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Comment by sdfhbdf | Hacker News Reader

Hmm the main allegation against GDPR seems to be that it lead to creation of useless pop-ups, which is partially true but it should be also highlighted that GPDR itself does not require a pop-up mechanism just consent, it did not specify what technological implementation should there be. It is the website owners to blame for using daunting cookie pop-up implementations.

This is to say that "killing pop-ups" should not be a point of a legislation if there isn't one that requires these pop-ups.

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The popups are a revenge tactic used by data hoarders. "Oh, look at this terrible EU, they make us show you all kinds of popups [small]because we want to track your every move online[/small], poor you, the inconvenienced users! If only there was a way to prevent this terrible faith!"

So you think every single website has cookie banners as some sort of political statement?

Isn’t the simpler answer that the EU like most governments is incompetent and didn’t think through their legislation even though it’s 99 sections and 11 chapters?

The EU knew exactly what they were doing. The requirement for explicit consent was entirely intentional.

It was websites and businesses that chose cookie walls over data minimisation. Most websites don't need a cookie wall or even a popup. Even ad supported websites can use context based advertising without any tracking whatsoever but the choice is clear.

It's not always a political statement to add a cookie wall. Some companies are too lazy to consider alternatives, others don't care enough about their users. This stuff has been coming for years and nobody cared until suddenly everyone was "surprised" and now years later everybody is still acting like this is a recent development.

The message is always clear: your convenience as a customer is worth less than your data.

My convenience as a customer was impacted by the laws in the EU. The law had no positive effect on my experience as a user.

Apple did more for privacy with a 30 line rule change on the App Store than the GDPR. As evidence by every company dependent on tracking admitting during earnings that they are losing money by the change. No company announced any effects by the GDPR.

Imagine that a private technology company knowing more about technology than the EU.

The popups happen because that turns out to be what the legislation is incentivising. The solution is to make different legislation that doesn't incentivise popups.

Some examples (obviously not problem-free, but just to show that a solution space exists):

* No tracking even with permission

* No tracking unless the user mailed you hard-copy permission

* No popups

* No popups unless user testing shows that a user who hates popups, doesn't care about privacy and is just clicking stuff to get to see the site, will decline tracking at least 80% of the time

This whole charade feels exactly like ISO-9000 and SOX compliance. Both were a pretty simple idea: document your policies, and document your adherence to the policies. In practice however, mid-level managers at Fortune 500's sprang into action to implement every idea thrown at them by white papers, underwritten by auditing firms, who would then be hired to come in and judge whether the company was adhering to their recommendations for compliance, which ultimately had very little to do with either precision and accuracy (in the case of ISO) or separation of roles and security (in the case of SOX).

A lot of cookie pop-ups you encounter are not even remotely required under GDPR. They are a mostly a form of malicious compliance from the ad-tech industry that want the restrictions lifted.

So every mom and pop website is being political? Stack Overflow is being political?

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