[hikingsimulator]

The blog clearly works from the actual outcome lense. It's repeated. Several times. The companies could just not track.

The actual outcome is that they do want to track, and use adversarial patterns and malicious compliance to twist your arm and "force consent."

Paul Graham is still wrong.

[jasode]

>The blog clearly works from the actual outcome lense. [...] The companies _could_ just not track.

No, you've inadvertently stated a contradiction. Your use of the word _"could"_ is literally a hope/wish/intention of the law.

In contrast, the actual outcome is that the companies didn't stop tracking. We _wish_ they would stop tracking. (I.e. "The companies _could_ just stop tracking us!") But that hope still doesn't change the observation of reality.

[hikingsimulator]

The law is not code. Equating hope with the intention of the law is a poor way to think about it. The law is to protect users against opaque companies and to enable them making informed choices.

If companies act maliciously to contort around the law and force users back to making uninformed choices, it is the companies' fault and not the law's. Companies could have followed the interpretation of the law unobstrusively. But they didn't.

Invoking "reality," semanticking a position, do not make Graham's position justified. Neither does it make the blog wrong.

[itishappy]

But companies have stopped tracking (or they've started lying). I can now opt out. I could not before.

[voxic11]

Can you really say that confidently? I think a lot of these companies would go out of business if they didn't track users so it seems like under the law they have no option but to show cookie banners. Or are you claiming the law exempts companies in such circumstances?

[itishappy]

I'm sure illegal/unethical actions would help a lot of struggling companies.