[aurareturn]

You just perfectly highlighted why over-regulation in tech is troublesome. This is why I've always been against European tech regulations which gave us the cookie prompt. Politicians shouldn't be product designers.

Edit: I'll take the downvotes. Every time I say this, I get downvoted. Weirdly, even EU politicians are beginning to see that they've over regulated their tech industry so much that it can't compete but HN just can't accept this opinion.

[idle_zealot]

The cookie prompt is a perfect example of under regulation. The law you're citing as over-regulation requires companies to get consent before tracking you. Companies across the board settled on "annoy users into consenting" as their compliance strategy. You want to revert to implied consent? Fuck that, layer on "also you can't pester users into agreeing to being tracked." Too vague? That's the point; anything else and you incentivize dancing on the line of exactly how close to non-compliance you can get away with. Politicians broadly shouldn't be product designers, but establishing broad no-go zones around anti-consumer behavior is foundational to modern society. Without that you get cartoon ads marketing menthol cigarettes to kids and commercials for casino apps for betting on drone strikes.

[ceejayoz]

Yup. It was pure malicious compliance by the tracking industry with the hopes of killing the regulation.

[aurareturn]

This is over regulation because regulation always have unintended consequences. The unintended consequence is the cookie prompt.

And before someone comes out saying that only "bad" websites want to track you, the official European Union website has a cookie prompt. https://commission.europa.eu/index_en

[idle_zealot]

> regulation always have unintended consequences

An extremely strong claim. You're making a generalized argument against any attempt to influence market forces. I can maintain the position that regulations can sometimes succeed and sometimes fail to achieve their goals, whereas you have to prove that, say, banning mining companies from hiring child coal miners has caused more harm than good in the form of unintended consequences.

[aurareturn]

I do not advocate for no laws at all.

[croon]

The page you linked has an "Accept all" and an "Accept necessary" button, and it's instant when you click the "necessary" button, or have it scripted. They opt-in for collecting third party data for analytics.

If they hadn't, or self-hosted analytics they wouldn't need the prompt at all.

Any site that is slower/more hidden to opt out is non-compliant, and is not an example of over regulation but under enforcement.

[dgellow]

It’s about consent, that has nothing to do with good or bad

[aurareturn]

99.999% of people don't care and don't even know what it's suppose to do. Yet, the cookie prompt has collectively wasted how many millions or billions of hours of people's time? How many freaking times has a website fully loaded, shows you a cookie prompt, and clicking on the wrong option will reload the entire website?

The web has gotten worse since cookie prompts and websites lost a bit of competitiveness to mobile apps because of these annoying prompts. Load a website on a phone screen and 30% of the screen is covered by an intrusive cookie prompt.

As an industry, we learned a long time ago that people hate popups. European Union decided to make a law that causes most websites to show a popup or face potentially bankruptcy level of financial punishment.

[dgellow]

Yes, those cookie banners are annoying, I’m not sure what you want me to say. Companies can decide other approaches to track you with your consent, most decided to go with the frustrating UX. Having an annoying banner and explicit tracking consent is still an improvement over just collecting and sharing your data with 3rd parties without your knowledge and consent

[idle_zealot]

Or they could not collect unnecessary user data. They chose to waste users' time. If you don't like that we can always punish them for those billions of wasted hours.

[aurareturn]

Collecting user usage data is the basic step to actually understanding how your users use your website so you can improve it. It's so standard that even the official EU government website collects this kind of data and has a cookie prompt.

And you know what irks me the most? These politicians weren't smart enough to write a law that does this to all digital places. Yes, they only wrote this law for websites while apps are basically free to collect the same data on users freely without any prompting.

[orwin]

This is because the law should say "The only circumstances in which you can get your users PII is when they willingly give them to you, as clients/subscribers. The only circumstances you can sell that data or track your users is never".

Instead we tried something that look like a punt, and even then tracking/adtech ghouls aren't happy. I say we should lobby hard to get my version at least examined in the EU parliament (or in any parliament in a EU country, really), that will probably scare them into removing the cookie banners.

[ofrzeta]

The regulations also gave us "USB-C everywhere" and the possibility to use a different map app than Apple maps on iOS. More to come.

[aurareturn]

And possibly hindered innovation for a newer, better port because USB-C everywhere is required.

I remember Google maps existing on iOS before Apple Maps was ever released.

[ofrzeta]

Sure you could install Google Maps but you could not configure it as a default applications for maps.

[dgellow]

~That’s bullshit, the regulations do not mention USB–C, they mention it has to be a common standard, with evaluation every few years~

Edit: I was wrong

> I remember Google maps existing on iOS before Apple Maps was ever released

You couldn’t change the default map app on iOS before the EU forced Apple to allow default apps to be configured. That’s what the person you responded to was claiming, and they are correct

[aurareturn]

It has to be a USB-C physical receptor and must use USB protocols.

  be equipped with the USB Type-C receptacle, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-3:2021 “Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power – Part 1-3: Common components – USB Type-C® Cable and Connector Specification”, and that receptacle shall remain accessible and operational at all times;

  incorporate the USB Power Delivery, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021 “Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power – Part 1-2: Common components – USB Power Delivery specification”;

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv%...

[dgellow]

Ok, I see what I got wrong, I misunderstood the role of the delegation responsible to evaluate technological progress. The standard is indeed in the text and the delegation is allowed to update it to ensure it stays relevant. Sorry for my aggressive tone, I shouldn’t have done that

[reaperducer]

and the possibility to use a different map app than Apple maps on iOS

iPhones have had Google Maps since day one. No regulation or EU needed.

[ofrzeta]

You could not configure it as a "default application" for maps. Obviously you could always install Google Maps but it was a second-rate citizen.

[surgical_fire]

> European tech regulations which gave us the cookie prompt.

What gave you cookie prompt is malicious compliance.

[aurareturn]

Let's start with the official EU government website's cookie prompt: https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en

[subhobroto]

> even EU politicians are beginning to see that they've over regulated their tech industry so much that it can't compete

Yes, it feels a bit weird to me that the HN crowd is a fan of regulation although much of the crowd works in the least regulated profession.

Maybe we need to have regulation that puts an automatic expiration on regulation and there's no way to bypass that. Existing regulation nearing expiration can only be extended by a democratic voting process. Just the burden of handling this should naturally filter out regulation that's unpopular or no longer relevant.

[guesswho_]

Cookie promots are not necessary for functional cookies.

[2ndorderthought]

It's because the actual goals have nothing to do with what they say they are.