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Comment by cnity | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, we also get non-stop cookie permission banners and often just straight-up denied access to certain services that don't want to have to jump through the hoops.

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The only things I've been denied as an EU citizen on the web so far have been US local news websites. And tbh I assume that is just one company that has a blanken policy of sorts. So I don't think "often" is accurate here.

That's just the secret program to get Europeans to stop making fun of us.

If you don't want to deal with cookie banners, there are browser extensions you can install to automatically accept them. However, although the cookie banners are sometimes a nuisance, it is still a good thing that people are informed and given the option to accept it or not.

Those extensions are far from perfect in my experience (ditto the lists in uBlock Origin)

Often leave you wondering why you can’t click anything on the page

I agree in general, but when I see a dialog box titled "We respect your privacy" and a choice between "allow all" or "see more", I donate 0.10 € to NOYB.

If anything, every time I have to click through one of those banners I wish that activist organisations/politicians had to pay me for having to go through it.

You can get an extension that will automatically click "allow all" and everything will be exactly as it was before this directive.

I wish that was true, but those extensions are far from flawless. Still, they are a massive improvement over having to click away all banners, especially for those of us who have our browsers set to clear cookies when quitting the browser.

I want one that automatically rejects all.

You can disable cookies in browsers so that cookies do not persist after session close. Firefox lets you add a whitelist of sites to allow cookies, too.

Cookie banners will still appear.

If I understand the law correctly, your suggestion is good on practice but could be harmful on the long run.

When I click "I agree" I am not agreeing to cookies but rather to tracking. If the website wants to track me with (say) browser fingerprinting, deleting the cookies will not stop them from tracking me across sessions. Even worse: since I agreed they no longer need to show me a warning, so I may not even notice that I may want to revoke that consent.

If I don't want to be tracked, saying "I do not consent" is the only legally-actionable way. Deleting cookies works now because cookies are still cost-effective, but this won't remain true forever.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/istilldontcar...

Emphasis mine:

> In most cases, the add-on just blocks or hides cookie related pop-ups. When it's needed for the website to work properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier to do).

It is not the activists fault that the company wants to track you. They do not have to show you that stuff if they don't so unnecessary tracking

> when I see a dialog box titled "We respect your privacy" and a choice between "allow all" or "see more"

It’s usually “we value your privacy”, which always makes me think “you put a value on it, alright, can’t wait to take it away”.

You

https://consentomatic.au.dk/ also allows to reject them automatically.

If anything, there should be extensions to automatically reject them. It’s a testament to how draconian the process to do it usually is that the extensions just surrender. Every time an extension or person accepts those, they’re reinforcing those companies’ choice to break the law¹ in the name or profit.

¹ The GDPR is clear that rejecting must be as simple as accepting.

that's propagated to the rest of the world lol

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