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Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

amazingcto.com

101–110 of 662 posts

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#101
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is around the 5th time this sentiment has been expressed in this thread, I have to ask... are cookie banners really so frustrating? Oh no, gotta click one, maybe 2, more buttons...

> are cookie banners really so frustrating They would be a LOT less frustrating if: a) they were standardized — they currently add a hefty cognitive load while parsing them, deciding which action to take, etc. b) they worked properly — I would say, more often than not, they 'forget' the previous setting. I should never see a cookie popup on the same site twice unless I clear my browser settings.

Standardization would certainly be nice, since we could automate it then (I imagine doing so now would require specific cases for most sites)

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#102
post #17

Imagine a market in which companies charge a lot of hidden fees behind their customers' back, and users are not happy when they realize after the fact. The law is updated to say you are not allowed to charge the user a fee unless you tell him in advance. Companies with tons of hidden fees decide to keep them but force you to read all the fees on every page of the menu before you can see the rest of the text, in the m…

Using your analogy, I think what ends up happening is that even companies that don't collect hidden fees will put up a banner just in case. Not only that, I'm not an EU citizen and I'm not browsing websites based in EU but I'm still bombarded with cookie banners non-stop.

For your first point I disagree, my companies don't track and we don't have banner cookies.

On your second point, that is again a choice of said companies, not a problem with the law. The GDPR has proven very well that if they cared, they can segment who is affected or not, and not just big tech lots of random local news site and the likes are doing it just fine.

So again, you're aiming at the wrong culprit.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#105
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is around the 5th time this sentiment has been expressed in this thread, I have to ask... are cookie banners really so frustrating? Oh no, gotta click one, maybe 2, more buttons...

If you want to click “no” it’s often dozens of clicks (e.g. to explicitly disable each “trusted partner” with “legitimate interest”) alongside constant attempts to trick you into clicking “yes” accidentally.

On most websites I use, it's 1 click. On the rest, it's 2. I've never once encountered a website that required "dozens" of clicks

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#106
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using your analogy, I think what ends up happening is that even companies that don't collect hidden fees will put up a banner just in case. Not only that, I'm not an EU citizen and I'm not browsing websites based in EU but I'm still bombarded with cookie banners non-stop.

> Not only that, I'm not an EU citizen and I'm not browsing websites based in EU but I'm still bombarded with cookie banners non-stop. Again, that's the fault of the companies putting those up, they could make it opt-in to collect your data, they could just put a small notice on the footer with 2 simples links "Accept all/Reject all". But they chose, they decided to pester you with those banners as annoyingly as poss…

The fact that companies are doing that says more about the bad law than the companies which is exactly Paul Graham's point.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#107
post #70

>, Paul Graham came up with the thought, that the EU forces companies to have cookie banners. There is no law for cookie banners. [...] Companies could easily avoid any cookie banner. Just don’t track. KingOfCoders/amazingcto, of course you are technically correct but Paul Graham wasn't talking about the letter of the law. Instead, you have to interpret his complaint with the lens of game theory . I.e. The Law of Uni…

Doesn't that argument work both ways? If you interpret the EU's regulation with the "lens of game theory", it is an unintended consequence of aggressive corporate data collection. Not sure why it makes sense to complain about the EU and not the companies.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#108
post #58
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is around the 5th time this sentiment has been expressed in this thread, I have to ask... are cookie banners really so frustrating? Oh no, gotta click one, maybe 2, more buttons...

2 more buttons x the number of websites you visit a day x the number of time the website forgets your choice? Yes, they are quite annoying.

My bar for annoyance must just be very high.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#109

I wonder - why didn't the the EU put the burden on user agents a.k.a. web browsers to handle the cookie notices? When I visit a site, before saving any cookies, have my user agent ask me if I want to allow cookies for that site. Could have a default "no cookies" option with a whitelist, or default "yes" with a blacklist. It would have been so much easier, with a far more consistent UX, wouldn't it have? Now we have t…

The EU in this scenario believes in the open market: let the web browsers and web sites find a technical solution.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#110

Hate this way of thinking where the government (with seemingly good intentions) tries to stop something but leaves a loophole where all our lives are made more tedious and then people defend it saying the companies should just not do it, well we needed the law in the first place so it's a bit silly thinking to suggest they stop doing it after the law, no?. If the cookie law was written properly then it would have jus…

It would be 100% ok for it to be a browser setting. It isn't though, because that would make too many people opt out. That's what the article is about.
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