Seriously, can we come up with a better solution to these things? Like can browsers notify you about cookies instead in a non-intrusive way? Same with social media nagware.
Just thinking aloud, because websites will become increasingly annoying over time.
You could have websites emit headers in responses that will offer the appropriate regulatory compliance warnings, which the user agent can surface in an appropriate way such as in an address bar icon or a dedicated button, and allow the user to ignore them entirely, upon request.
Although not directly related to this particular article, this would also be a way in which porn bans can be easily enforced (e.g. Virginia) instead of requiring intrusive user verification - the website software might emit a "X-Regulatory-Info: porn" header, which parental control software can then look for; and any websites not emitting that header would be considered illegal.
What I'm proposing is if we're going to legislate the web, make it smarter and intuitive. Unfortunately the people writing these laws rarely get feedback from people who actually build websites or care about end-users.
Edit to add some more detail. There's a lot of scholarship that more information or transparency can't be bad - and I don't disagree too much - but the cluttering and intrusiveness is too much. Every legal regime (privacy, safety, consumer protection, IP, etc) clambors to be the most important and worthy of being front page news. But this results in a brutal web experience. I miss the old, simple websites we had as kids. Can't we all agree that a privacy policy or terms link is enough? That's what links are for.
Ultimately those are written by lawyers for lawyers. They're extremely long, verbose, and hard for a layman to parse. And that's on purpose. It's a dark pattern to get people to agree because they lack the time to read and to understand [0][1][2].
Reading isn't the same as understanding, and that's a separate bag of worms which comes up all the time in legal affairs. Take the recent Disney fiasco. I don't think the average person would read the ToS and come to the conclusion that Disney can more or less kill your loved ones with impunity in their parks if you watch Disney Plus. Not that other lawyers agree either, but apparently that's the understanding of Disney's lawyers.
Not that pop ups, modals, and warnings are much better. But I think a clear warning/opt out pop up is far better than a link buried in account settings or policy/ToS.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/readi...
[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/it-would-take-17-hours-to-read-th...
[2] case in point, I'm sure better links exist but I'm sort on time and just plugging what I reviewed from the top of Google results.
There's a continuum, though: from a dense legal meaningless document, to a hyper-loud intrusive but meaningless pop-up. I'd argue that the lawmakers should try to understand the entire market factors at work here, and propose laws that incentivize companies to produce useful/meaningful documents and policies.
What people disagree is in whether it's actually enforceable.
That using a Disney plus trial promo several years ago would force arbitrartion in a wrongful death suit stemming from a visit to a physical establishment is well beyond, IMO, a reasonable expectation.
Evidently, I was wrong... But the arbitration clause clearly says it applies to the case. You are expecting things that aren't written there (nor in any other of those "contracts" you sign every day). IMO, you should be correct on that, but the world seems to disagree.
E.g. For physical harm, perhaps I was upright/walking when something scary was on, and in my fright I stumbled/fell/flailed etc and experienced some bodily harm/death. I could totally understand and accept forced arbitration in this instance.
However, I don't expect that to continue for eternity. If I watched Disney plus for a day, canceled my subscription, and went to see Frozen on Ice years later, I wouldn't expect the Disney Plus ToS to have any bearing.
But anyways, back on point, I don't think the average person is legally competent enough to enter into these agreements. Laymen can read and argue what we expect/understand something to mean, but that's very different from what it legally means. This is why I think a ToS/Policy page are not good stand alone solutions.
I'd argue that the ToS/policy page solution can still work, though. We just need higher standards and greater clarity for what those policies are allowed to do, and what they are not allowed to do, and greater clarity on what the bright lines are for companies -- like, there should just be a rule about how contracts work in this Disney case, not a rule about where you need to tell people about the specific thing.
But given it's possible to comply with the law by throwing up obnoxious banners, that's what these companies do, and you're basically forced to do, if you compete with them.
Whether you blame 'capitalism' or 'the marketplace' for those things or, you believe 'the government' has the job of understanding this and putting in place laws that make it easier across the board, is kind of up to your political affiliation.
They absolutely can, and they absolutely can be our user agents for maintaining cookie whitelists, blacklists, with a consistent UI for being notified a site uses cookies and if we want to allow them.
But they don't do that.
It would have been 1000x more user-friendly and convenient for our user agents to behave like actual agents, filtering cookies for us, instead of 1000 different flavors of invasive cookie banners and "necessary cookie" notices.
But the EU lawmakers didn't want that, or perhaps they just didn't understand the problem enough.
I mean if it's notifying you in a non-intrusive way then it's not really notifying you. That said I absolutely agree with the spirit of your comment. All the EU regulations accomplished was adding an infuriating dialog about cookies that the vast majority of users just click-through anyway, which I suspect will also happen to anyone subjected to surgeon general's warnings about how bad social media is for you. They already click through the T's and C's without reading, I doubt this will be more interesting.
This, IMO, is just another symptom of our individualist-obsessed culture. We'll tell people how terrible a thing is for them to consume, but ultimately, we also permit them to consume it. I don't think that's a wrong idea in and of itself, I'm generally pro-autonomy, but products that explicitly create addiction in their consumers are, IMO, an ethical gray area with regard to this and undermine the notion that they are being engaged with in a healthy way, which is core to the pro-autonomy argument. If you choose to consume alcohol, knowing the health issues it can cause, then I'm absolutely fine with you doing so, and extend that to any other harmful substance or product. If you are addicted to it, on the other hand... well, it's complicated.
I'm old enough that I remember when it was commonplace to figure out what on earth your car was even mad about that you had to take it to a mechanic and pay for the privilege. That's one aspect I will absolutely give has improved both to new cars' infotainment systems that can give much more detailed information about what's wrong, and to the wide-spread adoption of DTC decoding devices/apps.
I tend to agree regarding the current state of things, but most nagging pop-ups are not compliant with regulations, and are bound to get slammed sooner or later. I think they will last a couple of years before being seriously challenged and be gone (possible replaced by something worse, though).
This has spawned some services you pay for which handle the dialogs for you.
I’ve noticed some of these providers, they have a consistent layout and are localised, even on small sites purely designed for American audiences. If these services are good, then a lot of smaller website will be good as well without them needing to invest too much time or money in this.