The other approach to killing the cookie banner is simply to declare that such a thing <i>cannot</i> constitute “informed consent”. (Perhaps: “ticking a checkbox and/or clicking a button cannot constitute informed consent”; and see what they try next.) From a factual perspective, I honestly think that shouldn’t be controversial: it’s well-understood that very few people actually read those things, they just want to get them out of the way. Just as shrink-wrap licenses and even simple <i>contracts</i> have at times in some jurisdictions essentially been neutered, so that only terms that a reasonable person would expect to be there are enforceable, at which point it becomes obvious that the whole thing needs tearing down in favour of standard licenses/contracts. In the Australian state Victoria, for example, there are standard rent and property sale contracts; for renting you <i>must</i> use that contract <<a href="https://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/housing/renting/starting-and-changing-rental-agreements/different-rental-agreements/residential-rental-agreements#:~:text=You%20must%20use%20the%20%E2%80%98prescribed%20form%E2%80%99%20when%20entering%20into%20a%20written%20rental%20agreement%2E" rel="nofollow">https://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/housing/renting/starting-and...</a>>, and I got the impression that residential sales practically always use the standard contract.<p>But of course it’s impossible to convince someone of something when their livelihood depends on their not understanding it.
<i>> it’s well-understood that very few people actually read those things, they just want to get them out of the way.</i><p>This is a jaw-drop moment for me every single time I observe someone else using the web and quickly clicking "accept" on every single cookie banners that pops up, without ever wasting a second even reading <i>what</i> they're accepting. It's mind boggling to me. Sure, I'm in IT, so surely I'm more aware of data mining, profiling, and other privacy-related aspects. But in many cases, you could just click "reject" and the banner would also disappear...<p>To me, having a browser setting for cookies is the only sane way to handle this, it's surprising that this was not considered from the beginning.
"Accept all" always makes it go away immediately.<p>Some variant on "reject" takes more effort like 70% of the time. Which is on purpose, of course. The ones that aren't maliciously-complying have a "necessary only" button that insta-closes it, but tons pretend that you might want to allow <i>some</i> spying but not <i>all</i> of it and make you go through another screen if you don't just "accept all".<p>> To me, having a browser setting for cookies is the only sane way to handle this, it's surprising that this was not considered from the beginning.<p>Then it'd be possible to default it to "nope" (Firefox, and perhaps Safari, might do this) or to allow a "never, anywhere" setting the first time the question is asked, and malware and spyware vendors know that'd mean a much larger proportion of denials.
It literally does not matter what you pick on these things - most of them don't work anyway. Think about it: Of course they don't. All the third-party javascript is already on the page. Anything you do inside the sandbox with UI provided by, usually, some other third-party, can't just magically force all that other code to behave in a specific way, unless someone has done a great deal of work to integrate the cookie banner code. If the first-party site were that competent at instrumenting every bit of third-party code, the marketing department threw at the website department, they wouldn't even need the third-party cookie banner vendor in the first place.<p>Clicking those "REJECT!" buttons might make you feel empowered, but it's pointless. Just set your browser to delete all the cookies at the end of the session except for whatever sites you want to allow to 'remember' you.<p>The whole thing has <i>always</i> been a problem to be properly solved by the <i>browser,</i> and it's probably just the fact that Google makes the only browser that matters, that it's been foisted upon every website owner, who mostly just wants basic analytics and to track conversions from the ads they run, and isn't "selling your data."<p>The browser is your <i>user agent.</i> If it's sending any information up to web servers on every request that isn't okay with you, why are you using it?
> Just set your browser to delete all the cookies at the end of the session except for whatever sites you want to allow to 'remember' you<p>Exactly. I use the "I don't care about cookies" extension, which rejects most cookies automatically without me having to see the popups. But even accepting cookies is fine - I'll be closing my browser soon anyway and they'll be gone.
It's a nag-box that appears every time someone visits a new website.
Of course people are going to click it away as fast as possible.
In the few cases you repeatedly visit a website one might want to reconsider, but by then it's out of mind due to not being shown after giving consent.<p>It is known that warnings and pop-ups that show up almost all the time yield diminishing returns.
I think it was named "normalization of deviation" by some folks in a blog a while ago, and I believe that name fits.
If you get warned about missing https all the time, or that something might be dangerous (even though it does precisely what you want it to do), it will loose its effect by the time you actually need it.<p>You can argue this is malicious compliance, but if you want it to go away it would probably be easier to go for banning tracking and personalized ads altogether. Eliminate the reason for this behavior, so to speak.
