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

(nednex.com)
583 points SweetSoftPillow | 3 comments | 22 Oct 25 12:12 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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narag ◴[22 Oct 25 13:07 UTC] No.45668518[source]▶
Lawmakers must consider enforcement. What are the practical consequences of those rulings?
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1. schmidtleonard ◴[22 Oct 25 13:36 UTC] No.45668951[source]▶
Laws should be enforceable, but at some point "it's a bad law if it can be bypassed with corruption" just completely surrenders any hope of holding powerful people / companies accountable to anything at all.
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2. narag ◴[22 Oct 25 17:59 UTC] No.45672823[source]▶
That's a very absolute outlook. The fact is that they were very naive and, althoug they seem to be adjusting, it's been painfully slow and the harm has been done and the public is suffering meanwhile.

Law making is a way of predicting the future and setting up incentives to achieve a goal. You need to foresee what can go wrong, talk to incumbents and anticipate the response. It's a technical matter and this has been a debacle.

It's useless to put the blame in the advertisers. Even if they're evil, that doesn't make the situation any better for the public.

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3. dns_snek ◴[23 Oct 25 07:31 UTC] No.45679198[source]▶
> The fact is that they were very naive and, althoug they seem to be adjusting

Who are "they"? The law hasn't changed, it's enforcement that is changing, albeit very slowly.

There are so many institutions that can be rightfully blamed - chiefly the DPAs and the national governments, but your continued insistence on blaming the lawmakers makes no sense. The law is clear, it's just not being enforced.

Of course advertisers deserve all this blame too, but their blame is irrelevant when discussing enforcement. I don't expect them to stop any more than I expect a serial killer to turn themselves in. This is still a failure of the institutions.