Hacker News Reader

Comment by isodev | Hacker News Reader

You mean the EU should have foreseen that people in tech have no conscience and sensitivity for right or wrong?

It's not enough to write a law on principles alone. It must be clear and practical to comply and clear how it will be enforced. The EU should not have created a situation where the most practical solution for 1000's of companies is a cookie banner.

Eh, I think people have the wrong take-away from all of this.

Imagine if the banner said "This website is known to the state of California to cause cancer". Would you keep visiting the site?

Like if every time you went the bar, the bouncer asked "Hey, can I punch you in the face?". Would you keep going to that bar?

As annoying as the banners are, they actually aren't annoying enough to change mass-behavior.

To be fair, completely foreseeable.

Yeah, I’m not sure legislators should be on the hook for malicious compliance, though.

Of course not, I was just having a laff at tech's expense.

As a reminder, it's the same people in tech we're trusting to build things like chat bots, "AI", cars that try to drive themselves and rockets that try to land themselves... etc.

You have to admit that if these same people can't be trusted to follow a simple "do not track" directive, humanity is in big trouble.

Sadly, we are. I didn't ever think of myself as an optimist until I realised just how pessimistic it is possible to become, as I've learned in the last 5 or so years. Now I realise I was quite an optimistic person, at least by comparison with my present self.

I mean, humanity is and always has been in big trouble. That's why history is full of disasters, mass death etc.

But I don't think it's that developers "can't" follow a DNT cookie. It's that they won't because it doesn't benefit their employer's financial interests.

Making a rocket that lands, on the other hand, does directly correspond to SpaceX's financial interests.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com