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Comment by rapht | Hacker News Reader

The problem with cookie banners is not their intrusive ubiquity: it's that they keep going against the spirit of the law, which was to make any "non essential" (whatever that means) data collection opt-in.

If that were functioning, whereby the two buttons presented to you were a "Continue without cookies" and "I want to opt in", the annoyance would be worth it. But as it stands, most sites just _pretend_ their tracking is opt-in through an "I agree" button, with "I don't agree" generally leading to a mess of check boxes in front of partners the general public has no idea about.

I do hope regulators end up cracking on this...

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I agree, though I prefer to frame this a little differently. If websites make me click on "I agree" by deliberately making it difficult for me to get through to the actual page without jumping through an extra bunch of hoops, then the act of clicking "I agree" does not constitute freely given consent, and therefore they are collecting personal data illegally.

I don't understand why the regulators are ignoring this. It's destroying the entire principle of the regulation.

It would indeed be glorious to see regulators pick 10 of the largest sites with the “Agree and continue” vs “let me uncheck 100 checkboxes” consent, and simply fine them a sum that is large enough to make all sites on the planet decide that it’s better to comply immediately than be in the next round of fines.

Right now I think a lot of sites are thinking “If we don’t use these tracking ads we aren’t going to be able to keep the lights on, so it’s better to use that pretend compliance banner everyone else is using, than to have to close”. And that’s the problem. The regulation should make bankruptcy or a massive risky change of business Model look attractive and low risk compared to “agree and continue”. Otherwise why would shady sites not try to do exactly what they are doing.

Tracking ads are unfair competition. It’s like a business not paying their taxes. The reason you can’t start a site paid by non-tracking ads, is that the competitor uses tracking ads.

When tracking ads aren’t an option, the money in “good” advertising goes up. (Or, all the money is concentrated to Apple and Facebook, the bad scenario).

What I don't get is if the intent of the law was truly to make non-essential data collection "opt-in"... why even bother with all of this instead of just banning it properly? Was there really a concern from people that they wouldn't be able to opt into being tracked by 3rd parties they aren't engaged with?

> "non essential" (whatever that means)

I am quite interested at finding out whatever exactly this means.

(It was pretty clear to me that the GDPR would eventually rid us of the most flagrant of the abuses like the ones that you mention, via the stick of fines.)

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