As a matter of process, this isn’t a new law. It’s the same law that was in place in 2018 when the first complaint was filed. The courts have only just decided what it means for this specific scenario. They decided you can’t rely on contractual necessity to excuse not presenting the user with a choice about whether to be tracked, just because Facebook’s business is tracking. Up until now Facebook had operated assuming they could.

The main fault of the process is that it took 4.5 years. That’s 4.5 years of illegal revenue. Speed is justice. We all know this. It would have been preferable for the law to have been so clear that it didn’t take that long to argue. I forget the exact wording but I think it was pretty clear, and they just managed to draw it out long enough to turn more profit in the meantime. Possibly not so much a problem with lawmaking as with the litigation.