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As I click my 10,000th cookie modal to read this article, I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience better in any way, to which the answ

As I click my 10,000th cookie modal to read this article, I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience better in any way, to which the answer is a resounding no. I understand the importance of it, but please prioritise revising its shortcomings rather than doubling down on being the most tech-hostile region in the developed world.

Nextgrid 6y ago
The problem isn't the legislation but its lack of enforcement. The legislation itself explicitly prohibits annoying/misleading consent prompts.
- dfgdghdf 6y ago
  Perhaps, but legislation should be designed carefully so that it can be enforced in a meaningful way
- kyrra 6y ago
  I disagree. Pop-up fatigue causes people to just click the button that will get them to their content the fastest. While some people might dive into trying to opt out, when you get these pop-ups on every other site, many people are going to click the easiest button to make it go away. This is a poor law because it has to be done on every website. I think it may be better to have this as a decision the user chooses once within their browser, and the browser can then pass along the intention to the website. There can maybe also be a third option where the user could then choose on each site, and the browser would show the choices, rather than the website itself. This would standardize the UX around the issue.
  - benplumley 6y ago
    The law is that it needs to be as easy to reject cookies as it is to accept them. Ergo, "people are going to click the easiest button to make it go away" indicates a failure to enforce. I agree it'd be better handled by the browser than each website, though.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      My interpretation of that is that at least two buttons are required: a close (or “reject all”) button, and an “accept all” button. Websites would then be free to add a third “customize” button if they wish. Unfortunately, many websites that I’ve seen have only “customize” and “accept all”. And the customize pane then contains dozens of preselected checkboxes (which, AFAIK, isn’t allowed, but I digress). Each checkbox is for a separate tracker I need to disable before clicking “save”. The problem is absolutely the lack of enforcement.[a] If it was being enforced better, these sites would be fined until they fix themselves. [a]: Yes, I’m aware that it is being enforced. I’m complaining that it’s not enough.
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    > This is a poor law because it has to be done on every website. The law doesn’t require this, it only requires informed consent. > I think it may be better to have this as a decision the user chooses once within their browser, and the browser can then pass along the intention to the website. There can maybe also be a third option This is would be an allowable approach under GDPR. Someone just needs to build it and make it happen. Unfortunately the “do-not-track” debacle shows that ad companies aren’t interested in playing ball. Hence our current mess.
  - simion314 6y ago
    GDPR is not only about the browsers , it is applied outside of tech too, would be weird for the law to define browser standards . desktop apps standards and mobile apps standards. Developers should do their job, does w3c guys could decide how to handle this and not force politicians to decide for them. Sure some people will click accept but some of them will know who is the actual bad guy that sends their data to 100+ third parties and what websites are respecting them or at least respect the laws. I agree that browsers could do a better job, maybe implement a shit list, put all shitty websites there and ask you only once if you want to accept to allow this bastards to track and sell your data or if you want to open the website in a special container. Then if you decide to use the container the browsers should try to do their best to limit the tracking, maybe by blocking requests to the trackers, clearing caches often, disabling some features that could fingerprint you and if it works just disable JS. But who knows, maybe we will have to pass laws to force the popups to use certain fonts, colors and input types because the majority of websites are evil.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > Pop-up fatigue causes people to just click the button that will get them to their content the fastest. And why is that button allowed to be the "Accept Everything" button? There should be two buttons, equally easy to find and press.
- wickoff 6y ago
  Legislation is problematic too. I can't be bothered to make a decision to make a decision about storing cookies every time I visit a website, so I click yes every time without reading.
  - serhatozgel 6y ago
    If the legislation were to be enforced, you would click "no" every time without reading.
    - MereInterest 6y ago
      Or just ignore/hide the banners, which by GDPR, may not be interpreted as consent.
- hetspookjee 6y ago
