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.
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.
Well almost all websites in France do the legal thing now with an obvious "decline all" button, which was not the case at first.
It took just a pair of ruling that made it clear this illegal pattern was going to actually be cracked down upon, and now these popups are just a small annoyance rather than the absolutely enraging trap that they were at first.
Of course I still wish they were unnecessary, but they serve as a reminder that these websites are still trying to prey upon their visitors.
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.
schmidtleonard|4 months ago
narag|4 months ago
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.
seszett|4 months ago
It took just a pair of ruling that made it clear this illegal pattern was going to actually be cracked down upon, and now these popups are just a small annoyance rather than the absolutely enraging trap that they were at first.
Of course I still wish they were unnecessary, but they serve as a reminder that these websites are still trying to prey upon their visitors.
crazygringo|4 months ago
Disagree. The popup is the enraging problem. It's not a small annoyance. I click them multiple times every single day and it's ludicrous.
I don't need a "reminder". The last thing I want is some "reminder" day after day after day. I want a law that protects consumers in the first place.
SoftTalker|4 months ago
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.
account42|4 months ago