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Comment by runako | Hacker News Reader

I know the intentions are positive here, but I can't help feeling like this is going to have unintended consequences that make services worse for the majority of us who do not live in the EU, like GDPR did.

We have a regulatory body that doesn't prioritize standardizing on a single type of electrical plug now driving digital standards for companies that operate globally.

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>> unintended consequences that make services worse for the majority of us who do not live in the EU, like GDPR did.

Can you give an example? Things like Google Takeout and other services allow you to download all your data are a direct consequence of GDPR. Seems like a huge win to me. If your complaint is “cookie banners” your complaint if with website owners rather than any legislation.

The complaint is cookie banners. They litter the Web now as a direct result of GDPR. Website owners didn't just start obscuring their sites because it's fun. They make the Web worse for everyone in the world.

Yes, I know that technically such banners are not required under GDPR. I also know that even the webmasters at The European Commission (see the linked ec.europa.eu site) add cookie banners 7 years after the law was passed. It is not reasonable to expect other organizations to interpret the law more effectively than the EU itself.

Cookie banners existed long before the GDPR, due to the ePrivacy Directive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPrivacy_Directive

And the EU is actively working on creating a new ePrivacy Regulation [0] that would explicitly tackle the explosion of cookie banners.

> Simpler rules on cookies: the cookie provision, which has resulted in an overload of consent requests for internet users, will be streamlined. The new rule will be more user-friendly as browser settings will provide an easy way to accept or refuse tracking cookies and other identifiers. The proposal also clarifies that no consent is needed for non-privacy intrusive cookies that improve internet experience, such as cookies to remember shopping-cart history or to count the number of website visitors.

[0]: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eprivacy-r...

The assertion that the proliferation of cookie banners dates to 2002 does not pass the smell test. It was GDPR.

What smell test? I very much remember cookie banners being a problem way before the GDPR and so does the rest of the web:

(2012) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19505835

(2013) https://econsultancy.com/17-useful-examples-of-eu-cookie-law...

(2015) https://superuser.com/questions/725312/disable-all-cookie-wa...

(2013) https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/40687/we-use-cookies-...

I must have been blind to the banners for a number of years :-). In any case, the larger point stands: the EU created the cookie banner mess that makes the Web worse for everybody, whether or not we are EU citizens. It seems the only debate is whether they have dawdled 14 years before attempting to address the issue or "only" 5 years.

It was the 2009 amendment of the ePrivacy Directive which introduced cookie consent, as noted in the Wikipedia article.

Takeout predates the GDPR by years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Takeout

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