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Comment by aliasxneo | Hacker News Reader

I just traveled to Europe for the first time. I was already tired of the cookie banners being a U.S. citizen, but I didn't even think about how many I don't see due to localization. All of the sites where I don't usually experience the banner with were now showing them to me. In some cases, it's a full page of text that I have to dismiss before I can see anything.

I am not necessarily commenting on the philosophy behind the banner, but I now have a much fuller understanding of how disruptive they are.

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Imagine how awesome and accessible those sites would be if they didn't feel the need to ask for massive tracking cookies. I'm in Spain at the moment and most of the government run service sites don't have this issue and the lack of such a banner warms my heart with the knowledge that my activity isn't being needlessly tracked.

You now have a much fuller understanding of how disruptive the tracking industry is

To clarify for those who don't know: If your website uses cookies for storing the products a customer added to their shopping cart or similar "legitimate interest" purposes, they don't need to display a cookie banner.

The law demands them to ask for informed consent only if they want to collect more than that technically necessary data. If that consent isn't given voluntarily it isn't consent. If the choise is "Yes" and a puzzle-maze of a thousand flavors of "No" it isn't informed consent. If the cookies exist before asking they haven't been consentual, etc.

If websites cared about users they just honored the Do Not Track setting

You haven't seen the non detachable bottle caps yet. The ones on yoghurt are the most annoying. But if it saves the whales I will have to accept them without spilling by beverage on EU MPs.

At least you're accepting them. Half my FB feed was complaining about them as if they were the worst thing to be foist upon them and I sarcastically posted about how people want the world's problems to be fixed and the environment to be saved, but won't for a microsecond accept any actual solution that might involve them to do some work - cue classic Dilbert moment

They should really complain about plastic food packaging instead. Non detachable bottle caps are just an attempt to start somehere and hopefully discourage usage. I'm sure there are other ways to attach a bottle cap without annoying the crap out of consumers, but the industry chose the cheapest solution and now everybody blames the EU, just like in the case of cookie banners.

Funny you mentioned that since it took me two days of ripping them off before some kind waiter informed me that wasn’t the intended use.

I’ve lived in Australia and that was the best time of my life. Not only this, also they have water bottles with a cap that you can separate, they provide bags at the grocery store, and if you want to heat the offices to 19°C in winter, it’s allowed.

I’m told my data is protected in the EU, but of I don’t click Approve on the cookie banner, the newspaper tells me “You must either subscribe to our newsletter or approve cookies”, and the receipe website adds “We fund our cranky website full of undesired videos and where we hide our ingredient list under a “See more…” to get beyond the 3-ingredient limit, with ads, so you must allow cookies.”

If the EU could make itself useful, that would be now.

> and if you want to heat the offices to 19°C in winter, it’s allowed.

That's also allowed in the EU, it's actually illegal in Sweden for temperatures inside to be under 18C for long periods.

Illegal in France.

> they provide bags at the grocery store

Not anymore. I mean, you can pay for them now, but you don't get them by default.

> You must either subscribe to our newsletter or approve cookies

That's not legal... or at least some versions it are not. You can report them or try contacting https://noyb.eu/ in case they're interested. But now you know how you actually pay for that website.

> If the EU could make itself useful, that would be now.

They literally created laws which make this behaviour illegal. (Again, some versions anyway) Now it's up to enforcement, but that's country-local not something EU as an organisation can do.

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