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Comment by hypeatei | Hacker News Reader

What does GDPR get you that browser settings and an extension don't? I'm genuinely curious how random websites refusing to serve content / spamming cookie banners is a good thing?

The data download and removal side of GDPR seems useful for more "entrenched" use cases where you have an account and a long history on a service but... fly-by website visits should not be this heavily regulated. Blocking cookies and scripts is trivial.

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I should not need extensions for a business to respect my privacy. It's as simple as that.

If you look at it through an equity angle, needing extensions relegates the negative effects to those that are already not "well off" — the technologically illiterate who don't know what to do or know someone who does.

So someone's refusal to make a couple clicks to install an extension necessitates: 1) millions of users having to click to get the annoying popup off their screen, 2) installing an extension to block those anyway, and 3) a more fractured internet where website operators outright refuse to serve content because of liability? I'd bet a very large sum of money that the technologically illiterate don't read anything on those popups and click "Accept all cookies"

How does someone's refusal to install an extension necessitate millions of users having to close the popup? I guess you mean someone as in "vast majority of population"?

Why is the government making efforts to increase technological literacy not an option?

A proper course in technological literacy would also necessarily include the fact that browser extensions are quite possibly not safe.

> I'm genuinely curious how random websites refusing to serve content / spamming cookie banners is a good thing?

They refuse to allow visitors to visit their website without taking, processing and selling their data and letting those visitors know that this is happening. That they outright block me instead of doing those anyways, clearly is a good thing and in my benefit.

There's also your IP address. No browser setting or extension is going to hide it. There are of course VPNs and proxies, but they're different things.

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