  The fact that you need to download a _opt-out_ plugin to disable Google Analytics for tracking you is a prime example of failing enforcement.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Having to go through a menu of a few dozen items to see & choose what you'll allow to track you is annoying, but so long as sites are willing to track you in dozens of different ways there's really no way around it. Sites win because exercising your privacy rights even under the GDPR is an inherently annoying thing to do.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    > Sites win because exercising your privacy rights even under the GDPR is an inherently annoying thing to do. Under GDPR: - only cookies and data strictly required for the site's functionality don't require consent - collection of any other data requires consent - pre-ticked boxes, lack of "reject all" button, leading the user to click "allow all" and similar dark patterns are not consent, and are, strictly speaking, violating the law. See? exercising your privacy rights under the GDPR should be extremely easy. Too bad the law isn't enforced vigorously enough.
  - nicbou 6y ago
    There's a way around it: uBlock Origin, a few extra filter lists, and a block on third party cookies.
- Aardwolf 6y ago
  > The legislation itself explicitly prohibits annoying/misleading consent prompts. What does a non-annoying prompt look like?
  - majkinetor 6y ago
    There are more or less annoying prompts however. With the later kind I could coexist. Instagram has the most annoying one ever, if I stumble upon it by accident I am so annoyed that I need to count to 10. And I am not even using it, its just random click The far less annoying popups are barely noticeable and do not block/fade content or have missing options like "NO, I don't want cookies, let me in".
  - serhatozgel 6y ago
    A non-existing one, you go to your settings to enable it so they can track you.
tjoff 6y ago
As clear as can be yes. Now you know which websites are willing to absolutely ruin your experience just to abuse you. The implications can be seen pretty much everywhere in society, it is a momentous step in the right direction.
- iFreilicht 6y ago
  Exactly, this just brings to light how little most companies care about their customers. Not saying the legislation couldn't be improved, though.
  - unicornporn 6y ago
    What would you improve? I think what happened when brexit went into full effect was pretty telling. Both Facebook and Google were on their toes to get back to abusing the data of UK citizens. There's much to be gained. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/15/facebook-move-uk-users-california-eu-privacy-laws https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/15/facebook-... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-privacy-eu-exclusive-idUSKBN20D2M3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-privacy-eu-exclusi...
    - iFreilicht 6y ago
      That was meant more as a preliminary defense as I saw other people complain and don’t know enough to defend the specific legislation. But damn, that is indeed a pretty good indicator that it’s working as intended.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  ignoring the fact the vast majority of users never noticed , never cared, and still don't care but not robotic like click away the warnings. I am not dismissing the need to let consumers know how their habits and information are used I am merely stating that many here overreact on behalf of people who really could care less, they just want their content
  - 6y ago
indeyets 6y ago
Well… if GitHub could fix their cookies so that they do not need to show any more modals, some of those 10,000 could too. https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/
retSava 6y ago
Well, it is better, since I assume that you don't click "yes, allow". If you would, you would likely have a cookie saying "he/she is ours" with a lifetime longer than the heatdeath of the universe. If you dare to click no, that's when you get 10k options and optouts and have to send fax to someones grandma. The root cause of your experience being worse is not the legislation, it's that the site doesn't follow the intent/purpose of the law. They want to annoy you until you click "yes". They could simply present you with a yes/no modal once and be done with it, but they choose not to, hoping that they will break you down with time.
- XCSme 6y ago
  > They could simply present you with a yes/no modal once and be done with it Any extra modal, as simple as it might be, leads to a really bad user experience and wasted time.
  - slavak 6y ago
    Then don't place cookies that aren't necessary for the delivery of your service. There, problem solved! If invading your users' privacy is more important than your site's user experience, then the blame is on you, not the legislation.
    - stale2002 6y ago
      No, legislators don't get to ignore the unintended consequences of the laws that they implement. This applies to all laws that are passed. It is a frequent criticism and problem, of laws, is that there are often unintended consequences. And that is the fault of the law, that they did not consider the unintended consequences.
