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

(legiscope.com)
332 points vegasbrianc | 1 comments | 14 Nov 24 22:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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ryandrake ◴[14 Nov 24 22:58 UTC] No.42142148[source]▶
People blame the cookie banners themselves or the legislation that "made them necessary" but somehow never seem to blame the web companies for doing the naughty things on their websites that make them subject to the law.

The "cookie banner problem" exists because it's primarily end users that are shouldering the burden of them, and not the companies. For the company, it's a one time JIRA ticket for a junior software engineer to code up a banner. For everyone else, it's thousands of wasted seconds per year. Make the law hit companies where it hurts: their balance sheets.

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dmix ◴[14 Nov 24 23:20 UTC] No.42142345[source]▶
The second cookies are blocked the industry moved to fingerprinting and other methods

It's like piracy, there's only so much you can do plugging holes

Cookie banners always felt like a feel-good solution. Made worse by inconsistent UIs, differing button texts, long explanations, etc.

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ryandrake ◴[14 Nov 24 23:30 UTC] No.42142421[source]▶
> It's like piracy, there's only so much you can do plugging holes

I say keep on plugging. When you make a law and bad actors find loopholes, the solution isn't to throw up your hands and say "Well, we tried!" The solution is to continuously refine the law as loopholes are found. Laws should get regular patch releases.

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1. dmix ◴[14 Nov 24 23:54 UTC] No.42142603[source]▶
Yes that seems to standard practice in modern government. Impose a series of ineffective rules that do more harm on the public than helps them, and when it fails just invent new ones without considering why the last one failed. And most importantly don't get rid of the previous rules, just let them stick around a decade after it's been apparent they were ineffective.