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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: 0.226s | 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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hananova ◴[22 Oct 25 13:14 UTC] No.45668630[source]▶
But the law never allowed this. Enforcement just turned out to be an issue due to the enormity of it all.

Also, please remember that in Europe there is no such thing as "the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law." The intent of the law IS the law.

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1. yxhuvud ◴[23 Oct 25 07:49 UTC] No.45679328[source]▶
Europe is not homogenic when it comes to law doctrine though and does have variations in how to handle unclarities in the letter of the law. In some jurisdictions the intent very much matter to resolve how ambiguities should be resolved.