> To me, having a browser setting for cookies is the only sane way to handle this, it's surprising that this was not considered from the beginning.<p>There is one. It's a DNT header. Knucklehead websites ignore it.
Because it doesn't mean anything specific and breaks entire business models (merely logging that you landed from an ad click and seeing if you check out counts as 'tracking,' doesn't it?) if interpreted purely literally. So, the only way to treat it is to either ignore it or to just send back an error code and message that says "Sorry, having some tracking is the condition to get this free content. Accept or don't."<p>Like it or not, the Web is a two-way street, meaning that the server end of the transaction doesn't owe the client end anything in particular unless there's some relationship in place (like a payment). It appears the "just ignore it" matches the intent of most web users, though, since an overwhelming majority of web visitors accept a bunch of spammy ads + free 'content,' and a slim minority pay for ad-free alternatives.
Including the one we're posting on
I believe myself to be fairly well-informed, and usually accept the cookies, because I don’t foresee any potential harms, and it helps the people running the website. I am worried about many things like phishing and hacking/data leaks, but the valuable data isn’t cookie-related.<p>What harm are you worried about?
Tracking usually happens across websites, meaning the information is shared with third parties outside the people running the website where you accepted the cookies. Knowing your interests, behavior and preferences makes you prone to manipulation. The selection of information shown to you will be crafted such as it maximizes engagement. For example, showing you information that upsets you, in order to get you to react. Or just information with a slant or spin to influence your opinion. Nobody is immune to being affected by the distribution of what they are being shown.
The banner is not just about cookies, but also about data sharing, so by accepting you increase the amount of your data that can be leaked.<p>These banners handle both ePrivacy consent for cookies etc, but also GDPR Art. 6(1)(a) for processing purposes (personalised ads, measurement, audience insights, precise geolocation, even device fingerprinting).
These popups aren't about cookies but really about spying. It seems you have nothing to hide. I understand: I also don't. However, the problem with spying is not about individual secrets but about the society and democracy.<p>Lack of privacy harms journalism and activism, making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy, it will be much easier to target them. Everyone should have privacy to protect them. It’s sort of like freedom of speech is necessary not just for journalists, but for everyone, even if you have nothing to say.
> But in many cases, you could just click "reject" and the banner would also disappear...<p>Oftentimes the reject flow is substantially more annoying than the accept flow. I click reject myself when it's an option, but I can absolutely understand how people might get conditioned to click accept when clicking reject might result in more popups.
"To me, having a browser setting for cookies is the only sane way to handle this, it's surprising that this was not considered from the beginning."<p>This is exactly what browsers did back the 90s, they asked about every single cookie.<p>Then browsers got configurable options to simply accept either all cookies, no cookies, or only first party cookies (excluding third party sites unrelated to the domain you visited).<p>For now well over 20 years I have disabled 3rd party cookies in all browsers I use, and only in a few cases overall did I need to make exemptions.
Well, the whole thing is theater anyway. It does not matter what you choose.<p>They will fingerprint you with or without cookies. They may or not try to honor your preferences, but their "partners" will not try, and by the time you see that banner, it's all out there.<p>"Accept" is the close button.
People expect visiting a website to be read only or contained within a sandbox to not read other files on their computer which is correct. Most people just don’t care about tracking and want to get to the content.
Most people reasonably assume that if they click Reject they won't get the page they're looking for.
><i>This is a jaw-drop moment for me every single time I observe someone else using the web and quickly clicking "accept"</i><p>There's a mismatch between the velocity at which people visit sites and the time it takes to navigate the cookie particulars of each site.<p>And, we can dismiss this as people being uninformed or lazy but the reality it is that's actually not so unreasonable. Cookies are in some ways near the bottom of the list where privacy is concerned, given everything else from breaches to search dossiers to device finger-printing to mobile device location-tracking to the ubiquity of cameras in the real world, and on and on.<p>The idea that we're clawing back privacy in any meaningful sense by blocking a few cookies here and there is kind of quaint.
Because 90% don't even do anything? It turns out it's actually one of those really annoying problems to delay cookies which were supposed to be sent already in the HTTP request response until a user interaction has happened. And on a lot of pages, non technical people embed random 3rd party resources. And these 3rd party resources might claim to use only "technically necessary" cookies, but of course that's nonsense; I'm not visiting the 3rd party.
if ever there were a need for a small local ai plugin...