      - XCSme 6y ago
        I agree, don't publish a law that you can't or don't know how to enforce. What they should have done is made a public tool that checks your website and says: yes this site is GDPR compliant or no, it is not because A,B,C.
tester756 6y ago
Blame sites that show cookie modal even when they use cookies only for auth or just tech stuff Also what if big companies want to make your experience as poor as possible in order to make you think that this law sucks? Maybe using private mode in browser is making your experience even worse?
mrtksn 6y ago
The website could have chosen to make your experience better by showing you 0 popups. EU isn’t involved in the quality management of web experiences. To do that, of course, the website would need stop sending your latest ip address, your unique identifier, and the information that you’re a techie interested in Tiktok to all ad agencies and data brokers.
quarantine 6y ago
There is work underway to improve the cookie modal situation: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-eprivacy-regulation https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-epriv... Please also remember that the GDPR is also applicable outside the internet, and protects people from IRL data gathering.
Deukhoofd 6y ago
They are reworking the cookie law, it's just a complex piece of legislation. They are aware of its shortcomings, and want to tackle them through an enforced browser setting. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-eprivacy-regulation https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-epriv...
- csunbird 6y ago
  > This will ensure that these popular services (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype) guarantee the same level of confidentiality of communications as traditional telecoms operators. Sounds very ominous, don't law enforcement agencies have access to the "traditional telecoms operators" data? On topic, a Do-Not-Track header setting that automatically opts-out of everything and the new "legitimate interest" trend, would be awesome.
JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
Training older people and non tech literate people to just randomly click yes on every website has to be one of the greatest fails of the GDPR. I would say that people are even less safe now. Cookies, while annoying and privacy-eroding, never hacked someone's system like clicking yes to installing God knows what malware will do. We had just trained everyone to not do that.
dspillett 6y ago
> I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience better in any way If it were as hard to opt-in as it is to fully opt-out, or as easy to accidentally (and permanently) opt-out as it is to accidentally (and permanently) opt-in, then there might be a case for something other than the sites and/or their partners being the problem. The legislation does not in any way force sites or their partners to make your browsing so inconvenient if you don't want to just click "accept all from all without or without lube". They could implement a small non-modal active-opt-in option, they instead chose to implement labyrinthine modal hunt-the-231st-opt-out adventure games.
raverbashing 6y ago
With the cookie modal you start noticing which sites don't have it (and there are a couple) And sites can still provide ads. Google still provides ads to me with customizations turned off. So yeah, I'm pretty bothered by them as well but I know where the blame lies
pjc50 6y ago
"Privacy conscious" need not be "tech hostile". Personally I feel the problem arose from trying to write extremely generalist legislation in the GDPR without actually addressing the economic incentives OR mandating a technical solution. Mandating a technical solution such as "respect the DNT header" would have the disadvantage of limiting innovation, but would have forced a clear division of websites into "you can't browse here without turning DNT off" and ones that actually worked properly. Alternatively, just straight up banning the browser-targeted advertising practice would take away the economic incentive to do this kind of nonsense. That would force the "how do we get paid" question again, which remains awkward.
jamaicahest 6y ago
How is this relevant to the article?
ploika 6y ago
I'm all for hostility to tech that's unnecessarily invasive and privacy-destroying.
planb 6y ago
That law is a very bad execution on a very good idea. Simply making adherence to a do-not-track header mandatory would have solved the same problem without annoying anyone.
simplerman 6y ago
At least, now you know. Companies can choose better user experience if they want. What's your opinion about Apple vs Facebook?
tushar-r 6y ago
> I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience better in any way, to which the answer is a resounding no. I actually find myself digging into the settings that are offered to click on "Reject All" where possible. I wish my region had the same data protections :-/
- yholio 6y ago
  Reject third party cookies coupled with session only cookies works pretty well though.
  - lrem 6y ago
