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Comment by poszlem | Hacker News Reader

Putting up a wall in the middle of a busy street and then getting upset when people find ways around it doesn't make sense. The solution is either to remove the wall or ensure it cannot be bypassed.

Right now, it's just irritating for the average person and slightly inconveniencing those who actually break the rules.

This is the same situation with the cookie banner regulations. If the goal is to eliminate tracking, then making tracking illegal is the straightforward path (or make "do not track" actually mean something legally). Otherwise, ignoring it might be better. Implementing a policy that only frustrates the general public without effectively addressing the problem is not the right approach.

This is what the OP cannot understand.

EDIT: To the downvoters - I don't think you understand what the purpose of the downvote is on this site.

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I think the goal was to give citizens the possibility to make informed decisions about where their personal data is being used.

If you don't care about tracking, ok. But some do. The EU tried to cater to both audiences which I think is fair. Turns out most people that did not care about tracking would also not consent when they are asked about it specifically and there are no immediately perceived downsides visible.

> informed decisions

And therein lies the false premise that makes the whole thing absurd.

Most people have no idea what "cookies" are, don't understand what difference it makes when you reject them, and are never going to learn - and we shouldn't expect them to! Leave the technical stuff for the programmers.

The cookie law only makes sense if you think that there's any significant overlap between "people who understand what cookies are" and "people who need help with internet privacy", for which I refer you to the Venn diagram in this comic: https://churchm.ag/eu-cookie-law-history/

There is no cookie law. There is a law that makes companies ask for consent when they share personal data or store identifiers that make this possible.

If companies wouldn't try to frame the whole thing in technicalities, it could be a simple popup listing the features on the website that need sharing personal info and users could turn that off.

Since this is around the 5th time this sentiment has been expressed in this thread, I have to ask... are cookie banners really so frustrating? Oh no, gotta click one, maybe 2, more buttons...

2 more buttons x the number of websites you visit a day x the number of time the website forgets your choice? Yes, they are quite annoying.

My bar for annoyance must just be very high.

> are cookie banners really so frustrating

They would be a LOT less frustrating if:

a) they were standardized — they currently add a hefty cognitive load while parsing them, deciding which action to take, etc.

b) they worked properly — I would say, more often than not, they 'forget' the previous setting. I should never see a cookie popup on the same site twice unless I clear my browser settings.

Standardization would certainly be nice, since we could automate it then (I imagine doing so now would require specific cases for most sites)

Most consent banners are produced by a relatively small set of providers. As such, https://consentomatic.au.dk/ does a decent job of submitting your preferences and pushing them out of sight.

Thanks!

If you want to click “no” it’s often dozens of clicks (e.g. to explicitly disable each “trusted partner” with “legitimate interest”) alongside constant attempts to trick you into clicking “yes” accidentally.

On most websites I use, it's 1 click. On the rest, it's 2. I've never once encountered a website that required "dozens" of clicks

It definitely happens where they don't give you a 'reject all' option, so you have to go 'select options' or similar and untick each one, or at least each category, and then 'confirm choices'.

As an aside, it's supposed to be as easy to decline as to accept; so if you give a 1 click 'accept all' then more than that (whether two or dozens) is unacceptable.

The typical pattern I see is:

- bright red or green “OK” button that opts in to all tracking

- muted “save settings” button

But aha, gotcha, the default settings still have a bunch of tracking enabled, so you have to uncheck all of those, then remember to press “save” and not “OK”.

In the worst ones there’s an artificial delay when you uncheck one of the third-party boxes, as if it has to file a form in triplicate for the unusual request of not immediately sending all your account info there.

This is actually in violation of the rules. Withholding consent is supposed to be as easy as giving consent.

Yes, I know. It’s infuriating but understandable that the regulations aren’t enforced properly.

Why is it understandable that the regulations aren’t enforced properly?

It would be time-consuming and expensive to take some of these companies to court, and likely difficult to win as they'd nitpick over fine details and pass the buck over who's responsible.

Slowly turn the wheels of justice. We’ll get there, I think. Lawsuits take time. Regulations take time. And, as demonstrated in every GDPR-discussion anywhere: understanding takes time.

Fun fact, they are illegal if they require more clicks to reject than accept; so this is not a consequence of the law anyway.

I wouldn't call it fun that so many big providers just ignore the law and are apparently getting through without consequences.

Gears of EU grind slowly but finely. IAB just received a fine for promoting horrible banner practices. And it's not like we'd be better off if the gears didn't grind at all. Now just even uBlock will save you a lot of hassle and server-side tracking purely by the virtue of blocking the consent banners (so they can't be approved)

I believe they were probably being facetious

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