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Comment by bewareandaware | Hacker News Reader

I must say I'm really surprised. I'm a frontend developer and probably more keen to keep an eye on this stuff but there are lots of times where I just say yes because the popup is in-my-face and I just want to scroll to the content.

I guess where the article falls flat is where the author says a "proper GDPR content banner" was implemented. No online publication will do this. At least they will trick you with button colors, or some kind of double negative mind trick. Sometimes they will require you to tick all the checkboxes out.

GDPR was a good idea from the start but it's implementation is rather dull - they shifted responsibility to each country without penalization for relaxed enforcing, and now there are countries like mine (Portugal) where we have less than a hundred fines.

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> but there are lots of times where I just say yes because the popup is in-my-face and I just want to scroll to the content.

I am exactly the same. I use UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger so pretty much nothing gets through anyway but just to get rid of the banner, I click on OK.

However, that being said, I only do it if the other choice is "Manage Preferences" or something equally vague: If I am given a clear yes-or-no choice, I always choose "No".

I sort of think this kind of behavior is problematic. I also do it often, but for example Gitlab offers some level of tracking: Necessary, Functional, Performance, and Personalization with the first three preselected. there is also a Show details for more information.

I see no reason to turn off Performance and Functional in most cases.

> I use UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger so pretty much nothing gets through anyway

And yet the cookie is still there and can be used to track you. They don't need to serve you adds to track you. A simple check for the presence of the cookie is enough to track.

There's a filter list for uBlock that removes most of those popups. Can't remember it's name off the top of my head though.

Everywhere has poor implementation. The UKs ICO gave companies an entire year of grace as they weren't ready for it themselves and have done very little in the way of fines since. They are as always underfunded and simply don't have the resources to enforce it but so far it is a law with no teeth due to no enforcement the EU over. Companies have managed to get away with the wrong defaults and dark patterns for acceptance for years at this point, setting a clear precadent for how this will work going forward.

I try to make sure to always decline. If there's no easy way for me to do that I leave the site.

> At least they will trick you with button colors

I agree with the broader point, but principles of a nice user interface also apply here.

Unless the website tricks you into clicking a button that you did not intend to click (like with your double negative example) it is not a trick. If you do not read and just click the most colorful rectangle to make the pop-up go away that is the user problem even under the GDPR

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