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Sort of aside but it’s wild to me that people talk of ab testing all kinds of minor things and yet so many shops immediately cover up the item I’m viewing with a huge banner/full page annoyance about cookies.

The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, it's very possible the same places found the tracking data is worth the annoyance.

You're right and I'm torn on whether it's good or bad. In a way that would be at least sensible, but awful for me. The other option is they're making lazy bad choices.

I do wonder what would have happened if the laws were in place first. Would people have been so willing to add all this stuff if it meant putting a big thing over the entire shop?

My other consideration is whether if the owners had to use their site like new customers every time if they'd get pissed off about the stuff covering their actual shops.

Given people A/B test all kinds of minor things I'm sure someone would have hit on it and then it would spread. That's basically the rocket fuel that drives people really into A/B testing everything rather than just hunches "I could find something which increases metrics you wouldn't otherwise think to try".

In either case, I think the net result is bad news for users, good news for people selling things. And of course the sprinkle of "people just making mistakes/guesses" too, but there's no universe that's not going to be found.

The other day I accidentally double-clicked on the the dismiss of a popup and the second click went through to the page underneath and I added an item to cart.

Don't know if it was intentionally positioned like that but I was ready to imagine it was.

I'm not a fan of conspiracy things but I'd definitely agree that would A/B test better.

Petty revenge, torturing their users with malicious compliance.

> I think blaming the EU for cookie banners is wrong. Those banners are malicious disobedience, and, for the most part a legal violation.

The EU's own government websites are littered with the obnoxious cookie banners [1].

It's an unbelievably thoughtless and misguided law that has unfortunately ruined the internet. I think a lot of people rightfully blame the EU and they're terrible lawmaking for this nonsense.

https://european-union.europa.eu

I don't seem to get them from outside the EU (even with my adblocker disabled), so a law saying they need an annoying banners I agree to before they go for it might actually be a step up.

At least it has a 'only necessary cookies' option and you don't have to click through a lot of 'settings' to get them off.

It's also easy to hide with the element picker of uBO. It's a DOM element with a straightforward id #cookie-consent-banner

You are not wrong, but the fact that they never follow up and allow the practice makes them complicit. Same for the farcical malicious (non-)compliance of the GFPR through 'legitimate intetest' abuse.

What are they supposed to do about it?

They didn't want user data to be sent to third-parties without consent, so they created a law that made it mandatory for web pages to ask for consent to send the data. Most web pages need to send data to third-parties to be profitable, so they need to ask for consent.

What would the next steps be like? The purpose of the law is to give users the power to consent or not consent. In other words, I can pay for the contents of a web page with my data. Removing that option from me doesn't give me power to do whatever I want with my data: it takes that power away from me instead. That would be bad.

> Most web pages need to send data to third-parties to be profitable

Is that true? If so, it's a sad state of affairs.

Best: Opt out by default.

Runner up: 1-click reject all mandatory

If the majority of users use the system wrong, it's the system that's wrong, not the users.

That rubric only applies when the users aren’t actively and maliciously sabotaging the system, which privacy-subverting websites absolutely are. (And everyone else is cargo-cutting their behavior.)

Note that the most annoying consent banners come from advertising conglomerates (IAB comes to mind). Well who would think they wouldn’t sabotage anything?

To be fair, I’m sabotaging it from the other side with my ad-blocker.

Defending yourself from abuse is not an excuse for others to engage in abuse. I have no issue with passive 90's-style ads. I don't need to block them. I use my abuse-blocker to handle more concerning problems.

I agree with your sentiment, but it would really be a great step to stop calling these things "cookie banners" and use "consent banners" or "tracking banners". Call them what they are.

Because it is not the means, it is the intent that the GDPR tries to protect you from. The GDPR (and EDP) says that tracking, any tracking not just cookies, requires the consent of the tracked one.