Agreeing to terms and contracts without reading or at least skimming them is not responsible adult behavior and should not be used as a model for legislation, no matter how many people do it. I agree that we do have a culture where private law is not taken very seriously, and that's very unfortunate.<p>People do not have a right (morally speaking, not legally) to access or use a service (or a website) etc without having to read/agree to the terms (applies to analog and digital).
Terms of services and contracts are written for lawyers and not the average people.<p>If your terms require people to get a law degree and take a week to parse the 400 page document, then I would argue that it's a tactic to get people to sign up for the service without fully understanding it.<p>We need legislation that forces companies to communicate the terms in a way that an average person can comprehend.
How much of <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/">https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/</a> have you actually read?
Try to get anything done then, there's so many places these days where you have to approve 300 page legal documents to e.g. record day care times, pick up packages and so forth. There is literally not enough time in the day. The option for me would be to not put my kid in daycare (I lose the spot if I don't put in the daycare times, and the only way to do that is a 3rd party service) and not pick up packages (have to agree to the EULA to get the app that I need to unlock the pickup locker) and dozens of other places.<p>We really need to stop companies from putting up these insanely complicated legal texts to use basic services when they could all be behind standard contracts.
Cookie control always should have been a browser control. The legal route always should have been to force it to be built into browsers that provide sane defaults, and make it illegal to circumvent what the browser declares as far as fingerprinting etc.<p>any sort of elevation prompt, IF I allow them to be popups or an icon in a toolbar, should always be in the same place and not cover the page.
Just enforce the GPC header... <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/Sec-GPC" rel="nofollow">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...</a>
In a way it is - or rather it wouldn’t t change anything if we added more features.<p>The default is “no”. Without explicit consent you can’t do a lot of things.<p>You can’t have a default yes, because how can you agree with consent but automatically to everything?<p>And if it’s a no, are you saying you can’t ask a user for permission to use their data for a specific purpose?<p>And if you can ask, that’s what we have right now.
If people really cared, they’d choose browsers that have better control, but that’s obviously not a priority for them. Why do you think this sort of thing should be regulated to suit your preferences when most people don’t seem to agree with you?
Because everyone agrees - cookies banners are annoying and need to go away. Everyone is on the same page about this. The easiest way to make that happen is "move them into the browser".<p>How often do you get prompted for, say, secure DNS or HTTP? Almost never, because your browser has sane defaults and controls that. So, there you go.
I think that's a stretch. People can care, but be unwilling to spend the time researching it or accept the trade offs that come with small browsers (which are often unsupported for applications you might want to use).
There are many things someone might care about and at some point you have to prioritize. This topic in particular is practically a cold war where you always have to catch up on how things are, lest you loose it all. The required effort is disproportionate to the result.<p>P.S.: No true Scotsman spotted
> If people really cared, they’d choose browsers that have better control<p>If people really cared, they’d chose reputable suppliers that sell non toxic food. If they are eating food with lead, they don’t care.<p>Don’t force your wordview on people through regulation
IMO any contract, waver, etc., shouldn't be legally enforceable unless the signatory has actually read it. It's always seemed to me to be one hell of a pathway of abuse (in a way) to just be able to bind someone to be legally required to do anything you want, for example, by just relying on them not reading the thing they signed.
Good grief no. Using websites in the UK and the EU is an exercise in pain. Every single one of them has the doorway effect where you follow a link to them and you’re faced with some Subway sandwich grade range of choices to be made and you’ve forgotten why you were there in the first place.<p>As it stands I just hit Accept on literally everything and that’s fine for me.
You could use Consent-O-Matic <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-matic/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-mat...</a><p>It already pushes the correct "Reject" button for you on a lot of sites (not all; it works based on rule lists)
How cookie consent has been deployed by the data sponges is my go-to demonstration of malicious compliance.
Websites need cookies.
I don't get why I have to suffer through this for a few puritans who literally lose nothing in the process of this transaction but act as if Stasi is watching them.
> From a factual perspective, I honestly think that shouldn’t be controversial: it’s well-understood that very few people actually read those things, they just want to get them out of the way<p>There’s no way this would fly. “I didn’t read it” can’t possibly be an excuse to avoid being bound by an agreement. Every party to an agreement that flaunted its terms, even though they took advantage of the benefits granted by it, would invoke it as a defense, and it’s irrefutable. The system would completely fall apart if this happened.<p>There’s a balance that needs to be carefully managed here. Yes, fairness to consumers is important. But you can’t destroy the incentive to produce value in so doing.