    Where's the "reject server-side fingerprinting"?
hjek 6y ago
Get the Sticky Ducky add-on[0] for hiding fixed overlays, and add Fanboy's Cookiemonster list[1] to your adblocker of choice. [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-ducky/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-ducky/ [1]: https://github.com/ryanbr/fanboy-adblock/blob/master/fanboy-cookiemonster.txt https://github.com/ryanbr/fanboy-adblock/blob/master/fanboy-...
rospaya 6y ago
> I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience better in any way Yeah, and women's suffrage caused longer lines at the polls because more people vote so you would have to wait longer. It's not about the experience, it's about your rights.
simias 6y ago
I see this mindset a lot but I don't really get it. You'd rather blame the legislation for forcing the websites to disclose all the tracking that they do instead of blaming the websites for tracking you in the first place? I'm very happy that I can at least click "say no to all" when I get to a new website. Hopefully if enough people do that, they'll realize that the current approach is counterproductive and switch to a different model eventually. I don't know if you've ever bothered to go through the list of "third parties" you can now opt-in to track you, but I'm frankly amazed by the sheer number of them. Literally hundreds. Before the GDPR I knew that I was tracked online, but honestly I underestimated the scale of it all. Apparently hundreds of companies around the world used to track my every step online. Good riddance.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  Wouldn't it be easier to just disable cookies in your browser then? And you can re-enable them on a per-site basis if you think you need them.
  - nyanpasu64 6y ago
    I'm using Enhanced Tracking Protection set to Strict, and I still get cookie banners. Is there any difference between saying "Allow All" and "Reject All"? Will "Reject All" reduce server-side tracking and sharing of information among data brokers?
AntiImperialist 6y ago
https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
forgotmypw17 6y ago
I refuse to click them, and just let them hang there. If I can still read the article, great. If not, I leave the page.
- xxs 6y ago
  Reader mode
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    Here's the thing... There are a number of ways I can get to that content. However, I don't think the content is worth it. I've found a very strong correlation between low-quality content and low-quality presentation. When I see a site which pulls this kind of crap or requires several megs worth of JS just to display text, I just assume it's low-quality content and move on. Sometimes there are exceptions, but they're rare.
White_Wolf 6y ago
I, sometimes, think we could be a lot more developed(tech-wise) without regulation but... we got to the point when they are needed, badly. Dark patterns, web wide tracking, anti-consumer features. vendor lock-in, you name it are all over the place and common practice and not there to help/protect consumers.
schmorptron 6y ago
In ublock origin, there are optional annoyance filters that are not enabled by default, those get rid of a lot of the cookie banners for me.
y04nn 6y ago
I feel the same, the web is build around standards, and the fact that there is no standard for this central "feature" is a real pain to deal with everyday. If I had the time I would build a auto-reject browser plugin.
avianlyric 6y ago
The law wasn’t designed to make your web experience better, or worse. It was simply designed to make it easier to exercise your right to privacy, by forcing companies (and by extension their websites) to get informed consent before they invade your privacy. There’s many reasons why we’re in our current mess, but I don’t think making companies get informed consent is “tech-hostile”. It’s privacy invading hostile, and if privacy invasions are now synonymous with the tech-industry, then as an industry we need to take a long hard look in the mirror and decide if we’re going to continue enabling this behaviour, or find other business models that don’t rely on trampling the rights of the ignorant or uninformed. I honestly don’t understand why people take such an issue with the concept of informed consent. It’s one the foundations of a free and equal society.
volgar1x 6y ago
Or developers can stop using cookies on their website
nicbou 6y ago
Since this law came in effect, I'm allowed to opt out of tracking, download my data, and request its deletion. If that wasn't the case, that data would still be held hostage by various services.
sva_ 6y ago
I think that they should've included something into the law, that makes it possible for a browser to automatically signify how a user wants their data to be used; for browsers to offer some interface to control these choices, and force websites to automatically accept these choices. I'm hopeful something like that will come around sometime. I think some browser (looking at firefox or brave here) needs to perhaps offer such an interface first, so that legislators could pick it up and make a law that'll make it possible to enforce compliance.

