers.

Edit: I'll take the downvotes. Every time I say this, I get downvoted. Weirdly, even EU politicians are beginning to see that they've over regulated their tech industry so much that it can't compete but HN just can't accept this opinion.

The cookie prompt is a perfect example of under regulation. The law you're citing as over-regulation requires companies to get consent before tracking you. Companies across the board settled on "annoy users into consenting" as their compliance strategy. You want to revert to implied consent? Fuck that, layer on "also you can't pester users into agreeing to being tracked." Too vague? That's the point; anything else and you incentivize dancing on the line of exactly how close to non-compliance you can get away with. Politicians broadly shouldn't be product designers, but establishing broad no-go zones around anti-consumer behavior is foundational to modern society. Without that you get cartoon ads marketing menthol cigarettes to kids and commercials for casino apps for betting on drone strikes.

This is because the law should say "The only circumstances in which you can get your users PII is when they willingly give them to you, as clients/subscribers. The only circumstances you can sell that data or track your users is never".

Instead we tried something that look like a punt, and even then tracking/adtech ghouls aren't happy. I say we should lobby hard to get my version at least examined in the EU parliament (or in any parliament in a EU country, really), that will probably scare them into removing the cookie banners.

The regulations also gave us "USB-C everywhere" and the possibility to use a different map app than Apple maps on iOS. More to come.

> even EU politicians are beginning to see that they've over regulated their tech industry so much that it can't compete

Yes, it feels a bit weird to me that the HN crowd is a fan of regulation although much of the crowd works in the least regulated profession.

Maybe we need to have regulation that puts an automatic expiration on regulation and there's no way to bypass that. Existing regulation nearing expiration can only be extended by a democratic voting process. Just the burden of handling this should naturally filter out regulation that's unpopular or no longer relevant.

It's because the actual goals have nothing to do with what they say they are.

> European tech regulations which gave us the cookie prompt.

What gave you cookie prompt is malicious compliance.

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