> “I didn’t read it” can’t possibly be an excuse to avoid being bound by an agreement<p>Only engineers have trouble understanding this. It can be a reasonable defense, and it has successfully been used in courts of law many times. The law is not a machine that compiles text like code literally. Imagine someone who coerces a dying or sick person to sign an agreement they couldn’t possibly be in a reasonable state of mind to understand what they were doing -- the law can and does invalidate such “contracts”. That is the same principle behind age of consent laws. The law could theorerically (and does) invalidate “agreements” which no one is reasonably expected to read and understand.
I am an attorney, and am aware of certain exceptions. But these are exceptions and not the general rule, which is what I am speaking of.<p>> The law could theorerically (and does) invalidate “agreements” which no one is reasonably expected to read and understand.<p>I haven’t heard of a single case where an agreement was voided because “no one could reasonably be expected to understand it.” Unless the language was so impenetrable or vague that the agreement itself could not be discerned. Lawyers tend not to write such agreements.
EULAs are restricted in power in EU and at least to me these cookie banners are similar in spirit.
"I didn't read it," sure. But, "A reasonable person would not read it?"
Why would a reasonable person not read it?<p>I just visited theguardian.com to see their cookie banner. The banner says this:<p>> Your Privacy (`x` button to close the tab)<p>> US residents have certain rights with regard to the sale or sharing of personal information to third parties.<p>> Guardian News and Media and our partners use information collected through cookies or in other forms to improve experience on our site and pages, analyze how it is used and show personalized advertising.<p>> You can opt out of the sale of all of your personal information by pressing<p>> <button>Do not sell or share my personal information</button><p>It's 3 sentences, plus a button that says "Do not sell or share my personal information". I actually don't even think this is GDPR compliant, because my layman's understanding says that GDPR consent must be presented as opt-in, rather than opt-out. (I guess they are going for CCPA/CPRA compliance?) But anyway, I would think that a reasonable person could be expected to notice a button that says "Do not sell or share my personal information" and then click it, especially when it's portrayed prominently at the bottom of the page.
> Why would a reasonable person not read it?<p>Because this is there 1 millionth cookie banner, because every site and their momma has one.<p>Also, 90% of cookie banners are not this good. They tell you nothing, hide the "reject" button behind multiple screens, etc. At that point the consumer is trained to click accept.
This is indeed a rather good implementation of ehat GDPR requires: clear unambiguous language, an opt-out available immediately.<p>This is the definition of informed consent
The GDPR doesn’t allow opt-out consent to count as consent. The only consent it recognizes as valid consent is opt-in.<p>However, since we are discussing the banner that The Guardian website shows to US viewers, I assume they’re trying to comply with California privacy law, which does allow opt-out regarding the sale of personal information.
But it is complicated, no? Even if you click you agree, if the you thought you were agreeing to one thing but actually agreed to another because they buried the lede, “I didn’t read it” is a reasonable defense.
Why would you claim the false "I didn't read it" ahead of the true "I read it but understood it differently"? The latter allows for adding the fault shifting claim "because the other party wrote it deceptively", while "intentionally didn't read" makes it much harder to blame the other guy.
It just won’t fly in court. Full stop. There are perhaps other defenses to be raised, like unconscionable terms, but not that one.
It can and has been in many cases in many legal systems. For example, let’s say you walk into my store to buy a dish washer. I say ”here is an extended warranty that I will give you. Just sign” you sign it instead of reading 15 pages of boilerplate. In the end of the document it says you now owe me 10 billion dollars. Doubt I will be able to enforce it in most legal systems.
That’s not an “I didn’t read it” defense. That’s a “term is this contract is unconscionable” defense. They’re not the same thing. I was speaking strictly of the former.<p>Also, striking an unconscionable term typically does not void the whole contract. Just the term in question.
As a general rule I believe many online terms of use, eulas and similar online contracts are examples of procedural unconscionability, in that length is often too long that one can be expected to read it in the day to day action of "surfing the web", I believe this is also the opinion of the EU and many of its member states, hence the limitations found on enforcement of such contracts.<p>Aside from that many of these contract have terms that might be considered substantive unconscionability - for example if terms state that what you post can be used by the company that owns the service for marketing of the company or the service I feel this would not make it through most legal systems that I feel before the attempt are not inherently corrupt.