Nextgrid 6y ago

The problem isn't the legislation but its lack of enforcement. The legislation itself explicitly prohibits annoying/misleading consent prompts.

dfgdghdf 6y ago
Perhaps, but legislation should be designed carefully so that it can be enforced in a meaningful way
kyrra 6y ago
I disagree. Pop-up fatigue causes people to just click the button that will get them to their content the fastest. While some people might dive into trying to opt out, when you get these pop-ups on every other site, many people are going to click the easiest button to make it go away. This is a poor law because it has to be done on every website. I think it may be better to have this as a decision the user chooses once within their browser, and the browser can then pass along the intention to the website. There can maybe also be a third option where the user could then choose on each site, and the browser would show the choices, rather than the website itself. This would standardize the UX around the issue.
- benplumley 6y ago
  The law is that it needs to be as easy to reject cookies as it is to accept them. Ergo, "people are going to click the easiest button to make it go away" indicates a failure to enforce. I agree it'd be better handled by the browser than each website, though.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    My interpretation of that is that at least two buttons are required: a close (or “reject all”) button, and an “accept all” button. Websites would then be free to add a third “customize” button if they wish. Unfortunately, many websites that I’ve seen have only “customize” and “accept all”. And the customize pane then contains dozens of preselected checkboxes (which, AFAIK, isn’t allowed, but I digress). Each checkbox is for a separate tracker I need to disable before clicking “save”. The problem is absolutely the lack of enforcement.[a] If it was being enforced better, these sites would be fined until they fix themselves. [a]: Yes, I’m aware that it is being enforced. I’m complaining that it’s not enough.
- avianlyric 6y ago
  > This is a poor law because it has to be done on every website. The law doesn’t require this, it only requires informed consent. > I think it may be better to have this as a decision the user chooses once within their browser, and the browser can then pass along the intention to the website. There can maybe also be a third option This is would be an allowable approach under GDPR. Someone just needs to build it and make it happen. Unfortunately the “do-not-track” debacle shows that ad companies aren’t interested in playing ball. Hence our current mess.
- simion314 6y ago
  GDPR is not only about the browsers , it is applied outside of tech too, would be weird for the law to define browser standards . desktop apps standards and mobile apps standards. Developers should do their job, does w3c guys could decide how to handle this and not force politicians to decide for them. Sure some people will click accept but some of them will know who is the actual bad guy that sends their data to 100+ third parties and what websites are respecting them or at least respect the laws. I agree that browsers could do a better job, maybe implement a shit list, put all shitty websites there and ask you only once if you want to accept to allow this bastards to track and sell your data or if you want to open the website in a special container. Then if you decide to use the container the browsers should try to do their best to limit the tracking, maybe by blocking requests to the trackers, clearing caches often, disabling some features that could fingerprint you and if it works just disable JS. But who knows, maybe we will have to pass laws to force the popups to use certain fonts, colors and input types because the majority of websites are evil.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > Pop-up fatigue causes people to just click the button that will get them to their content the fastest. And why is that button allowed to be the "Accept Everything" button? There should be two buttons, equally easy to find and press.
wickoff 6y ago
Legislation is problematic too. I can't be bothered to make a decision to make a decision about storing cookies every time I visit a website, so I click yes every time without reading.
- serhatozgel 6y ago
  If the legislation were to be enforced, you would click "no" every time without reading.
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    Or just ignore/hide the banners, which by GDPR, may not be interpreted as consent.
hetspookjee 6y ago
The fact that you need to download a _opt-out_ plugin to disable Google Analytics for tracking you is a prime example of failing enforcement.
ineedasername 6y ago
Having to go through a menu of a few dozen items to see & choose what you'll allow to track you is annoying, but so long as sites are willing to track you in dozens of different ways there's really no way around it. Sites win because exercising your privacy rights even under the GDPR is an inherently annoying thing to do.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  > Sites win because exercising your privacy rights even under the GDPR is an inherently annoying thing to do. Under GDPR: - only cookies and data strictly required for the site's functionality don't require consent - collection of any other data requires consent - pre-ticked boxes, lack of "reject all" button, leading the user to click "allow all" and similar dark patterns are not consent, and are, strictly speaking, violating the law. See? exercising your privacy rights under the GDPR should be extremely easy. Too bad the law isn't enforced vigorously enough.
- nicbou 6y ago
  There's a way around it: uBlock Origin, a few extra filter lists, and a block on third party cookies.
Aardwolf 6y ago
> The legislation itself explicitly prohibits annoying/misleading consent prompts. What does a non-annoying prompt look like?
- majkinetor 6y ago
  There are more or less annoying prompts however. With the later kind I could coexist. Instagram has the most annoying one ever, if I stumble upon it by accident I am so annoyed that I need to count to 10. And I am not even using it, its just random click The far less annoying popups are barely noticeable and do not block/fade content or have missing options like "NO, I don't want cookies, let me in".
- serhatozgel 6y ago
  A non-existing one, you go to your settings to enable it so they can track you.

