Europe's cookie law messed up the internet. Brussels wants to fix it | Hacker News Reader

Europe's cookie law messed up the internet. Brussels wants to fix it

politico.eu

10 pointsmvdwoord12 comments

Ah yeah the banners are the problem, not the fact that almost every website out there wants to know every detail of my entire life...

> almost every website

When https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en has a cookie banner, it's entirely fair to blame the EU.

Until quite recently even https://gdpr.eu/ had a cookie banner. They finally got around to fixing that irony.

Actually yes the banners bring up cookie rage. When in cookie rage I'll click anything to make that banner go away. And then repeat the next visit. The banners make me not care. Give me a global in browser setting for that.

If you look other answers here you find a solution.

I don't want those banners. I don't want extensions or artificial solutions to a manufactured problem. I want to set up my preference in my browser, once, and have it respected by all sites i visit. I'm not sure why my comment was downvoted for stating a personal preference. For me, those banners do the opposite of what they were meant to.

>privacy rules that force websites to run cookie banners.

This is such bullshit and common misconcepton.

Websites DO NOT have to run cookie banners!

If you only have necessary cookie for session and do not track users, you don't have to show cookie banner. Websites that want to invade privacy must run cookie banner to ask permission.

> Websites that want to invade privacy must run cookie banner to ask permission.

Why does the EU want to invade my privacy? https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en

https://european-union.europa.eu/cookies_en I'm certainly not a web developer expert, maybe someone can break this down.

>a law called the e-Privacy Directive to require websites to get consent from users before loading cookies on their devices, unless the cookies are “strictly necessary” to provide a service. Fast forward to 2025 and the internet is full of consent banners that users have long learned to click away without thinking twice.

I think that is the issue here.

Yes, clicking "Customize" then "Reject all" is annoying, but it beats "Copy link address", "New Incognito window", then paste and return.

The obvious regulatory improvement is that reject-all is default and all other options must be harder to get.

ps. Current solution is use browser extension to automate rejection.

Consent-O-Matic

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-mat...

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/consent-o-matic/mdj...

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/consent-o-matic/id1606897889

Makes you wonder, what other things did the EU mess up, and which of those do they want to fix..

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