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Comment by veltas | Hacker News Reader

>Tech bros love to whine about "The EU cookie policy" that simply doesn't exist the way they imagine it. All these popups are the most radical way to interpret the explicit consent demanded by regulations when sending data to a 3rd party. An ongoing provocation by the ad/tracker industry to blame their ruthless data hoarding on the EU.

The official EU website has one of these annoying pop-ups. Are they part of the provocation? https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en

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That one's the pretty much the optimal implementation though.

* it's a small bar on the bottom

* the site works without clicking on the consent buttons

* it has clear "opt-in" or "opt-out" options

* no annoying "customize my permissions" sub-menu with tons of enabled switches and dark patterns

* No loading screen when you don’t accept all cookies

It’s also fast. I clicked the don’t allow button and it responded instantaneously. Many cookie banners are (probably purposely, at least when should don’t allow) slow as hell.

> That one's the pretty much the optimal implementation though.

Takes up 40% of my screen on mobile

> That one's the pretty much the optimal implementation though.

It's strictly performative, they're setting session and tracking cookies without consent. Whatever you click on their "consent" (or if you click at all) is irrelevant and has no effect on the cookies being set. It's been that way for a long time and nobody cares (I've reported it before and never got a reply).

It's a classic "do as I say, not as I do". Rules are for us, not for them.

After navigating for a couple of pages in incognito (without clicking on any option on the banner) I see two cookies set: one which I suspect tracks if I accepted cookies or not, and one that tracks the fact that I closed the EU/European Commission survey. I'm not sure what you're seeing, or if you're thinking that these two are not OK to be set.

Pure chromium private window, zero interaction with the page, first load, they're all set via JS.

_pk_ses.c9513597-70e6-4b84-80c5-36f9dddf8c7c.9f33: * (Expires 2023-04-14T11:55:32.000Z)

_pk_id.c9513597-70e6-4b84-80c5-36f9dddf8c7c.9f33: 067c09531fc49591.1681471532.1.1681471532.1681471532. (Expires 2024-05-11T11:25:32.000Z)

cck1: %7B%22cm%22%3Afalse%2C%22all1st%22%3Afalse%2C%22closed%22%3Afalse%7D (Expires 2023-10-11T11:25:32.000Z)

I was in Ff and I only got the last.

If you click on the cookies explainer you'll see that they actually use a shitton of cookies:

https://european-union.europa.eu/cookies_en

Instead of that cookie banner they could just not have visitors connect to all those 3rd party services that use cookies to track users!

If you click on "how we use cookies" you'll see the reason is 3rd party services outside of the control of the EU (like embedded YouTube) that they are using on some of their pages.

> has one of these annoying pop-ups

You mean a footer. With a 'Only essential cookies' option.

A bit annoying, yes, and other commenters have mentioned the reason for it.

So nothing in your face like "We care about (selling) your privacy"

It is still in your face. It takes a large part of a mobile screen.

If they care enough about privacy they would only use “essential cookies” and get rid of the others.

Yes that's the joke. The law was meant to discourage the use of "non essential" cookies on the assumption that people would rather stop using them than put up annoying banners, but even the EU org itself thinks that YouTube embeds are essential.

> Are they part of the provocation?

No, why are you assuming that?

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