tjoff 6y ago

As clear as can be yes. Now you know which websites are willing to absolutely ruin your experience just to abuse you. The implications can be seen pretty much everywhere in society, it is a momentous step in the right direction.

iFreilicht 6y ago
Exactly, this just brings to light how little most companies care about their customers. Not saying the legislation couldn't be improved, though.
- unicornporn 6y ago
  What would you improve? I think what happened when brexit went into full effect was pretty telling. Both Facebook and Google were on their toes to get back to abusing the data of UK citizens. There's much to be gained. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/15/facebook-move-uk-users-california-eu-privacy-laws https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/15/facebook-... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-privacy-eu-exclusive-idUSKBN20D2M3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-privacy-eu-exclusi...
  - iFreilicht 6y ago
    That was meant more as a preliminary defense as I saw other people complain and don’t know enough to defend the specific legislation. But damn, that is indeed a pretty good indicator that it’s working as intended.
Shivetya 6y ago
ignoring the fact the vast majority of users never noticed , never cared, and still don't care but not robotic like click away the warnings. I am not dismissing the need to let consumers know how their habits and information are used I am merely stating that many here overreact on behalf of people who really could care less, they just want their content
- 6y ago

indeyets 6y ago

Well… if GitHub could fix their cookies so that they do not need to show any more modals, some of those 10,000 could too. https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/

retSava 6y ago

Well, it is better, since I assume that you don't click "yes, allow". If you would, you would likely have a cookie saying "he/she is ours" with a lifetime longer than the heatdeath of the universe. If you dare to click no, that's when you get 10k options and optouts and have to send fax to someones grandma. The root cause of your experience being worse is not the legislation, it's that the site doesn't follow the intent/purpose of the law. They want to annoy you until you click "yes". They could simply present you with a yes/no modal once and be done with it, but they choose not to, hoping that they will break you down with time.

XCSme 6y ago
> They could simply present you with a yes/no modal once and be done with it Any extra modal, as simple as it might be, leads to a really bad user experience and wasted time.
- slavak 6y ago
  Then don't place cookies that aren't necessary for the delivery of your service. There, problem solved! If invading your users' privacy is more important than your site's user experience, then the blame is on you, not the legislation.
  - stale2002 6y ago
    No, legislators don't get to ignore the unintended consequences of the laws that they implement. This applies to all laws that are passed. It is a frequent criticism and problem, of laws, is that there are often unintended consequences. And that is the fault of the law, that they did not consider the unintended consequences.
    - XCSme 6y ago
      I agree, don't publish a law that you can't or don't know how to enforce. What they should have done is made a public tool that checks your website and says: yes this site is GDPR compliant or no, it is not because A,B,C.

