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Comment by est31 | Hacker News Reader

FTR, Firefox is working on supporting this natively: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1783015

According to this german article: https://www.soeren-hentzschel.at/firefox/firefox-sagt-cookie... , you can already set various values for the cookiebanners.service.mode about:config setting on Firefox nightly. 1 denies all cookies, 2 also accepts if there is no option to deny or if denying didn't work.

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If any Firefox Devs read this; PLEASE ADD:

If I sign in / store a password for the website, allow cookies.

Necessary cookies are not covered by the cookie law, so login should still work when you deny cookies.

Should, but even the websites themselves don't seem to know this. And it's not about cookies either, it's about anything allowing tracking on and between websites.

I've seen websites that use no cookies at all put up the banner. (Just in case.)

(Not a lawyer.)

The GDPR is not about cookies, the freely-given consent requirement applies just the same if they’re tracking you in other ways (perhaps submitting a fingerprint via XHR, or even server-side—arguably just storing IPs in an access log counts[1]). The recorded data doesn’t have to be actively used to identify you, only usable for that purpose in principle.

The earlier 2002 “ePrivacy Directive”[2], which came to be known as “cookie law”, does mention cookies in the motivational part, though the actual text just refers to storing stuff client-side whatever the means. Storage strictly required for the website to function is specifically exempted. Unlike what the GDPR would say later, the preamble said sites would be able to tell users to GTFO if they refuse the cookies.

[1] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?mo... (ruling), https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=CJEU_-_C%E2%80%91582/14_-... (unofficial explanation)

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX..., recital 25 and article 5(3).

In the old days (Netscape Navigator) you'd get an annoying popup asking you if you wanted to store cookies. Firefox came from the open sourcing of Netscape. How things repeat!

cookies were once delicious delicacies - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213186

Wow, what a toxic environment.

Having easter eggs is cool.

Telling your users about what web technologies are and what certain settings mean is also cool.

Wanting to be helpful to a wider audience rather than have a funny easter egg for tech nerds feels like an okay thing to do, once a project is past a certain stage and aims for larger adoption.

That said, seeing "18 years ago" for the message dates in the discussion feels sobering.

I was referring to the tone adopted by what looks like a key participant in that discussion towards other participants.

(I'll go back into my bubble now.)

Doesn't work on Android yet. Can't wait for this to be finished, cookie banners are even more annoying when you have as small a screen as on a phone...

Firefox Nightly allows you to use your own collection of add-ons that you've set up on AMO, including I Don't Care About Cookies and forks as long as they're up on AMO:

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install-any-ad...

I've been using this on Android for a while now and holy crap, never going back.

The settings are available though, are they not working?

Does this use some regularly updated list to recognize the various different types of banner?

This brings up a great point! Why didn't browsers jump in right away and offer this natively instead of letting the web get littered with annoying cookie banners that everyone is either going to (1) ignore (2) blindly accept?

They had do-not-track for ages. It was the choice of the cookie banner devs to not respect that flag.

I fully expect the EU will somehow find a way to regulate this out of existence .... (in protection of users all browser software must ensure privacy options are not supressed and displayed prominently with a dialog immune to any form of automation ....)

Firefox should worry more with core browser, standards, speed, security, bugs... And less with implementing things that already exist as addons

Browser add-ons require permissions which you might not want to grant to arbitrary code. And anyway, it’s a truism that products can and will absorb add-ons into their code (cf ‘Sherlocked’)

They can spend time absorbing whatever they want, just make sure first you have a capable browser, that can be competitive, maybe absorb some market share from other Chromes. Instead of being a constant crippleware that we just barely tolerate, with half cooked "nice" to haves

If you don't trust, don't install. Maybe don't install anything on your machine just to be safe

Firefox can improve their addons security audit, their addons website to help users make a choice... absorbing addons seems like wasting time

What is Sherlocked? I searched around on Google, but I couldn't figure out what you were referring to.

This - https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-co...

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