[ryukafalz]

> But in many cases, you could just click "reject" and the banner would also disappear...

Oftentimes the reject flow is substantially more annoying than the accept flow. I click reject myself when it's an option, but I can absolutely understand how people might get conditioned to click accept when clicking reject might result in more popups.

[thom]

A lot of UK sites (Reach local news stuff) now explicitly say take cookies or pay, which tbh I always thought was illegal.

[xp84]

It's wild to me that anyone thinks that would be a reasonable law (whether or not it is law, I have no clue, I don't live in UK or EU).

If you made a website and you said "To view the private content on my website, you have to either pay me, or sign a name, any name you wish, in my guestbook" what business is it of the government to say "No, this random person refuses to pay or sign the book, but Thom, you have to let them see all your articles anyway."

Note that I used "sign any name" as the metaphor, not "show ID," since it is trivial to not allow any important information exchange if you simply delete the cookies yourself, which is easy to configure a browser to do. The end-user has the choice, if it's so important to them, to configure their browser. Even Chrome can be configured for which sites to allow cookies, which to disallow, and which to clear when the browser closes (the smart choice, since accepting them and throwing them away soon after is the undetectable option that accomplishes your main aim).

[thom]

Allowing bad actors to act badly against all but the most sophisticated users is exactly where lawmakers should be stepping in. Sorry you find that controversial.

[ApolloFortyNine]

YouTube is a site that pretty much everyone has an account already for (and therefore have already consented), but say you make YouTube 2, you can only make money if people allow personalized ads (they pay 10-20x untargeted ads). 90% less revenue means your business model doesn't work. The government in the area has decided you can't refuse service to customers that cost you money (people who don't consent).

You simply will have to go out of business.

This is also why you see many large companies fighting for more regulation. It's harder for a competitor to emerge if they have to navigate mountains of red tape.

[kalleboo]

What if I want to start a restaurant that can only make money if I use expired ingredients, run the fridge at a higher temperature to save on electricity, and don't waste my employee's time by washing their hands? These food safety laws mean my business model doesn't work.

I simply will have to go out of business.

[ApolloFortyNine]

This is just a strawman, these aren't equivalent and I'm not going to waste time pretending they are. Might as well just compare ads to nuclear weapons at this point.

[xp84]

We ask more sophistication of drivers to understand the rules of right of way than we would be asking of users to hit Settings -> Privacy and Cookies and read the plain language there.

Sorry that you need the government to "help" people in this way, by forcing other people to give them free things.

[kalleboo]

Are you proposing a licensing scheme to use the internet?

[xp84]

No, I'm just saying that it's okay to burden humans with the responsibility to learn a few basic ideas about how to operate their own computers if they want to control their data privacy.

Simple, easy tools are already there, such as the Clear Browsing Data menu item in Chrome, Edge, and Safari. For more complicated intents, the browser settings are no more complicated to navigate than the actual customization UI in the CMPs, anyway.

[kalleboo]

You're fooling yourself if you think clearing cookies does anything. Everyone is doing browser fingerprinting instead these days.

[ben_w]

> If you made a website and you said "To view the private content on my website, you have to either pay me, or sign a name, any name you wish, in my guestbook" what business is it of the government to say "No, this random person refuses to pay or sign the book, but Thom, you have to let them see all your articles anyway."

More: "To view the private content on my website, you have to either pay me, or let more businesses connect the dots between this content and the rest of your internet browsing habits, than there were students and teachers combined in your high school."

Yes, it is technically possible to fake this content, or to auto-delete it.

But https://xkcd.com/2501/ applies. "It's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the privacy settings for Safari and one or two Chromium derivatives."

(Real world user familiarity with software is much, much worse; this is an old survey now, but look at the chart near the bottom: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/)

[xp84]

I'm in agreement with you that most computer users haven't bothered to learn anything about how to use their browser or computer.

But still, let's say I agree that there's even an important problem to be solved.

We can (A) regulate the browser to dumb this down for these ignorant people, and have the problem guaranteed solved, or (B) we can burden every single company that operates a website, and rely on enforcement since otherwise it's all honor-system.

The EU and so far multiple US states, have chosen the stupid option B.

[ben_w]

Option A is insufficient, as cookies are a mere implementation detail about how tracking is done, and the tracking is the concern.

[tripzilch]

This is a false analogy. The cookie banner stuff is explicitly about sharing data with third parties. If that were the case in your example, it'd be a different thing, right.

[roelschroeven]

It is illegal, but compliance is not enforced to the degree that it should. Companies get away with a lot of GDPR infractions, unfortunately.

[inigyou]

They're in UK, not EU, and it has a different law.

[account42]

UK GDPR is simmilar to the EU one and German news websites do the same thing in the EU.

[dredmorbius]

The UK is somewhat famously no longer part of the EU (you may have heard of a thing called "Brexit" a few years back).

However the UK does have its own GDPR regulation (see: <https://www.gov.uk/data-protection>), though my understanding is that it may be less strict in requiring equivalence between "accept" and "reject" actions. (I may be wrong on this.)

UK sites accessed from the EU would have to be under EU GDPR compliance.