[delecti]

The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.

I wish the US had something similar, and that there was more enforcement of disallowing "accept all" buttons without an equivalent "reject all" option. I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me, but lets not pretend there aren't annoying consequences.

[munk-a]

Companies could just reduce the amount of tracking data they're trying to harvest - then they wouldn't need a banner. If you're annoyed then be mad at the company - not the law trying to offer you some way to protect your data.

[roger110]

I don't care if the company does that

[scbzzzzz]

It is like blaming government for policy to make cigarette packaging unappealling.

Every company wants to spy on you using cookies and sell you data or target ads. cookies banners are warnings to protect your data from these greedy companies.

[forgotaccount3]

> I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me

And I recognize that there is a non-trivial cost to knowing if you need the banner or not, and people are likely to ask their web designer/dev "Hey, where's the cookie banner?" and then pay for the subsequent cost of implementing that because it's cheaper than expensive lawyers.

[inigyou]

I don't think anyone in their life has asked for a cookie banner if they thought they didn't need one. It's not a positive thing.

[embedding-shape]

> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.

Yeah, just like it's the EU's fault sometimes that the police cuts of roads when a drunk driver collides with another car, it can impossibly be the fault of the driver themselves.

Maybe try to point the blame in the direction of the ones that are A) showing you the banners in the first place and B) refuses to remove them and instead decide to inconvenience you

You know, like we do with every other single thing.

Besides, GDPR has nothing to do with those cookie banners, you're yet another example of people not understanding how any of these things work, yet find it valuable somehow to point blame in some direction, even if they don't understand the fundamental reasons things are the way they are.

I'm sure you also think EU is the same as Europe, as that tends to also be a common misconception among the people who don't understand the cookies banners or GDPR.

[scblock]

If you want to be pedantic, the companies who track us across the internet with all of these third party tracking cookies on every website are the enemy here, not informed disclosure and consent.

[roger110]

I want to be pedantic. It's not the company making my browser store/serve cookies, the browser is doing that itself. If you really care, you can turn that off or wipe after session. And third-party cookies in particular are already globally disabled in Firefox and Safari because they're almost useless besides tracking, but Chrome still has them.

[mindslight]

Yes, the EU passed the ePrivacy directive in 2002. It was terribly broken (didn't actually address the problem it meant to), and resulted in malicious compliance of "cookie banners".

The EU then learned from these mistakes and passed the GDPR in 2016. The GDPR is quite on point - it directly addresses the problem, preempts the foreseeable ways which companies could sidestep such regulation, and didn't succumb to lobbyists looking to install backdoors.

The US could learn a thing or two from the EU regarding legislation.

[Analemma_]

> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.

This is the most low-rent complaint imaginable and it boggles my mind how I keep seeing it made straight-faced. One time I literally timed how long it took me to dismiss a EU cookie banner, it was about 350ms and only needs to be done once per site. All this outrage is over 350ms and I cannot take it seriously.

[mghackerlady]

Also, why would you not want cookie banners? I prefer being able to choose to opt out of them, even if it's annoying

[embedding-shape]

I think the general vibe I get from some Americans is that they're OK with some abuse, as long as you don't tell them about it or do it to your face, and they would rather have some abuse than none but having to make their own choices. Of course, small subsection of people, but plenty of HN commentators make that exact case over and over whenever the discussions about cookie banners come up.

[mghackerlady]

Seems to be the case as well. Theres also a bit of apathy in that its become so normalised people dont even care

[DANmode]

Because the law probably should have mandated functionality-only cookies until I disclaim my right to privacy,

such as when creating an account, or doing anything to provide consent besides loading the domain.

Instead, we normalized breaking the site by covering 80% of it so the standard user clicks the first thing that brings the site back: Accept (giving me the 80 advertiser tracking cookies!!1!)

[mghackerlady]

I'm sceptical the "functionality-only cookies" are what they say they are

[DANmode]

It would definitely be the next place to keep your eyes peeled for fuckery.

[roger110]

So every article on some site I try to read doesn't throw a full-page modal, sometimes with a delay. At least reader mode will sometimes ignore those banners.

[ryandrake]

First, cookie banners are associated with a totally different legislation, not GDPR, and they began appearing long before GDPR existed.

Second, the EU is not to blame for cookie banners. Companies doing tracking via cookies are to blame. They always have the option to not have a cookie banner--just don't do the things that require cookie banners. They deliberately choose to do these things, and then people complain about the banners.

[hrimfaxi]

In California, where everything can give you cancer, do people consider that a failure of the companies putting the notices on everything, or a failure of government?

[wat10000]

That's a failure of government because the law mandates the notice in so many places that it becomes pointless noise.

Cookie banners are not analogous. It's easy to make a web site that doesn't need cookie banners. It's actually easier to make a site that doesn't need them than to make one that does. Adding in the tracking that requires banner takes effort. But companies prefer to put in that effort and annoy their users so they can have that tracking. That's 100% on them, not on the government.

[forgotaccount3]

> But companies prefer to put in that effort and annoy their users so they can have that tracking.

This is making the assumption that the company has already paid the significant legal fees to see if they need the banner or not. Or ignoring the companies that think it is easier to add the banner than pay a law firm to review it's data usage.

It's like 'Hey, I make T-shirts. I want to sell them to anyone who visits my website. Do I need a cookie banner? I don't know. I do collect personal information to facilitate the transaction. I do retain the information for refund purposes. I do log IP addresses. Is this covered without a banner? Am I 'safer' to just make a banner saying we are saving their data and using it? I can't afford a lawyer to review everything we do, but I can afford a developer to make a banner like they did on other sites. Even if they implement it incorrectly, I think it's worth the cost to have the banner because I probably won't be liable if I attempted to follow the law. And maybe I'm wrong there because again, I have no idea what the letter of the law requires. I just make t-shirts and want to sell them.'

[wat10000]

Tossing up a banner doesn't really help. You're required to allow users to opt out of anything that's not essential to the service being requested by the user. So regardless of whether you're going to have a banner or not, you have to identify what's essential. And once you've done that, you could stop there and not have anything non-essential.

[DANmode]

> That's a failure of government because the law mandates the notice in so many places that it becomes pointless noise.

Or we all just don’t take toxins seriously enough.

Not saying there isn’t alert fatigue - just that, in this case, not too many unwarranted alerts…

[roger110]

How easy is it really, seeing how nearly every website ends up having them? Even if they don't think it's needed, seems the legal risk isn't worth.

[wat10000]

It’s not the legal risk, it’s the desire to track users. How often have you seen a cookie banner that says “we only set cookies when it’s essential to the site’s functionality so there’s nothing for you to opt out of”?

[roger110]

It's almost every site big and small, so there must be plenty of cases where they don't even want to track users.

[sensanaty]

Case in point, GitHub & Gitlab (I think, not 100% sure) don't have cookie banners, one would hardly call those two sites small