Ask HN: Is Cookie Pop-Up Protection a Good Idea?
Of course this results in sites not remembering your (GDPR) privacy preferences which would in turn result in those pesky pop ups every time you visit a site. To mitigate this, DDG offers a feature to automatically handle the popups:
When DDG detects cookie pop-ups on sites you visit it can automatically set your cookie preferences to minimize cookies and maximize privacy, then close the pop-ups.
Technically, it's far from the simplicity of something like DNT header, but it works reasonably well on a (small) majority of websites. I think this is because those websites use a standardized dialog, the remaining sites still require manual interaction with the pop-up.What I've noticed recently in my own behaviour is that I tend to dismiss or ignore search results that DDG's pop up feature doesn't recognize. I.e.: I have a bias toward preferring sites that either don't have cookies, don't have cookie pop-ups or have cookie pop-ups that immediately disappear automagically.
So my question is: what if these kinds of tools gain wider adoption? Would that cause traffic to significantly decrease for sites with non-standard pop ups? And could that ultimately incentivize websites to tailor pop-ups to not annoy users? Any are downsides?