[probably_wrong]

Disclaimer: I actually click through the "do not consent" procedure, which tells a lot about what I'm about to say.

When the EU regulation came up, I was shocked that a single article was being shared with 100+ "partners". I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was that bad. At least now I get the choice to opt-out. Sidenote: Google got fined for that pop-up because it should have a "do not accept" option [1].

Companies know they don't need those pop-ups. They are putting them there to anger you and demand for things to go back. Do you want to blame the EU for not anticipating that companies would act maliciously? Sounds fair to me. But don't let the companies off the hook for acting maliciously!

[1] https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/insights-and-events/insight...

[itronitron]

Exactly, I always click the 'do not accept/consent' or 'manage my preferences' button. There are a surprising number of sites that use dark patterns.

Whoever made the initial video must be a shill for the tracking companies because they didn't click on the 'do not accept' options, otherwise people would see how pervasive and thoroughly ridiculous the trackers are.

[ilyt]

I believe not having opt out be as easy as opt in is breaking that law and they could be sued

[iamacyborg]

In practice, regulators are mostly not enforcing this.

[euroderf]

And when you get one that has a whole series of sliders in the left position and and all lit up green or blue, and no "Reject All" button at the top or bottom, close the tab.

[iamacyborg]

Or you do close them all down, and then there's another hidden tab with everything pre-selected for "legitimate interest" instead of "consent"

[sublinear]

> Companies know they don't need those pop-ups. They are putting them there to anger you and demand for things to go back.

You're giving these companies much more credit than they deserve. They're just going through the motions in an attempt to avoid lawsuits, but clearly not even Google can get it right 100%.

Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

[slotrans]

Yeah, it's this.

Having worked for a number of companies implementing these measures, there's no malicious intent, they are rolling their eyes the whole time. It's just a box they need to tick. Everyone wishes it would just go away.

[pcan77]

incorrect; they are demanding that you download their app. "See! Our mobile experience isn't good, you need the app!!"

[saiya-jin]

Who the heck downloads apps these days for every stupid thing? I mean apart from clueless grannies who would gladly send some money to that poor Nigerian prince over and over again.

I've stopped quite some time ago, basically my collection of apps is set in stone once I configure a new phone. If something seismic happens in real world I may add app in average rate 1 app/year, and that's about it.

Not using apps is so cool, some crappy webs that don't support mobile firefox with ublock origin don't even get my time, the rest is well curated. Due to reasons behind I am more than fine clicking on consent popups, the way they are designed to get to reject consent dialog tells you outright how moral/amoral business is behind it. So this is actually time-saving feature.

The thing is, life is short. No, its darn short, ask any old person. Definitely too short to waste too much of it on regretful things like phones.

See, everybody (who matters) wins.

[sublinear]

That's not even related to GDPR, and doesn't mean their webpage sucks. It means they want to push the app.

Marketing is a funnel. People who bother to download the app are heavier users of the site. Finding those users is the point.

[legitster]

> Do you want to blame the EU for not anticipating that companies would act maliciously?

Yes, I think we should clearly hold legislators accountable for unintended consequences. And I think it would be crazy not to.

If the law didn't have the desired effect, and makes everyone miserable, we should fix or amend it.

[ilyt]

So far the law had desired effect, and the companies making it hard to opt out are actually breaking said law, just nobody yet bothered to take them to court for that.

[itronitron]

How has the law not had the desired effect? For many sites it is now fairly simple to select the 'only essential' cookies option.

[iamacyborg]

I like sharing this link[1] when folks ask how bad tracking can be.

A simple page request results in almost a thousand requests being made to third parties, just to show you some bad ads.

[1] https://pagexray.fouanalytics.com/q/pathofexile.fandom.com?f...

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

>Companies know they don't need those pop-ups. They are putting them there to anger you and demand for things to go back. Do you want to blame the EU for not anticipating that companies would act maliciously? Sounds fair to me. But don't let the companies off the hook for acting maliciously!

This gets repeated a lot. However, even one of the pages on the official site of the EU has a cookie banner:

https://commission.europa.eu/index_en

Is the EU itself acting maliciously in putting up that cookie banner?

[zeroonetwothree]

No, they are putting them there because it’s easier and they don’t want to be fined.

[mrweasel]

When the first cookie law came into action companies sprung up claiming to provide a solution. Rather than actually doing anything useful they'd give you a JavaScript snippet to just dump onto your page and then they'd deal with everything. They'd scan your site and compile a list of cookies and their purpose and present that to your users. It sort of worked, expect the service would frequently fail to recognize certain cookies or part of you site might be behind a login. But it was something you could easily implement and push the responsibility to a third-party for a small fee.

Then came GDPR and these retarded cookie banner companies decided to offer that as a service as well... Basically the same thing right? Well for many of the sites it is, because their goal is find a way to do nothing, or as little as possible, they don't want things to change and here's someone offering them just that.

I hate that it when people are blaming the EU for the nightmare that is consent popups. They aren't required, unless you doing stupid shit. Companies love presenting this as: The EU is making us do this. NO, you want to track people online and the EU is simply asking for you to declare that.

It's truly amazing that companies don't see to problem telling people that they care about their privacy, yet presents them with a list of 600 "partners" whom which they share our data.

So yes, it's laziness, these sites don't want to chance the way they deal with advertisers, because that would be slightly harder. It's also partly incompetence, there's an entire generation of ad people who don't know the first thing about advertising, they know Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.

[foverzar]

> NO, you want to track people online and the EU is simply asking for you to declare that.

False. Cookies aren't there only to maliciously track your actions and show add. They solve lots of technical issues in various scenarios.

This is your typical premature compliance for a technically incompetent formalistic regulation. Better be safe than sorry - so thats why you see that stupid "this website uses cookies" on every other site that merely has a login form, a captcha, or a cdn - because of course it fucking does.

[antonf]

I would like an option for those of us who don’t care and click whatever button have brighter color. Like a default consent to sharing all data. This don’t have to be on by default. This would improve my browsing experience tremendously.

[julesallen]

You're going to love this:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=i+still+don%27t+care+about+cookies

[mariusor]

I mostly just close the tab unless it's something I really want to interact with, and even then I choose the option with minimal exposure like you do.

[rvieira]

Yep, exactly. Unfortunately, it is working.

People will choose convenience over mostly everything else.

[freetinker]

Precisely - malicious compliance.