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

(nednex.com)
582 points SweetSoftPillow | 7 comments | 22 Oct 25 12:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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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.

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crazygringo ◴[22 Oct 25 12:52 UTC] No.45668318[source]▶
No, the problem is 100% the law, because it was written in a way that allows this type of malicious compliance.

Laws need to be written well to achieve good outcomes. If the law allows for malicious compliance, it is a badly written law.

The sites are just trying to maximize profit, as anyone could predict. So write better laws.

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michaelmauderer ◴[22 Oct 25 13:02 UTC] No.45668443[source]▶
But the courts are saying: the law does NOT allow this.

So maybe “malicious compliance” is a misnomer. We should just call it "illegal dark pattern".

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mikae1 ◴[22 Oct 25 13:22 UTC] No.45668736[source]▶
Not a radical idea. The EU is already working on it.

> […] the Commission is pondering how to tweak the rules to include more exceptions or make sure users can set their preferences on cookies once (for example, in their browser settings) instead of every time they visit a website.

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-cookie-law-messed-up-...

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1. dgfitz ◴[22 Oct 25 13:25 UTC] No.45668806[source]▶
[flagged]
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2. yetihehe ◴[22 Oct 25 13:30 UTC] No.45668875[source]▶
The alternative is that they tweak the laws without much thought...
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3. dgfitz ◴[22 Oct 25 14:58 UTC] No.45670136[source]▶
Isn’t that the current status quo?
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4. lukeschlather ◴[22 Oct 25 15:17 UTC] No.45670455{3}[source]▶
The GDPR has over 100k words, and those words are certainly less than 0.01% of the thought that has gone into this problem.
5. immibis ◴[22 Oct 25 16:19 UTC] No.45671448[source]▶
Agile laws might not be so terrible.
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6. JadeNB ◴[22 Oct 25 16:23 UTC] No.45671519{3}[source]▶
Counteropinion: agile laws would be absolutely terrible. Either people wouldn't take them seriously because they're going to change in a few minutes anyway, or people would take them seriously and be bound by law by the equivalent of late-night untested code that seemed like it should work.
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7. _carbyau_ ◴[23 Oct 25 00:03 UTC] No.45676681{4}[source]▶
Charitable interpretation of their comment: Law is implemented and then rapidly improved upon.

But yes, I think your take is more realistic as any measure that allows rapid changes also allows willful politics to rapidly make a mess.