Browsers already had a way to consent to cookies, since the invention of cookies themselves. But the EU didn't consider that _real_ consent.

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9dev 2 days ago | parent [-]

Treating the browser's "disable cookies" feature as a way to reject consent is not real consent. That cripples many legitimate use cases outright; it's neither accessible nor understandable by normal users; it's a technical defence measure, not a way to consciously reject contractual consent.

In contrast, the GDPR demands that you properly ask for consent if you want to process somebody's personal information, inform them why that is necessary, and only process the data if they agree to the processing.

There is clearly a difference here, and IMHO the EU is quite correct here.

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intothemild 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Correct.. the gdpr isn't the anti cookie law. It's the data privacy law.

If it wasn't cookies it would be something else.

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DarmokTanagra 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Correct in principle, completely ineffectual and annoying in practice.

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brainwad 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Most browsers in the 00s had a "always ask" option for cookies. Nobody used it, because it's as annoying as gdpr dialogs now are. But it existed.

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M95D a day ago | parent | next [-]

I tried to use it, but it didn't remember the "no" answer. Every time I loaded a page, the same confirmation for the same cookie was presented again and again.

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9dev a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, but that's still way too narrow to capture what the law is about. The GDPR doesn't really care about cookies, or storing data on clients in some way. Instead, it's about end-users giving informed consent to processing their data. Not just by hand-waving away some disclaimer, but actually conscious of the consequences of that action, and why it is necessary to do so.

I know this sounds all lofty and Brussels ivory-tower-ish, but I'm absolutely convinced it's the only sensible way to deal with personal information - even if American companies insist on forcing a new normal of lacking privacy on all of us.

	▲	brainwad a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I was more talking about ePrivacy cookie banners, which really are about storing data on user devices. The whole thing exists because the already implemented technical solution was deemed inadequate.