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Comment by rkagerer | Hacker News Reader

To be frank, the practical result of GDPR is that it made my browsing experience worse.

Nearly every website opens with an annoying cookie popup, often blocking the content (or reducing it to a fraction of my screen on mobile).

I've never once clicked "Yes, track everything", except by accident when tricked into it by deceptive UI (eg. a button designed to look more inviting than its less invasive counterpart).

I get that wasn't the intent, and there are less intrusive ways for companies to comply. But the result we ended up with is a mess.

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This is those companies successfully instrumenting you to lobby on their behalf. It is purposely and spitefully made to be annoying. Let's not reward that.

Don't mistake my comment as an endorsement for data collection.

It was about the practical effects that came about after the legislation was introduced. I hardly believe webmasters around the world coordinated a premeditated, mass conspiracy to annoy their visitors. I rather think the mess results from a misunderstanding on the part of businesses about what is actually required by the various legislation, complacence by the poor chap who's just trying to publish a site, and, yes, dark patterns on the part of platforms providing elements of the stack.

e.g. Those annoying banners aren't needed if you construct your site to not use cookies at all, until they're actually required for functions a user explicitly requests. Platforms have no business asking for my consent in the first place to cookies they know darn well do not serve any bonafide interest for the user.

Well, all those popups are at least showing how much you've been fucked up before by tracking and analytics and other systems in place.

While the outcome isn't optimal (for the moment) we now at least see what's happening.

> the practical result of GDPR is that it made my browsing experience worse

Actually it's the website operators that did that. The GDPR doesn't mandate all these cookie popups.

GDPR declared war on trackers. The popups is the trackers fighting back. We are civilians caught in a warzone. I for one hope that GDPR wins; but there's a way to go yet.

Nope.

> there are less intrusive ways for companies to comply.

These intrusive ways are companies not complying. This is what is currently being litigated, an industry pulling out all the stops to not comply with the GDPR.

This ruling is a major victory along the way.

There should be some separate law that would oblige companies to accept "do-not-track" HTTP header.

Then we could just set it in our browser settings.

Do we even need a law, or would another case by Max Schrems suffice? The intent of Do Not Track is quite clear.

DNT compliance is voluntary. I don't think Schrems would have a legal leg to stand on.

DNT compliance is only voluntary in that it can be ignored when there is no law requiring consent to track.

If someone says "Do not track me", it's a bit disingenuous to interrupt them with a dialog asking them all the ways they might want to be tracked. It's either an attempt at coercion (we'll keep wasting your time until you give in) or an attempt to gain fraudulent consent through trickery/mistakes.

I always click the "Yes, track everything" because it gives me better ads.

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