Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites

Is there any evidence that this law is achieving the goals it was designed to tackle? If not, is there any reason it still exists? Why don't laws have to continually justify themselves as a matter of procedure?

If your asking if the GDPR is effective, yes, it is.

The only ones ignoring it completely are either dodgy companies, or the clueless. The companies exercising malicious compliance are now (quite rightly) increasingly seen as dodgy and need to up their game if they want to become respectable.

The days of not protecting user data are over.

GP asked for evidence.

I wanted to ask something like this, but I think you framed it better.

I am convinced these laws have just made my life and the Internet marginally worse, with no measurable positive impact.

The evidence is all around you.

For example, my insurance company can no longer get away with selling my details to financing companies behind my back. Such shenanigans are no more in the UK and EU thanks to the GDPR.

What do you mean by achieve?

Do sites stop tracking you if you reject the cookies?

Some do, some don’t.

Is the goal still valid.

Yes.

Not the laws but the way companies complied.

Still too few just show a simple „Reject All“ button.

And they ignored things like DNT in the browser on purpose.

So if someone made the Internet is worse it’s them and they successfully shifted the blame.

Even a "Reject All" button is one more annoyance than I had before these laws. The dialogs previously didn't exist at all.

I'm willing to accept that some amount of personal data is being sold less, at least by some market participants. I'm still not sure how I could possibly measure even the tiniest improvement in my life, though.

So you were ok if thousand of sites would track which sites you visit?

Before the law most didn’t even know how much the get tracked.

And you misunderstand something, the law doesn’t improve you life it prevents it from getting worse.

Just look what happens when companies know everything about you

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/17/loose-flapping-ends/#luig...

Exploitation beyond your wildest nightmares.

That’s what those laws try to protect you from

I was being tracked by thousands of sites before these laws were in place and had no measurable negative impact on my life. I’m also skeptical how much practical reduction of tracking has occurred for me in the US.

What I’m 100% sure of is that the UX of the web has been made worse, and I don’t think it’s sufficiently acknowledged.

You can ask companies for a copy of all your personal data they hold. There is no way this would be possible without GDPR and similar laws. In general, data controllers need to abide to some legal framework and not do anything they want.

I am not sure what OP asks. They should make their request more specific, what they want evidence for.