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Comment by jurassic | Hacker News Reader

The commenters here seem to take for granted that this cookie law is a good thing and Google/Facebook are evil villains, but there is a difference between a law and a good/just/reasonable law. I would argue interrupting the experience and wasting billions of peoples time clicking on cookie banners is also a form of harm. That’s certainly been my perception as an end user under this policy. I don’t work in ad tech and have no financial stake in this, I’m just sick to death of these fucking cookie popups.

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But the law isn't about cookies, it's about tracking and making sure you, the user, know you are being tracked. The poor UX is malicious compliance and seems to be working since so many people complaining about cookie banners and the law but not companies tracking you, the actual bad guys.

It doesn’t matter what the law is about, what matters are the actual consequences and the impact that the law has had. So far it has had quite a negative impact for users. I really don’t see how this was a win for anyone.

The consequences only highlight the problem. We're currently in the first stage in a transition towards allowing the end user to express their wishes about tracking which then companies need to respect.

It only shows how disrespectful almost all companies are by attempting to shape the end users opinion on this law by attacking them with dark patterns.

If France is now expecting companies to equalize the opt-in and the opt-out behavior, they're essentially attacking these dark patterns, which is very welcome by almost all end users.

I hope that there will come a point in time when I can go into the settings of my browser, tell it what the default behavior (answer) should be and possibly even express interests in certain ad categories to whitelist them, like "biking". It would be a granular "Do Not Track" option which must be respected by the website.

The law: exists, and is quite unequivocal.

Sites: implement things that are actually illegal under the law

HN, en masse: the law is bad, how can you say it's good?

EU has been very slow in going after websites, but I do hope they pick up the pace.

EU has far overreached, I hope their declining relevancy hastens and their holier than thou attitude continues to aid it in doing so

> EU has far overreached

How exactly did it overreach? Every country in Europe had data protection laws prior to GDPR. All these shitty sites ignored them.

So EU created a single law. If you want to sell people's data without their consent, go <expletive deleted>.

The US will eventually have similar laws as well (CCPA is one if them)

I wonder if you're playing Devil's advocate or you really are defending this.. They could skip the "burden" users face by just not using so many dang tracking cookies. If you want information about how your customers use the site, or what their interests are, you can just _ask_ and try to solicit feedback explicitly. Most of the people will likely decline, but that _should be_ their choice to do so. And providing feedback _should be_ opt-in, not opt-OUT.

> But the law isn't about cookies

EU law very much is about cookies.

> ... the ePrivacy Directive (EPD) has become known as the “cookie law” since its most notable effect was the proliferation of cookie consent pop-ups after it was passed.

> Strictly necessary cookies — These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies. While it is not required to obtain consent for these cookies, what they do and why they are necessary should be explained to the user.

> However, properly informing your users about the cookies your site is using and, when necessary, receiving their consent will keep your users happy and keep you GDPR-compliant.

https://gdpr.eu/cookies/

You are complaining that the allergens information takes room on your restaurant menu.

We the people, through our democratic processes, have asked companies for transparency of their tracking process, the industry have decided as a whole to say fuck off and made the process as painful as possible.

Yes, the companies are evil/stupid villains on this case. Not everything needs bloody philosophy.

Who is "we" though? I certainly had no part in a European democratic process that led to these laws but I still have to get nagged by popups every day.

Practically everyone tracks. Not practically everyone prepares food in a facility that also handles shellfish, etc. It's not philosophical that op reports (being sick of) clicking cookie banner ads in each site they visit. It's not even surprising empirically.

A lot of websites don't show cookie banners (DuckDuckGo, GitHub, HN, gitlab, etc.). Sure, the law has some minor mistakes, but it is the fault of the websites. If they didn't track the user, they wouldn't have to display a banner.

GitHub’s approach is really dubious and probably violates GDPR as well. They “only use necessary cookies” but then do (unnecessary) analytics on those necessary cookies. But doing the unnecessary part still requires explicit consent.

Discussion of this point at the time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25457903

GitLab has definitely shown me a cookie banner in the past. Did they find a way around it?

In a new session https://gitlab.com or e.g. https://gitlab.com/ase/ase don't show me a cookie banner.

I just opened that first link in a private window, and I get a cookie banner. Maybe because I'm in France.

I would argue interrupting the experience and wasting billions of peoples time clicking on cookie banners is also a form of harm.

Right. We should just be able to set a blanket "No" in our browser preference tab, and be done.

And all of the businesses can proceed to ignore that setting. At which point you're back to where we are now - an issue of enforcement.

All of these garbage cookie banners are just as noncompliant as ignoring that setting would be. You wouldn't have cookie banners to deal with, but at least clicking through those now supposedly results in less data being tracked.

At which point you're back to where we are now - an issue of enforcement.

Which is what the orange jumpsuits + baloney sandwiches are for. See my other recommendations in this thread.

Big companies sending executives of smaller companies to jail over arcane laws is a thing.

Being fully compliant is very hard. Or requires lots of bribes or both.

Those cookie popups are only there because websites are collecting non-essential information from visitors. If you only use essential cookies that perform functions like remembering the contents of a shopping cart, or providing security when you log in, without which the process could not work, then you are exempt from the consent requirement and quite happily have a website with no cookie consent banner. The popups are there because most devs are determined to stuff user tracking and analytics which they really, really need (despite never looking at them) into absolutely everything they develop, even though 99% of the time there's eff all point.

Most capitalists*

Not devs.

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