tester756 6y ago

Blame sites that show cookie modal even when they use cookies only for auth or just tech stuff Also what if big companies want to make your experience as poor as possible in order to make you think that this law sucks? Maybe using private mode in browser is making your experience even worse?

mrtksn 6y ago

The website could have chosen to make your experience better by showing you 0 popups. EU isn’t involved in the quality management of web experiences. To do that, of course, the website would need stop sending your latest ip address, your unique identifier, and the information that you’re a techie interested in Tiktok to all ad agencies and data brokers.

quarantine 6y ago

There is work underway to improve the cookie modal situation: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-eprivacy-regulation https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-epriv... Please also remember that the GDPR is also applicable outside the internet, and protects people from IRL data gathering.

Deukhoofd 6y ago

They are reworking the cookie law, it's just a complex piece of legislation. They are aware of its shortcomings, and want to tackle them through an enforced browser setting. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-eprivacy-regulation https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-epriv...

csunbird 6y ago
> This will ensure that these popular services (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype) guarantee the same level of confidentiality of communications as traditional telecoms operators. Sounds very ominous, don't law enforcement agencies have access to the "traditional telecoms operators" data? On topic, a Do-Not-Track header setting that automatically opts-out of everything and the new "legitimate interest" trend, would be awesome.

JohnJamesRambo 6y ago

Training older people and non tech literate people to just randomly click yes on every website has to be one of the greatest fails of the GDPR. I would say that people are even less safe now. Cookies, while annoying and privacy-eroding, never hacked someone's system like clicking yes to installing God knows what malware will do. We had just trained everyone to not do that.

dspillett 6y ago

> I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience better in any way If it were as hard to opt-in as it is to fully opt-out, or as easy to accidentally (and permanently) opt-out as it is to accidentally (and permanently) opt-in, then there might be a case for something other than the sites and/or their partners being the problem. The legislation does not in any way force sites or their partners to make your browsing so inconvenient if you don't want to just click "accept all from all without or without lube". They could implement a small non-modal active-opt-in option, they instead chose to implement labyrinthine modal hunt-the-231st-opt-out adventure games.

raverbashing 6y ago

With the cookie modal you start noticing which sites don't have it (and there are a couple) And sites can still provide ads. Google still provides ads to me with customizations turned off. So yeah, I'm pretty bothered by them as well but I know where the blame lies

pjc50 6y ago

"Privacy conscious" need not be "tech hostile". Personally I feel the problem arose from trying to write extremely generalist legislation in the GDPR without actually addressing the economic incentives OR mandating a technical solution. Mandating a technical solution such as "respect the DNT header" would have the disadvantage of limiting innovation, but would have forced a clear division of websites into "you can't browse here without turning DNT off" and ones that actually worked properly. Alternatively, just straight up banning the browser-targeted advertising practice would take away the economic incentive to do this kind of nonsense. That would force the "how do we get paid" question again, which remains awkward.

jamaicahest 6y ago

How is this relevant to the article?

ploika 6y ago

I'm all for hostility to tech that's unnecessarily invasive and privacy-destroying.

planb 6y ago

That law is a very bad execution on a very good idea. Simply making adherence to a do-not-track header mandatory would have solved the same problem without annoying anyone.

simplerman 6y ago

At least, now you know. Companies can choose better user experience if they want. What's your opinion about Apple vs Facebook?

tushar-r 6y ago

> I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience better in any way, to which the answer is a resounding no. I actually find myself digging into the settings that are offered to click on "Reject All" where possible. I wish my region had the same data protections :-/

yholio 6y ago
Reject third party cookies coupled with session only cookies works pretty well though.
- lrem 6y ago
  Where's the "reject server-side fingerprinting"?

