[daemin]

Cookie banners exist because it is a dark pattern companies use to get you to opt into marketing cookies by making the easiest thing the worst choice.

This could all be handled by settings in the browser, only if the sites themselves listened to the users' browser preferences.

[vincnetas]

Agree. Its like in some countries you put a sticker on the mail box "no advertisement, please" and its illegal tor postman to deliver you ad brochures. Same could have been possible with browsers, but oh no, now you have to go out to each postman ant tell him explicitly that you do not want ads, and postman has no memory, if you tel him that you don't want ads. He can come back ten minutes later and you have to tell him again.

[tyre]

Fun fact: in the US, the Supreme Court ruled that postal workers cannot filter out mail by the owner’s request.

It makes a bit of sense, since the mailer had already paid, but the main justification (iirc; it was years ago that I read the opinion) was that a postal service should be neutral and trusted to deliver.

[andyferris]

Sure, the ISP _should_ deliver the packets. No worries.

The user agent should... be an agent for the user, and be able to perform actions on their behalf.

(The legality of those actions is of course assumed by the user here... if I add an automated flamethrower to my mailbox and burn my bills, well the debt collectors may come regardless if I read them or not - we cannot shift blame to the USPS here).

[SiempreViernes]

Not terribly persuasive because the first argument could just as well be seen as the postal service selling a service it can't deliver.

The second argument has the problem that for the whole thing to work the recipient must also have reason to trust the post office, but here their interests are not considered at all.

[tardedmeme]

Fair enough. Most advertising isn't individually posted to each address because that's expensive - they hire their own guy, who isn't a postal worker, to go around and put it in everyone's mailbox. It's like paying one cent per email to prove it isn't spam.

[metiscus]

At least in the states, the postman is almost assuredly doing the end delivery of the mail, and is often given a stack of advert materials to mix into the delivery for a certain delivery area. The use of a mailbox by anyone who isn't a USPS employee delivering paid mail is prohibited by law. https://about.usps.com/news/state-releases/tx/2010/tx_2010_0...

[Geezus_42]

No, 99.9% of the mail I get is trash and is delivered by USPS. You can't even recycle most of it because of the paper they are printed on. It's a huge, disgusting waste of resources on multiple levels.

[dessimus]

> It's a huge, disgusting waste of resources on multiple levels.

The companies on the ads wouldn't do it that way if they were not getting a positive ROI from it. They probably only need to get 2 maybe 3 new customers to offset the cost of mass mailings.

[tardedmeme]

This isn't true. Proctor and Gamble cancelled $200m of advertising and saw no change in sales. And companies using AI are costing more money to produce worse quality stuff more slowly. Facts don't matter, only how well you can convince a CEO.

[Geezus_42]

I don't care. Its still garbage I didn't ask for that is now in my mailbox so I have to deal with it. They have plenty of other ways to advertise. Everywhere I turn in public there's more ads.

[cool_dude85]

In the US it's illegal for someone who's not a postal worker to put things in your mailbox for exactly this kind of reason.

[1718627440]

So you can't hand-deliver your letters and postcards? That's sad.

[d1sxeyes]

Imagine a similar sticker saying 'service of papers is not permitted at this address'.

Should USPS be required to respect that owners wishes here?

Sensible decision I think.

[whywhywhywhy]

If sites don’t listen to user preferences why would the cookie banner listen to my consent.

Ultimately there’s no good excuse for the banner solution.

[daemin]

Because the site (or marketing agency in charge of the ads) has plausible deniability for the user opting into marketing and tracking when they show a banner, whereas if it's a browser setting automatically applied then there's no such chance.

Same sort of thing when you log into Wizzair and the check box below the password field is not "remember me" but "subscribe to our marketing emails".

[arendtio]

Yes, the data protection people are always blamed for the banners when, in fact, the marketing people are responsible.

If you build a website without all that tracking stuff and without 'free' services from the data collection companies Google and Facebook, then you have a pretty good chance of not requiring a banner at all, because for logins, etc., you are allowed to use cookies et al. without requiring an opt-in.

But I never saw anybody at the OMR being proud about the state of cookie banners they created...

[theknarf]

"Do Not Track" (DNT) is already a browser setting. It just doesn't enforce anything, nor does anyone respect it.

[bragr]

To be fair, some cookie banners do automatically opt you out if you send DNT, but is not the standard for sure.

[olalonde]

Lawmakers should have foreseen this would be the consequence of the law and not have gone through with it.

[shakna]

The law does mandate that opting out should be as easy as opting in. The choices are meant to be equal. It is simply that no one is actually compliant.

[olalonde]

They could and should have foreseen this as well.

[jabwd]

It is all in the law, the problem is enforcement. 99% of the cookie banners on the web you'll encounter are in fact illegal.