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The GDPR created TONS of annoying cookie popups. Under GDPR you MUST pop-up consent requests with explicit consent. Luckily at least the EU website now does t

The GDPR created TONS of annoying cookie popups. Under GDPR you MUST pop-up consent requests with explicit consent. Luckily at least the EU website now does them at the bottom rather than the top. https://europa.eu/european-union/index_en https://europa.eu/european-union/index_en for an example that is a bit less annoying - the EU website used to do a blocking top banner that was super annoying back when GDPR was being taken seriously, now they just bury it (like lots of others do).

rhn_mk1 5y ago
> Under GDPR you MUST pop-up consent requests You actually don't, if you don't do any activity that calls for consent.
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  Please see the EU website itself - All normal websites are using cookies. The EU itself is doing a banner - they have (thankfully) made it a lot less obtrusive where you can still use the site now without giving explicit consent. But this is I think the "big lie" of the GDPR folks - no banners needed, when even the EU itself and its agencies etc all use it. So you expect random joe blow website to overthink this even further, go against what they see the EU itself doing? It's total garbage.
  - pgeorgi 5y ago
    I'm browsing europa.eu a fair while now (in a private browser session to avoid any old cookie from maybe interfering) and the only banner they show is "An official website of the European Union - How do you know?" There are two links to the cookie page (https://europa.eu/european-union/abouteuropa/cookies_en https://europa.eu/european-union/abouteuropa/cookies_en or equivalent for the currently used language), one in the top nav bar, one in the bottom. Interestingly, that page talks about the cookie banner and how they need consent for analytics and stuff, but I never saw that. So, given how they explicitly state that they need it for analytics, I went to my browser settings and disabled sending the DNT header - and there was the cookie consent popup. So: State outright and by default that you don't want to be analyzed and they won't bother you. My only question is why they see a need to do analytics. Without that they wouldn't require that stuff _at all_.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    No banners are needed. They are required when you start tracking your users because that when you need their consent to do so. And that's quite proper.
- samhw 5y ago
  I think the point is that no one knows which activities call for consent, or what all of their transitive dependencies do, and so they show it out of an abundance of caution. As should have been predictable by intelligent legislators, which the EU generally are.
  - simion314 5y ago
    Websites could do a better job and if browser makers would get involved to standardize the popup for Accept All/RejectAll/Manage Cookies then you could have a perfect experience. Today I hit for the first time a site that made it as easy to Accept or Reject startrek.com also many sites now offer option to delete my account and even JS APIs for tracking now have options for GDPR to not store private data. So YES things improved but are not perfect, to blame is not the law but the jerks.
    - pgeorgi 5y ago
      As mentioned in a sister thread, europa.eu uses the browser's DNT header (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DNT https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DN...) to see if they should bother asking for tracking. Browser vendors tried to establish such a standard but it pretty much died when Microsoft enabled it by default for IE9 and some ad brokers began to claim that they can now ignore DNT because it doesn't actually reflect user intent anymore. (see https://www.theregister.com/2015/04/03/microsoft_reverses_ie_dnt_position/ https://www.theregister.com/2015/04/03/microsoft_reverses_ie...) With that it became deprecated. Thank you, Microsoft and Yahoo.
      - simion314 5y ago
        You still find people here on HN that want to be tracked, they are convinced that tracking is necessary. So a browser could implement something to shut this people up, Instead of a simple flag On or off, you can start with 3 states, On, Off, Unset and you can have it set per webpage.
        5y ago
still_grokking 5y ago
That's not true, you don't need any consent banners at all! As long as you're not spying on your users or stealing their data. Simple as that. For example: https://noyb.eu/en https://noyb.eu/en https://codeberg.org/ https://codeberg.org/ See any consent banners? No? Just guess why.

rhn_mk1 5y ago

> Under GDPR you MUST pop-up consent requests You actually don't, if you don't do any activity that calls for consent.

whoknowswhat11 5y ago
Please see the EU website itself - All normal websites are using cookies. The EU itself is doing a banner - they have (thankfully) made it a lot less obtrusive where you can still use the site now without giving explicit consent. But this is I think the "big lie" of the GDPR folks - no banners needed, when even the EU itself and its agencies etc all use it. So you expect random joe blow website to overthink this even further, go against what they see the EU itself doing? It's total garbage.
- pgeorgi 5y ago
  I'm browsing europa.eu a fair while now (in a private browser session to avoid any old cookie from maybe interfering) and the only banner they show is "An official website of the European Union - How do you know?" There are two links to the cookie page (https://europa.eu/european-union/abouteuropa/cookies_en https://europa.eu/european-union/abouteuropa/cookies_en or equivalent for the currently used language), one in the top nav bar, one in the bottom. Interestingly, that page talks about the cookie banner and how they need consent for analytics and stuff, but I never saw that. So, given how they explicitly state that they need it for analytics, I went to my browser settings and disabled sending the DNT header - and there was the cookie consent popup. So: State outright and by default that you don't want to be analyzed and they won't bother you. My only question is why they see a need to do analytics. Without that they wouldn't require that stuff _at all_.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  No banners are needed. They are required when you start tracking your users because that when you need their consent to do so. And that's quite proper.
samhw 5y ago
I think the point is that no one knows which activities call for consent, or what all of their transitive dependencies do, and so they show it out of an abundance of caution. As should have been predictable by intelligent legislators, which the EU generally are.
- simion314 5y ago
  Websites could do a better job and if browser makers would get involved to standardize the popup for Accept All/RejectAll/Manage Cookies then you could have a perfect experience. Today I hit for the first time a site that made it as easy to Accept or Reject startrek.com also many sites now offer option to delete my account and even JS APIs for tracking now have options for GDPR to not store private data. So YES things improved but are not perfect, to blame is not the law but the jerks.
  - pgeorgi 5y ago
    As mentioned in a sister thread, europa.eu uses the browser's DNT header (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DNT https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/DN...) to see if they should bother asking for tracking. Browser vendors tried to establish such a standard but it pretty much died when Microsoft enabled it by default for IE9 and some ad brokers began to claim that they can now ignore DNT because it doesn't actually reflect user intent anymore. (see https://www.theregister.com/2015/04/03/microsoft_reverses_ie_dnt_position/ https://www.theregister.com/2015/04/03/microsoft_reverses_ie...) With that it became deprecated. Thank you, Microsoft and Yahoo.
    - simion314 5y ago
      You still find people here on HN that want to be tracked, they are convinced that tracking is necessary. So a browser could implement something to shut this people up, Instead of a simple flag On or off, you can start with 3 states, On, Off, Unset and you can have it set per webpage.
      - 5y ago

still_grokking 5y ago

That's not true, you don't need any consent banners at all! As long as you're not spying on your users or stealing their data. Simple as that. For example: https://noyb.eu/en https://noyb.eu/en https://codeberg.org/ https://codeberg.org/ See any consent banners? No? Just guess why.