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Comment by jasonkostempski | Hacker News Reader

HA, this made it to the front page right as I was composing this Ask HN submission about picking a de facto standard element CSS class so that ad blockers could just start including a simple rule to get rid of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17679932

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There is an adblock filter list for cookie warnings: https://github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list

I figured, but maintaining that is such a waste of human life and parsing the list is a waste of my CPU time. Since no one on either side of the fence wants the notices to exist, web developers could just use a de facto standard element class and ad blockers can add a simple rule.

Is it a waste of human life? From a utilitarian perspective, it’s easy to see how one dev coding for an hour could save cumulatively many hours otherwise wasted by users clicking through GDPR/cookie pop-ups. From a purely “time invested” vs. “time saved” perspective, maintaining Adblock lists is likely a net benefit.

Ad/tracker block lists, yes, totally worth the effort because we have to fight against people that want to use our own machines against us. For the cookie notice, we're all on the same side, so we can make it easier for everyone.

It'd be even better if my user agent could simply indicate my acceptance (or lack thereof) for me

This is what Do Not Track was supposed to be. Unfortunately it never got much momentum. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. ignore the DNT header.

Another useless attempt at reducing tracking I wish would be banished from the web. The amount of pollution in web standards; official, legal, or accidental; is becoming just as annoying as the annoying things they're trying to fix.

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