[gkbrk]

> why I see a cookie pop up on every damn web page I visit

There is no regulation that requires every website to give you cookie pop-ups. If you are seeing that, it is because the websites you visit are trying to stalk you online and making the popups as painful as possible so you will dislike the regulations instead of asking them not to stalk you.

[scarface74]

So now every website is doing some type of protest against regulation? It couldn’t possibly be that government is inept when it comes to understanding consequences of their legislation?

[skinkestek]

Every website thinks they are smarter than EU.

In reality fines are already being written, Facebook is seeing the writing on the wall and is already now (this surprised me a bit) pulling the desperate "we'll take our toys and go home" card, hoping EU won't call their bluff.

Let's be clear here: most of these informed consent banners are invalid.

The rules are something like:

- default is opt out

- if a choice must be presented opting out should be the easiest choice

Besides they almost all are trying to hide sneaky stuff behind the "legitimate interest” clause, but in that case you don’t need to ask and an opt out would be meaningless.

[scarface74]

Do you really think it takes much to ge smarter than a bunch of lawmakers when it comes to tech?

[skinkestek]

Do you really think it is easy to be much smarter than law makers and lawyers when it comes to laws?

There is an intersection here, but basically this - in my mind - isn't about bad laws but about big businesses fighting for their lives (or at least the lives of whole branches in their organizations) against these laws.

They'll do most things they'll come up with and think they can get away with: misrepresent, plead, beg, threaten to leave, willfully misunderstand even very clear laws etc as long as their lawyers and business people think the risk/reward ratio is favorable.

GDPR isn't that hard, technically.

It just gets extremely hard to comply with without letting go of abusive but highly lucrative business practices.

[scarface74]

Most lawmakers aren’t lawyers…

From what I have seen, when the government gets away with stuff - imminent domain, police corruption, etc., it’s a lot more detrimental than my not being able to side load.

As far as the GDPR not being “hard”. It’s 11 chapters with 99 sections.

https://gdpr-info.eu/

[skinkestek]

> As far as the GDPR not being “hard”. It’s 11 chapters with 99 sections.

Yet, the guiding principles are clear as day, just like the ten commandments. (Don't collect personal data without consent, store it responsibly, allow users to introspect data about themselves and remove it and you shouldn't need to worry.[1])

And it also only becomes a real problem when someone wants to get away with breaking both the spirit and the wording of the law.

[1]: And yes, I'm aware that this is mostly incompatible with the practice of hoovering up all you can get, selling it to everyone who wants to buy and generally abusing it for fun and profit in every conceivable way, but that isn't the fault of the law but a problem that companies who habe grown addicted to now antiquated business models have to brought on themselves, isn't it?

[gkbrk]

I don't know where you're getting "every website" from your previous reply and this one, but you can be certain that not every website is throwing cookie popups on their visitors.

The consequences of recent privacy laws is privacy-friendly services being able to compete easier because they're not subsidizing their costs by stalking their users and selling their data. If the government got such good results without even understanding the consequences, they must be very lucky.

[scarface74]

Right because there is a privacy first open mobile operating open operating system that has become popular.

And a privacy first social network.

And a privacy first search engine that is profitable.

The government has solved what tech problem exactly?