Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

The whole thing is a colossal waste too, it was a law written by people who don't understand tech for special interest groups who don't want to actually make things better.

If you don't want a website doing something on your computer, you start with the browser, not the website.

Future headlines after a browser compliance law made - “EU is destroying innovation!”

Enforced by companies who are doing shady things with data in the most inconvenient way, rather than listening to DoNotTrack or https://globalprivacycontrol.org/

Because if they can say "hey look over there, regulation bad"; they can escape regulation if it is repealed

That's why they created DoNotTrack initially. Then browsers turned that on by default, ad revenue lowered, and sites/adcompanies decided to ignore it because it was turned on by default.

Maybe the legislation simply should have required DoNotTrack to be honored.

The company that dominates the browser market also makes billions off of tracking people. That might be part of the problem.

You shouldn't need any kind of law here. Consumers have 100% of the power as it stands in regards to browser tracking. The innovation should be in browsers and plugins, not donottrack flags or compliance laws.

1. Do not track was not the browser deciding what to do (that would be a similar shape as Firefox multi-account containers and incognito mode). It was a machine-readable way to tell the site what to do; ie the same incorrect model as the click-through banners we have now, just non-interactive.

2. It was intended to be a way to communicate an actual intent from the user. Once it was set by default, it ceased to be an indicator of user intent.

> Once it was set by default, it ceased to be an indicator of user intent.

This presumes that it isn’t the default user position. There are three people on the planet who actually want ad tracking, and they’re welcome to go change the setting, but default off was the correct setting.

It's not about your computer, it's about your data. Tracking cookies are just one aspect. The GDPR is about consent and ownership of your personal data. It literally defines your rights with regard to your pesonal data.

The GDPR and ePrivacy directive aren't just about cookies. They limit what a company can do with your data in general, who can access it and how long. Cookie banners are just a downstream consequence of it and the reason they're bad is that most companies try to be clever and design them maliciously in ways to coerce you into "opting in" even though this makes them non-compliant.

If DPAs were serious about enforcing the law, every single website not giving at least equal visual weight to the "refuse all and continue" button (or hiding it behind other options or using individual "legitimate interest" toggle buttons to sneak in their partners despite the existence of the toggle button invalidating the claim of "legitimate interest") would be punished with the maximum fine because they have purposefully and maliciously violated the law.

> it was a law written by people who don't understand tech

On the contrary; data protection law was written precisely by those who understand tech and the dangers of companies using it to gather and share your personal data.

It's utterly bizarre people get annoyed for being asked explicit, opt-in consent to gather and share personal data on a case by case basis (as the law demands!), rather than get annoyed at the scummy SV adtech surveillance capitalists for seeking to share your data without consent.

(Once again, "cookie banners" are not required if you aren't tracking me or gathering personal data. Case in point, Hacker News sets cookies and is entirely compliant with no need to ask any permissions from me)

Maybe the parent of your comment works in adtech or has shares google?