Much like the current cookie banner shitshow, a "centrally configured" setting which "websites must respect" will accomplish nothing. There is no consent, informed or otherwise. Advertisers and their ilk are still hoovering up all the data they can, with or without cookies or consent.
Locking up a few people who don't respect their users' privacy would be a much more effective way of achieving actual results. AFAIK no big adtech or data brokers have been punished in any way.
>Locking up a few people who don't respect their users' privacy would be a much more effective way of achieving actual results. AFAIK no big adtech or data brokers have been punished in any way.
I'm a big fan of personal accountability in the corporate world.
You can't lock people up if they're not doing anything illegal. The first step is to write a law making what they're doing illegal. Then if they keep doing it, you'll be able to lock them up.
Me telling you that I don't want to be tracked, no matter what your argument is, is as informed as it gets. You just don't like the answer so you feel entitled to ask again.
Personally, I find this a move in the wrong direction where hostile behavior by websites is normalized and hidden. Cookie banners show web site true colors. When someone asks me to share data with a thousand of "partners", I leave.
> Personally, I find this a move in the wrong direction where hostile behavior by websites is normalized and hidden. Cookie banners show web site true colors. When someone asks me to share data with a thousand of "partners", I leave.
I kind of agree, but at the same time basically all websites are using some kind of tracking to know what kind of users visit, and I'm tired of clicking "allow all" just to read an article. Many websites don't even work if you refuse non-essential trackers, because their tag manager is configured incorrectly, or because by law if there's even a single textbox where users can put their email or name, they need to have the consent to show that and allow input on it.
Having a browser default of "nope" with the option to whitelist a broken website would save a ton of time for people and machines the same, and also reduce website latency a lot. There's a nice website that "tracks" this cost: https://cookiecost.eu/
I agree. I think it's one of those things that people complain about because other people complain about. You have to click a button. Wow. What an ordeal. The title of this thread used the term "nightmare". I would be thankful that my life is so wonderful that clicking a button is considered a "nightmare". It's transparent and if you don't like it, don't go to that site.
I think I agree, at least until it's clear how exactly this should be implemented.
Fingerprints can be shared with third parties without cookies, and while I know that the so-called "cookie law" is not really just about cookies, this is where the deception begins.
For some reason, I think it's easier to force websites to list everyone they share data with, than to force them to comply with an invisible preference that says "don't share data".
It even sounds as if this could be a trojan horse to dismantle parts of the GDPR altogether (see the DNT references in this thread...), and I happen to think that by and large, GDPR is good.
Step 1: force websites to add an opt-out flow for privacy-minded users.
Step 2: websites don't complain too much because they can implement it in obnoxious and dark-pattern-laden ways, so that few users actually opt-out.
Step 3: now that websites have proven there's no technical barrier and the flows are already implemented, slowly retire unnecessary user tracking and data sharing.
I'd be surprised if this was planned ahead of time, but it's not a bad strategy.
The choice citizens would make every single time is to see the website without ads. Of course, publishers aren’t happy about that, since they would have to close shop. Maybe the EC should consider both sides of the equation.
IMO there isn't a cookie nightmare but rather a tracking nightmare. I'm not fully up-to-date on if there is a separate EU directive on cookies on the internet specifically, but the GDPR is the _General_ Data Protection Regulation. Meaning that if I go and collect your info on pen and paper, I must then ask your permission on how I process and share that data, especially if sharing that data is not necessary to complete the main transaction but is somehow done auxiliary to the main purpose. (e.g. I buy a pillow online, my info is used to target ads for me.)
GDPR itself doesn't require consent for functional cookies. For example, Apple.com does not have a cookie consent box _at all_.
On tracking specifically, I feel there are at least two levels. One that happens in-browser by third party companies. These are your classic advertisements. The other is more first-party backend-heavy. These would be your local grocery store using your purchase history linked to your membership card and using that data to create analytics and targeted ads etc.
So creating a browser setting would likely not toggle all tracking away, just the ones that are "annoying" while browsing.
There is no legislation on cookies. The legislation is on tracking, or more generally, personal data collection. It doesn’t matter if websites use cookies or other means for those purposes.
