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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I just HATE all the pop-ups asking for permission to use cookies now.

Seriously, having to opt-in on a per-site basis has led me to loathe the GDPR. It's a usability disaster. I never thought I'd hate anything more than the "sign up for our newsletter" pop-ups... but these are even more pervasive.

If I'm the kind of person who hates cookies/tracking, I'll just install a blocker and block it everywhere, and then whitelist any domains I need to.

It just makes me feel like the GDPR was a win for lawyers and legalese, and nobody else.

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GDPR gives sites a choice: either stop doing shady stuff, or ruin the UX. If a site's UX has been ruined, that's because the site has specifically chosen to keep doing shady stuff. Blame the site for being shady. GDPR is on the side of the users.

Note that GDPR doesn't say things like "cookies need a consent form"; rather, it requires that data processing is only performed if a certain valid reason is given. One valid reason is that the service offered by the site couldn't be achieved without the processing. That's fine. If something's not required to perform the service (i.e. shady stuff), the only valid reason for doing it is if consent is given; hence the awful forms.

I think we should have a de facto standard element class for legal notices with no required user action, like legal-notice-no-action-required. Webistes use the css class, uBlock Origin makes it a built-in default element filter. Website owners can fulfill their legal obligations and users that proactively shape their browsing experience are all set. Neither side wants these things messing up the browsing experience so, unlike the ad wars, we can work together.

> I think we should have a de facto standard element class for legal notices with no required user action, like legal-notice-no-action-required. Webistes use the css class, uBlock Origin makes it a built-in default element filter. Website owners can fulfill their legal obligations and users that proactively shape their browsing experience are all set.

Sounds like P3P ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P )

> Neither side wants these things messing up the browsing experience so, unlike the ad wars, we can work together.

Personally, I absolutely want to know when sites are trying to spy on me and sell the data. Despicable crap like that should be forced out into the public, not quietly agreed to by the browser. That's exactly what GDPR is for.

> Personally, I absolutely want to know when sites are trying to spy on me and sell the data.

It's best to assume they're all doing that to some degree whether they tell you they are or not. For one, most of the world isn't beholden to EU law. Also, bad players don't play by the rules and by the time you know they're bad, it's too late.

> Despicable crap like that should be forced out into the public, not quietly agreed to by the browser.

But the cookie law doesn't fix that problem, or any problem for that matter. The notifications are 100% pointless and we're stuck with them because of a stupid law. If anything, having a standard way to block the notices might encourage more users towards a real fix for the tracking problems, which is using something like uBlock Origin (just don't tell that to the site owners that don't want users having tracking blockers).

It's almost like these companies implemented things in the shittiest way possible, to purposely sour your opinion on the law.

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