All of these cookie forms have the same set of toggles. At a high level all anyone is saying is that we should just declare any kind of tracking cookies unconscionable terms for this kind of dialog box. Caching, shopping carts, explicit log in, these are totally fine and you don't need a dialog. The tracking stuff is not that hard to define and it should just be declared unconscionable.
That's why billionaires don't buy their own dishwashers
This is bullshit.<p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/disney-says-man-cant-sue-wifes-death-agreed-disney-terms-service-rcna166594" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/disney-says-man-cant-su...</a><p>"Disney is trying to have a widower's wrongful death lawsuit dismissed and sent to arbitration because the man had signed up for a Disney+ account several years ago."<p>Now what happened was that Disney quit fighting over really bad PR. But the court challenge would have liteky succeeded.
That argument has actually worked in some cases, especially when you need to click away to actually access the document. I assume it's why we see more and more examples where you need to scroll the full body of text in order to "agree".
I don’t see how we could possibly prove that the person who clicked “I agree” is still the person using the computer.<p>Or that any actual human is aware that an agreement was made (since an AI can find a checkbox nowadays or software can be configured to bypass it). One way to add balance could be to require people asking for contracts to actually treat them like real serious legal documents, show up for the signing, and figure out who they are making an agreement with.
That doesn’t matter. If you authorize an agent—human or mechanical—to enter into agreements on your behalf (even by mistake), and the agent presents itself as operating on your behalf, the agent’s decisions will be treated as though they were your own.<p>Prinicipal-agent law predates computers by a very long time.
> There’s a balance that needs to be carefully managed here. Yes, fairness to consumers is important. But you can’t destroy the incentive to produce value in so doing.<p>The value is derived from the people consuming the product. Placing the "incentive to produce value" above the people who presumably are the source of this value seems...misaligned.
Of you need a nonstandard contract then you need to provide proof that it was understood. These are not provided in a context where I would expect anyone reading it to have a lawyer to advise so they obviously don't understand it
But "its specifically engineered to ensure that nobody reads it" is a real argument
If someone does not read a contract or a legal agreement, before accepting or signing, it's on them, as long as they were provided an opportunity to do so. Dissolving legal agreements because people didn't bother them to read them is not conducive to a society. This also harms people who would like to be able to form contracts with others and enjoy the benefits that come with that (for instance, you usually get something in return for agreeing to something you wouldn't otherwise). The government should not have such a big role to play here and decide which contracts are not allowed to go through.
>If someone does not read a contract or a legal agreement, before accepting or signing, it's on them<p>When was the last time you read an entire EULA before installing software?<p>I'm going to guess the time frame is somewhere around "never."<p>These are nuisance contracts designed to jade people with legalese while stealing their rights to things like class action and enforcing binding arbitration.<p>Standard contracts sounds like the way to go.
> Tired of misleading cookie banners? The EU Commission has finally proposed a solution: set your privacy preferences in the browser once, and never see another banner.<p>So lawmakers do know how to make legally binding preferences based on device settings? What a crazy innovation.. now if only parents were given these options to indicate their child is using a device.. we could do away with all this Online Safety Act nonsense...
Don't fall for the "we are just stupid" propaganda, which is used constantly by governments acting in bad faith.<p>Browsers <i>already had</i> settings for deleting cookies. There was never a reason for banners whose only function was pulling the ladder up from smaller competitors and concentrating power in the hands of an oligopoly that could siphon data directly from the OS.<p>This coupled with a law mandating ISPs provide a "change IP on demand" feature would have given users a sort of "Tor light" level of privacy. Strong privacy is trivial to achieve for a government that doesn't have a conflicting goal of total surveillance.
But I don't want to delete cookies? I <i>want</i> websites to use cookies that are technically necessary e.g. for keeping me logged in. I just don't want them to use it to track my behavior especially inter-website.
It’s not about cookies. It’s about what the site is allowed to do with your data. Cookies are an implementation detail.<p>It’s baffling we’re having this misunderstanding on this site in 2026 still.