Users will overwhelmingly use browsers in vanilla config. The question here will be how browser vendors show this option. If - say - a company that gives away a browser for free but makes money from ads designed this, then they'll hide the option deep in some obscure menu, never remind people it exists, and reset it on every update.
So the devil is in the details. The best option I think isn't a secret setting in a browser, but a standardized consent dialog. Basically the sites communicate to the browser a standardized data format for consent. Then the browser shows that query in a popup that looks the same for every site. That means 1) the sites no longer have a chance to do dark patterns 2) it's less confusing for end users since the UX is always the same 3) it allows users to check a "Automatically reject for all sites". The site should not know whether the user has auto-rejected this, or manually rejected it. There should be no option to automatically consent for all sites (Can't have that). So the only ergonomic choice is to set it to auto reject.
Having this "use this choice (reject) for all sites" is the really important part here. Because it means that ALL users of ALL browsers will quickly see this choice, so in short order a huge chunk of users will have made this permanent rejection choice.
Dialog is already standardized in the current GDPR. There is literally an item there which states that Reject consent option should be the same and equally easily accessible as Accept consent option. So basically all dark pattern sites are already criminals. The problem is zero enforcement of the GDPR.
Since tracking is not legal without informed consent, either browsers will be mandated to default to no tracking, or to display a choice on first use. Silently defaulting to tracking certainly won’t be an option, given the whole GDPR and e-Privacy framework.
"Europe's cookie nightmare" has nothing to do with Europe and everything to do with companies assuming that they have god-given right to all your data in perpetuity.
Europe literally said: we're not going to force specific tech decisions on you. All we ask is to let people opt-in if they want to be tracked. What we got is "we care about your privacy, we're sending all your data to 15000 partners" from the industry.
To people crying "but this should've been mandated as a browser setting": Which world's largest advertising company has dominating browser marketshare and subsumes all web standards committees? What exactly prevented that company to come up with a browser setting that isn't "we sell your data by default and use dark patterns to trick you to agree" https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1664682689591377923?
Our industry is shit, and we blame governments for regulations that ... assume that industries shouldn't be shit. There's literally no need for EU to regulate browser settings. And yet here we are.
In the meantime, if you're browsing the web with uBlock Origin, you should definitely enable cookie list filters in Dashboard > Filter lists > Cookie Notices. Haven't seen a banner in ages.
When the Digital Services/Markets Act was written this was actually considered. But there's also companies that surveil your browsing data and sell that for other purposes not just advertisement. Market Research and such. I'd have been for a blanket ban though.
Sadly, this is mostly a matter of not enforcing the GDPR enough. Things such as "data minimization" and the erosion of "technically necessary" already should protect us. Instead the Business Community chose malicious compliance on a vast scale and the data protection agencies did nothing.
This was the correct decision and could have been made a decade ago. An .. institutional deficiency was trying to make the GDPR as completely general as possible rather than doing a technology mandate. But this had two consequences: bad actors could circumvent it, and good actors just trying to comply ended up horribly confused (e.g. is logging an IP address in an Apache log "personal data"?).
DNT header. Legally binding. Out of the way of the end user. Unambiguous for enforcement purposes. Probably the end of targeted advertising, but that was always the logical conclusion of GDPR.
I agree cookie banners were the wrong solution, and sometimes made things worse (it make a cookie whitelist extensions I used to use unusable because you have to allow the cookie that stores your cookie preferences).
However, this bit concerns me:
> This key change is part of a new Digital Package of proposals to simplify the EU’s digital rules, and will initially see cookie prompts change to be a simplified yes or no single-click prompt ahead of the “technological solutions” eventually coming to browsers. Websites will be required to respect cookie choices for at least six months, and the EU also wants website owners to not use cookie banners for “harmless uses” like counting website visits, to lessen the amount of pop-ups.
That implies there will be "harmless tracking" allowed, and it removes choices. The latter might restrict dark patterns, but it might also encourage "allow all cookies or you cannot read the site at all" approaches.
Cookie consent banners and such come from the ePrivacy Directive, not the GDPR. The banners themselves were never mandated, but lacking any other standardized opt-in signal, that's what everyone converged on anyway.
DNT is dead by the way, Global Privacy Control (GPC) is the new privacy signal mechanism. It has actual legal weight in some jurisdictions already like California and their CCPA law for example.