hjek 6y ago

Get the Sticky Ducky add-on[0] for hiding fixed overlays, and add Fanboy's Cookiemonster list[1] to your adblocker of choice. [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-ducky/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-ducky/ [1]: https://github.com/ryanbr/fanboy-adblock/blob/master/fanboy-cookiemonster.txt https://github.com/ryanbr/fanboy-adblock/blob/master/fanboy-...

rospaya 6y ago

> I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience better in any way Yeah, and women's suffrage caused longer lines at the polls because more people vote so you would have to wait longer. It's not about the experience, it's about your rights.

simias 6y ago

I see this mindset a lot but I don't really get it. You'd rather blame the legislation for forcing the websites to disclose all the tracking that they do instead of blaming the websites for tracking you in the first place? I'm very happy that I can at least click "say no to all" when I get to a new website. Hopefully if enough people do that, they'll realize that the current approach is counterproductive and switch to a different model eventually. I don't know if you've ever bothered to go through the list of "third parties" you can now opt-in to track you, but I'm frankly amazed by the sheer number of them. Literally hundreds. Before the GDPR I knew that I was tracked online, but honestly I underestimated the scale of it all. Apparently hundreds of companies around the world used to track my every step online. Good riddance.

oh_sigh 6y ago
Wouldn't it be easier to just disable cookies in your browser then? And you can re-enable them on a per-site basis if you think you need them.
- nyanpasu64 6y ago
  I'm using Enhanced Tracking Protection set to Strict, and I still get cookie banners. Is there any difference between saying "Allow All" and "Reject All"? Will "Reject All" reduce server-side tracking and sharing of information among data brokers?

AntiImperialist 6y ago

https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

forgotmypw17 6y ago

I refuse to click them, and just let them hang there. If I can still read the article, great. If not, I leave the page.

xxs 6y ago
Reader mode
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Here's the thing... There are a number of ways I can get to that content. However, I don't think the content is worth it. I've found a very strong correlation between low-quality content and low-quality presentation. When I see a site which pulls this kind of crap or requires several megs worth of JS just to display text, I just assume it's low-quality content and move on. Sometimes there are exceptions, but they're rare.

White_Wolf 6y ago

I, sometimes, think we could be a lot more developed(tech-wise) without regulation but... we got to the point when they are needed, badly. Dark patterns, web wide tracking, anti-consumer features. vendor lock-in, you name it are all over the place and common practice and not there to help/protect consumers.

schmorptron 6y ago

In ublock origin, there are optional annoyance filters that are not enabled by default, those get rid of a lot of the cookie banners for me.

y04nn 6y ago

I feel the same, the web is build around standards, and the fact that there is no standard for this central "feature" is a real pain to deal with everyday. If I had the time I would build a auto-reject browser plugin.

avianlyric 6y ago

The law wasn’t designed to make your web experience better, or worse. It was simply designed to make it easier to exercise your right to privacy, by forcing companies (and by extension their websites) to get informed consent before they invade your privacy. There’s many reasons why we’re in our current mess, but I don’t think making companies get informed consent is “tech-hostile”. It’s privacy invading hostile, and if privacy invasions are now synonymous with the tech-industry, then as an industry we need to take a long hard look in the mirror and decide if we’re going to continue enabling this behaviour, or find other business models that don’t rely on trampling the rights of the ignorant or uninformed. I honestly don’t understand why people take such an issue with the concept of informed consent. It’s one the foundations of a free and equal society.

volgar1x 6y ago

Or developers can stop using cookies on their website

nicbou 6y ago

Since this law came in effect, I'm allowed to opt out of tracking, download my data, and request its deletion. If that wasn't the case, that data would still be held hostage by various services.

sva_ 6y ago

I think that they should've included something into the law, that makes it possible for a browser to automatically signify how a user wants their data to be used; for browsers to offer some interface to control these choices, and force websites to automatically accept these choices. I'm hopeful something like that will come around sometime. I think some browser (looking at firefox or brave here) needs to perhaps offer such an interface first, so that legislators could pick it up and make a law that'll make it possible to enforce compliance.