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Comment by blfr | Hacker News Reader

It's not popular because the costs usually outweigh the benefits and when they do, there's rarely a correction. The EU will do something great (roam like at home) or minor but positive (like OP, however we've had USB-C, Firefox, and sideloading on Android anyway) and then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps.

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> The EU will [...] then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps.

You know there's no EU cookie banner insertion agency that intercepts traffic and injects cookie banners - the sites could handle this way less obstrusive.

I'm with you on the attached bottle caps though. It's just a minor annoyance but you really gotta ask: Are environmental benefits really worth the negative reactions to regulation this will spur in the population every time someone tries to drink from a plastic bottle?

> Are environmental benefits really worth the negative reactions to regulation this will spur in the population every time someone tries to drink from a plastic bottle?

Yes.

We fucked up our ecosphere so badly, every little bit to counter our effects helps. Sure, it's just a goddamn bottle cap, but as a friend of mine uses to say: "No one snow flake feels responsible for the avalanche." Can be read both ways – all our small "misdeeds" accumulate, but all the small "good deeds" do, too.

Regulation helps, people will get used to it, and quickly, especially when it's just about minor inconveniences.

> and then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps.

The only reason cookie banners are so annoying is due to the people implementing them wanting them to be annoying.

It doesn't need to be, the directive explicitly states that giving or withdrawing consent should be equally easy. All of these annoying cookie banners requiring you to manually toggle 5+ checkboxes for opting out are illegal.

Maybe, although I'm skeptical, but regardless: if a regulation backfires or becomes unenforceable and the regulator cannot correct course, then I'm gonna blame the regulator.

You wouldn't accept blaming the user if a UI caused wide-spread issues. Legal systems aren't that different. They're made for people and they have to work for people.

You can read the actual regulation instead of being sceptical. And the most annoying ones are being sued already. The change may be slow, but we'll get there.

I would say it is working as intended if the regulators are able to mildly inconvenience you to achieve a greater goal.

Bottle caps are under the top 10 single-use plastic products most often found on European beaches [1], IMHO that’s good enough reason to mandate they be attached to the bottle.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...

Where will it all end? Somewhere perfectly fine, probably. But still, I wonder about the far limits and edge cases to this logic. If it was in all cases considered preferable to mildly inconvenience you to achieve a greater goal, that sounds like the cumulative effect would cease to be mild and would in fact be a bad thing. Maybe that could be fixed by regulation regulations?

it's a continuous cost-benefit optimization.

if it would be cheaper to clean beaches we would just do that. if it would be cheaper to put some manners into beachgoers, we would do that. if it would be cheaper to "police" beaches, we would do that too.

regulations also have costs, such as annoyance, inconvenience, enforcement, etc.

we will see how these will turn out culturally. (as in which "external rules" will turn into internal ones.)

There is no regulation to make cookie banners annoying, afaik. Plus there are addons that solve this problem.

Could you explain your annoyance with bottle caps?

They are attached to the bottle permanently, and tend to get in the way, depending on how the manufacturer decided to implement the regulation.

They're referring to new rules mandating tethered caps. Drives some people nuts.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/07/02/why-are-bottle-cap...

I'm not posh enough to routinely pour my drinks into a glass so an attached cap either drips, scratches, or gets in my way and I have to tear it off and then usually remove the plastic ring since it now comes with prongs that only sometimes come off with the cap.

Attached cap is also less convenient when screwing the cap back onto the bottle.

friends. you understand that you can just.. take it off, right?

fully unscrew the cap then just either continue twisting the cap over the the edge - honestly effortless - or just.. pull it off? the cap still functions as a cap, afterward.

apologies, but i don’t understand the furore over this change.

But you can flip the cap so that it stays open and in a single place when attached. There is often a small bump at the bottom of the cap that makes this easier. I also drink straight from the bottle and I find this unobtrusive. Even helpful - I no longer misplace a cap; I guess that was the goal.

If I remember correctly, people had the same issues with the soda can tabs. Back in the days they were detachable (and people simply tossed them wherever). So they introduced various attachable designs before settling on the current one. It took some time for people to adjust.

An article from Slate: https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/09/can-tabs-how-alumin...

Regulations are backbone of societies. Most of engineering is heavily regulated except for computer engineering.

I see less targeted ads, when I click "reject" on cookie banners. Also more & more has "reject all" opinion on the top level.

It should be checkbox on browser settings, but overall it works and I like it better than creepy notifications to sell me things that I randomly googled.

That is the general idea behind global privacy control[1], though Firefox still has it hidden behind about:config.

[1]: https://globalprivacycontrol.org

There was also "Do not track" earlier, but if it's not regulated, businesses will not give a crap.

Saying that USB-C is a minor benefit feels like American propaganda, or someone bitter.

Guess what, the EU never mandated websites to add cookies banners.

The reason cookie banners are annoying is because they show you in plain sight how much the site you are visiting doesn’t respect you as a visitor. Worse is that it’s always written in an hypocritical language.

Those websites had a disrespectful and dangerous business model that needed to be regulated. The GDPR have been announced 8 years ago and is implemented since 6 years. It’s nearly a decade old and those websites decided to change nothing except to ad banners.

Otherwise, there are a hella lot websites that don’t show banners because in the first place they decided to have a business model which was respectful of their customers /users.

> annoy you to no end with cookie banners

That is due to o malicious compliance. The actual problem is the amount of advertisement cookies, how invasive they are, and how advertisers really don't want to let them go.

> and attached bottle caps

What major problem is that?

So the law was aimed at reasonable and compliant money-grubbing wrong-doers, but they all turned out to be unexpectedly malicious.

Its not malicious. The moment you see a cookie banner you know the site is planning to plant tracking cookies in your browser. Before it did it without your consent now it gives you the option to avoid it if you want.

I would click on any banner you want as long as I can use my one cable for everything and use Vivaldi browser on my iPhone with uBlock origin built in so I can browse the internet on my phone without the need to worry about catching AIDS or cancer.

Like, apple not allowing to use a browser with an adblocker is like not letting people use condoms. It's spreading diseases.

Good thing Europe is yet again taking the responsible adult role for the sake of the rest of the world.

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