[hrdwdmrbl]

Sometimes it feels like the internet is still the wild west.

The EU tries to rope off a single building with velvet ropes, a doorman, ID verification, facial scans, and cookie banners, while next door it's an illegal rave in an abandoned supermarket.

[devjab]

I think blaming the EU for cookie banners is wrong. Those banners are malicious disobedience, and, for the most part a legal violation. What websites should do is that they should assume you reject any tracking as their default, and then they can offer a site setting that you have to seek out, where you can agree to be tracked. What they are sort of allowed to do, is that they can prompt you with a banner, but it has to be a single no-click without requiring you to read much, but that is still not compliance. Anything more annoying is a legal violation.

The real issue is that there aren't a whole lot of consequences when it comes to tracking data. It's a legal violation, sure, but it's not a criminal violation. So it would be up to you to pursue it. In many countries you can't even file a civil lawsuit, but rather, you have to go through your national data protection agency. Which in reality likely means your complaint will be auto-rejected after five years because they need to clean up the queue.

As far as the malicious disobedience goes... well... it's probably because "all the other website do it", but you might as well just give people the option to go to a setting to turn it off. It's not like that would be any less of a legal violation than the banner.

[IanCal]

Sort of aside but it’s wild to me that people talk of ab testing all kinds of minor things and yet so many shops immediately cover up the item I’m viewing with a huge banner/full page annoyance about cookies.

[petcat]

> I think blaming the EU for cookie banners is wrong. Those banners are malicious disobedience, and, for the most part a legal violation.

The EU's own government websites are littered with the obnoxious cookie banners [1].

It's an unbelievably thoughtless and misguided law that has unfortunately ruined the internet. I think a lot of people rightfully blame the EU and they're terrible lawmaking for this nonsense.

https://european-union.europa.eu

[PeterStuer]

You are not wrong, but the fact that they never follow up and allow the practice makes them complicit. Same for the farcical malicious (non-)compliance of the GFPR through 'legitimate intetest' abuse.

[erulabs]

If the majority of users use the system wrong, it's the system that's wrong, not the users.

[Propelloni]

I agree with your sentiment, but it would really be a great step to stop calling these things "cookie banners" and use "consent banners" or "tracking banners". Call them what they are.

Because it is not the means, it is the intent that the GDPR tries to protect you from. The GDPR (and EDP) says that tracking, any tracking not just cookies, requires the consent of the tracked one.

[giveita]

The physical world is like that too!

[rubiquity]

If anything the internet has become more of the wild west and will continue to do so as the internet is incredibly useful for state actors.