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Comment by wishfish | Hacker News Reader

Speaking as an American, I'm jealous of the EU approach. Yes, I think some of the EU regulations are silly. But they're taking a default position in favor of the citizens. Not in favor of the corporations. In this day and age, that's kinda heartwarming.

Here in the US we're obviously in the opposite situation. We get some good protections occasionally, but the default position is almost always pro-corporate. With extra favor given to those who donated money to the politicians. I'd so much rather have the EU way of thinking. Even if it leads to more annoying cookie banners.

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> Even if it leads to more annoying cookie banners.

Those are not the result of EU regulation; they're not even compliant with EU regs, usually. I don't know for sure why companies put up those stupid banners, but I suspect it's partly a kind of protest, and partly an (illegal) attempt to trick users into consenting to data collection.

Thanks for the correction. I always assumed those banners were to comply with the regulations. Nice to know the companies are being annoying for no reason.

The other guy is wrong. It just takes a simple Google search to confirm this.

I've had to implement and manage these banners at almost every company I've worked for the last several years. It's EU law. Websites that operate in the EU must obtain explicit consent to use tracking cookies. The exception here would be essential cookies which are needed to provide service – although you may still need to consent to do that depending on what data the service is collecting / processing.

Some banners don't comply with EU regulation because they default checkboxes to approve cookies and the EU regulation requires "explicit consent". That said, you almost certainly won't find a major website that doesn't comply for EU visitors and where sites get this wrong it's usually not intentional and is normally because smaller companies don't have the time or resources to comply with the nuances of EU data law. The larger companies who do have the resources hire people like myself to do it for them. There's a sizeable industry around complying with EU GDPR regulation here in Europe. Companies like Usercentrics make millions charging companies for EU-compliant cookie banners, https://www.cookiebot.com/

It's not great for small businesses, but it's great if you're a larger corporate with the money for compliance or an individual riding the EU regulatory gravy train.

The regulation is only 99 articles long and full of fun legal talk if you're interested in reading it yourself. It's just one of the many documents you'll need to familiarise yourself with if you want to do business in the EU: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

Thanks for the correction of the correction. I thought the banners were required, but I hadn't done much research. Therefore, I thought I might be wrong after the initial correction. Nice to know my original hunch was correct. Sounds like a good business to be in.

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