←back to thread

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

(nednex.com)
582 points SweetSoftPillow | 1 comments | 22 Oct 25 12:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
Show context
michaelmauderer ◴[22 Oct 25 12:36 UTC] No.45668112[source]▶
The problem here is not the law, but malicious compliance by websites that don't want to give up tracking.

"Spend Five Minutes in a Menu of Legalese" is not the intended alternative to "Accept All". "Decline All" is! And this is starting to be enforced through the courts, so you're increasingly seeing the "Decline All" option right away. As it should be. https://www.techspot.com/news/108043-german-court-takes-stan...

Of course, also respecting a Do-Not-Track header and avoiding the cookie banner entirely while not tracking the user, would be even better.

replies(27): >>45668188 #>>45668227 #>>45668253 #>>45668318 #>>45668333 #>>45668375 #>>45668478 #>>45668528 #>>45668587 #>>45668695 #>>45668802 #>>45668844 #>>45669149 #>>45669369 #>>45669513 #>>45669674 #>>45670524 #>>45670593 #>>45670822 #>>45670839 #>>45671739 #>>45671750 #>>45673134 #>>45673283 #>>45674480 #>>45675431 #>>45678865 #
1. sothatsit ◴[22 Oct 25 13:08 UTC] No.45668528[source]▶
I would blame ad providers more than individual website owners. From my experience, ad providers have made it very difficult to serve their ads unless you use an ad-supported cookie consent manager. I tried to write my own simple cookie consent form and gave up after realising how obscenely complicated TCF is. And since most ad-compatible cookie consent banners are provided by the ad companies themselves, you kinda just get stuck with bad options. I even tried to pay for a commercial cookie consent manager but it wasn’t supported by my ad provider.

If I had more time I probably could have figured it out. But unfortunately I’m just running a hobby project and do not have weeks to spend on this. The revenue from the ads is what pays for hosting. I imagine lots of websites are in a similar boat.

I would love if there was a simpler option that could respect people’s privacy more, be less annoying, and that would still allow websites like mine to survive by running ads. Targeting browsers instead of websites could have been that option.