An outcome I'm entirely fine with. Those industries are _not_ divinely entitled to fabulous wealth by violating one's privacy. I won't shed a tear if they don't survive once they are blocked from spying.
That moves the onus to the user to distinguish between tracking and non-tracking uses of cookies and local storage. It also contradicts the principle that tracking requires informed consent.
Speeding is illegal. Controlled substances are illegal. Murder is illegal. Embezzlement is illegal. Driving in a school zone while using a mobile device is illegal.
It wasn't a "Europe's" nightmare, it was website's nightmare. There is literally no legitimate reason to collect and store PII in excess of allowed by GDPR. No data harvesting - no cookie banners absolutely legally.
We need clear, direct punishments based on %revenue for websites not taking "NO!" for an answer.
Don't fucking rush, you useless bureaucrats.
"A mix of European legislation has resulted in cookie notices that use dark patterns to nudge people into accepting online tracking. And regulators aren’t taking strong action"
elric|3 months ago
Locking up a few people who don't respect their users' privacy would be a much more effective way of achieving actual results. AFAIK no big adtech or data brokers have been punished in any way.
general1465|3 months ago
jack_tripper|3 months ago
I'm a big fan of personal accountability in the corporate world.
Thorrez|3 months ago
nicbou|3 months ago
rsynnott|3 months ago
I mean, big tech has absolutely been punished under the GDPR, eg https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/12-billion-euro-fi...
Klaster_1|3 months ago
Personally, I find this a move in the wrong direction where hostile behavior by websites is normalized and hidden. Cookie banners show web site true colors. When someone asks me to share data with a thousand of "partners", I leave.
plqbfbv|3 months ago
I kind of agree, but at the same time basically all websites are using some kind of tracking to know what kind of users visit, and I'm tired of clicking "allow all" just to read an article. Many websites don't even work if you refuse non-essential trackers, because their tag manager is configured incorrectly, or because by law if there's even a single textbox where users can put their email or name, they need to have the consent to show that and allow input on it.
Having a browser default of "nope" with the option to whitelist a broken website would save a ton of time for people and machines the same, and also reduce website latency a lot. There's a nice website that "tracks" this cost: https://cookiecost.eu/
thinkingtoilet|3 months ago
moritzwarhier|3 months ago
Fingerprints can be shared with third parties without cookies, and while I know that the so-called "cookie law" is not really just about cookies, this is where the deception begins.
For some reason, I think it's easier to force websites to list everyone they share data with, than to force them to comply with an invisible preference that says "don't share data".
It even sounds as if this could be a trojan horse to dismantle parts of the GDPR altogether (see the DNT references in this thread...), and I happen to think that by and large, GDPR is good.
BoppreH|3 months ago
Step 1: force websites to add an opt-out flow for privacy-minded users.
Step 2: websites don't complain too much because they can implement it in obnoxious and dark-pattern-laden ways, so that few users actually opt-out.
Step 3: now that websites have proven there's no technical barrier and the flows are already implemented, slowly retire unnecessary user tracking and data sharing.
I'd be surprised if this was planned ahead of time, but it's not a bad strategy.
avmich|3 months ago
This is something which courts should consider more about other things, such as EULA and Terms and Conditions. Same reasons.
naIak|3 months ago
MangoToupe|3 months ago
mimsee|3 months ago
GDPR itself doesn't require consent for functional cookies. For example, Apple.com does not have a cookie consent box _at all_.
On tracking specifically, I feel there are at least two levels. One that happens in-browser by third party companies. These are your classic advertisements. The other is more first-party backend-heavy. These would be your local grocery store using your purchase history linked to your membership card and using that data to create analytics and targeted ads etc.
So creating a browser setting would likely not toggle all tracking away, just the ones that are "annoying" while browsing.
layer8|3 months ago
alkonaut|3 months ago
So the devil is in the details. The best option I think isn't a secret setting in a browser, but a standardized consent dialog. Basically the sites communicate to the browser a standardized data format for consent. Then the browser shows that query in a popup that looks the same for every site. That means 1) the sites no longer have a chance to do dark patterns 2) it's less confusing for end users since the UX is always the same 3) it allows users to check a "Automatically reject for all sites". The site should not know whether the user has auto-rejected this, or manually rejected it. There should be no option to automatically consent for all sites (Can't have that). So the only ergonomic choice is to set it to auto reject.
