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

(nednex.com)
583 points SweetSoftPillow | 1 comments | 22 Oct 25 12:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | 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. SoftTalker ◴[22 Oct 25 15:12 UTC] No.45670393[source]▶
Lawmakers should have a limit on the number of laws they can write. Say it's 100. They can regulate 100 things, so they need to consider importance. If they want to regulate something new, they have to give up something else. Which one is more important?

The vast majority of laws are never enforced, so in practice this isn't as absurd as it sounds. It would make people consider what laws they spend time writing.