Having this "use this choice (reject) for all sites" is the really important part here. Because it means that ALL users of ALL browsers will quickly see this choice, so in short order a huge chunk of users will have made this permanent rejection choice.
troupo|3 months ago
We know exactly how. Here's Google presenting "more private web". If you click "yes, I'm in", all the tracking options will be turned on: https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1664682689591377923
And of course HN (and the industry at large, and journalists) will blame it on "clueless bureaucrats writing regulations"
Yizahi|3 months ago
layer8|3 months ago
kotaKat|3 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track
lostmsu|3 months ago
troupo|3 months ago
Things like "precise location information stored for 12 years": https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541
Europe literally said: we're not going to force specific tech decisions on you. All we ask is to let people opt-in if they want to be tracked. What we got is "we care about your privacy, we're sending all your data to 15000 partners" from the industry.
To people crying "but this should've been mandated as a browser setting": Which world's largest advertising company has dominating browser marketshare and subsumes all web standards committees? What exactly prevented that company to come up with a browser setting that isn't "we sell your data by default and use dark patterns to trick you to agree" https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1664682689591377923?
Our industry is shit, and we blame governments for regulations that ... assume that industries shouldn't be shit. There's literally no need for EU to regulate browser settings. And yet here we are.
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
thrance|3 months ago
cpburns2009|3 months ago
lol768|3 months ago
Mistletoe|3 months ago
Devasta|3 months ago
IlikeKitties|3 months ago
Sadly, this is mostly a matter of not enforcing the GDPR enough. Things such as "data minimization" and the erosion of "technically necessary" already should protect us. Instead the Business Community chose malicious compliance on a vast scale and the data protection agencies did nothing.
pjc50|3 months ago
DNT header. Legally binding. Out of the way of the end user. Unambiguous for enforcement purposes. Probably the end of targeted advertising, but that was always the logical conclusion of GDPR.
graemep|3 months ago
However, this bit concerns me:
> This key change is part of a new Digital Package of proposals to simplify the EU’s digital rules, and will initially see cookie prompts change to be a simplified yes or no single-click prompt ahead of the “technological solutions” eventually coming to browsers. Websites will be required to respect cookie choices for at least six months, and the EU also wants website owners to not use cookie banners for “harmless uses” like counting website visits, to lessen the amount of pop-ups.
That implies there will be "harmless tracking" allowed, and it removes choices. The latter might restrict dark patterns, but it might also encourage "allow all cookies or you cannot read the site at all" approaches.
chuckadams|3 months ago
hypeatei|3 months ago
ragebol|3 months ago
iamacyborg|3 months ago
Making it a technological mandate would have made it trivial to circumvent.
zzzeek|3 months ago
the problem is a plugin like that would take out entire industries because it would basically end anonymous tracking cookies.
deafpolygon|3 months ago
gruturo|3 months ago
stickfigure|3 months ago
* Let websites do whatever they want with cookies/local storage.
* Let browsers delete them as often as they want.
* Make other kinds of fingerprinting illegal.
layer8|3 months ago
dylan604|3 months ago
Speeding is illegal. Controlled substances are illegal. Murder is illegal. Embezzlement is illegal. Driving in a school zone while using a mobile device is illegal.
Has the legality stopped any of it?
Yizahi|3 months ago
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
dang|3 months ago
Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980117 - Nov 2025 (60 comments)
damnitbuilds|3 months ago
Don't fucking rush, you useless bureaucrats.
"A mix of European legislation has resulted in cookie notices that use dark patterns to nudge people into accepting online tracking. And regulators aren’t taking strong action"
Wired, 20/5/2020:
https://www.wired.com/story/gdpr-cookie-consent-eprivacy/
aswegs8|3 months ago
lofaszvanitt|3 months ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33262369
a4n|3 months ago
[deleted]
retube|3 months ago
croes|3 months ago
nerdsniper|3 months ago
sunshine-o|3 months ago
They are proudly removing the annoyance they mandated 7 tears ago.
Do we have to congratulate them?
troupo|3 months ago
Curious how no one blames the industry which just needs to store your precise geolocation data for 12 years: https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541