Is there any reason to believe that the current laws being passed by the UK, EU are against the will of the people? Everything I have seen makes the "anti-porn" laws or whatever seem extremely popular.
changing IP is not really enough for privacy, there is many ways to fingerprint your machine/browser and uniquely identify you across networks<p><a href="https://creepjs.org/checker" rel="nofollow">https://creepjs.org/checker</a>
No, but it's the obvious starting point. You can then put additional laws on top banning fingerprinting out of band (if you care about window dressing), fund development of anti-fingerprinting technologies, fund Tor, run exit nodes in a transparent and publicly auditable fashion, etc.<p>It's not hard to make privacy work when you <i>are</i> the government rather than working against a hostile one.
I think it's because every single website breaks if you don't allow cookies at the browser level. Some knowledge of what the specific cookie does was necessary.
You mean we had the DNT flag in the browser.
That's exactly what the California's Digital Age Assurance Act does but that wasn't well-received either.
The problem there is that parent's won't know how to do it, or won't care. Many can hardly operate the most user-friendly phone, let alone manage accounts.<p>The online safety acts and its EU counterparts are somewhat risky, but nobody wants the mention the only proper alternative: a total ban on "social media." Not just for kids, but for everyone. Or a ban on smart phones, that would work too, at least short term. But: money.
> The problem there is that parent's won't know how to do it, or won't care.<p>This is unfortunately the reality.<p>The other day a friend asked me to help her make her phone safer for her kids to use. I started by asking if she set permissions on the apps she downloaded. She looked at me blankly, "What permissions?". I proceeded to show her how you can granularly control what you allow each app to do on your phone and what access it is allowed. Her head blew up, she had no idea any of this existed and after gong through a few menus, she didn't care any more. It was all too complicated and too much to think about for a busy mum.<p>This is why governments unfortunately are having to try to protect people from themselves. As tech competent people it all seems so simple to us, but we need to remember the majority of the population just click 'Allow All' and blow past all permission and security questions as they have no idea what any of it means.
"is this device for you, or a child" is one of the first options when setting up an iphone.<p>I haven't set up an Android in a while, but, I doubt it's massively different.
Yeah but most parents devices are for them, they just let their kid use it too.
it's very simpler, i recently got an android tablet for my child and it would take a lot of effort to miss all the stuff about setting it up for a child
Make the default "allow none" or "child-safe" and then if the parent does nothing that's what they get.
UK mobile operators already defaulted to blocking adult sites before OSA, and lets the subscriber turn it off, which seems like a reasonable option.<p>It'd be even better if there was a way for people to selectively turn it off for specific devices without MITM the connections. It wouldn't be that hard to come up with a mechanism for that.
When we buy a new phone, the configuration process should ask if the device will be used by a kid. Easy and simple.<p>When restoring factory defaults, the same question, just in case the phone is sold, gifted, stolen or whatever.<p>If you are going to give a phone to a minor you should set that option right from the start.
That's why the setting should be on the device, not the browser or individual apps. One setting that you could even get pre-configured when you buy the phone.
It's ok if parents won't care. It's a choice too.
Yes, you can't make parents care, but make it easy for the ones who do, and you'll also pick up some number of those who care but only if it's not too difficult. There's no reason a parent should have to set permissions separately in 10 differents apps on a child's device.
I've build some moderately sophisticated server systems up on "bare metal" (as the kids say), know my way around a shell better than most programmers, understand networking better than most programmers, et c., and I <i>still</i> find restricting and monitoring kids' devices to be a huge pain in the ass. The only places it's not <i>extremely</i> shitty are the Switch (which still isn't great) and Apple devices.<p>Options between "we don't have tech in the house" and "wide-open tech, we have it all" are all some amount of painful, usually for no good reason.<p>(I remember once investigating how to do some pretty basic stuff for this in Linux, hoping to find something nicer than manually setting some executable permissions and firewall rules and then having to go back and change them all the time, and the closest thing to a guide I found was an old article from Red Hat that basically lead with "LOL, good luck you poor sap, Linux sucks at this" before going on to explain the various bad ways available to sort-of, but not entirely, accomplish it with a lot of work, and significant ongoing time-burden)
That’s not true. Every TV app has a parent setting. That’s really easy to use browser support profiles just like TV apps do bad. UX doesn’t mean that it can’t be set up easily for parents. Windows itself could have profiles for kids that has all this set automatically. It’s not hard. There’s just no will to do it.
if parents wont make the slightest bit of effort why should the rest of us pay to keep their children safe?
A child can still access knives if the parents don't care.
>>>>>>> now if only parents were given these options to indicate their child is using a device.. we could do away with all this Online Safety Act nonsense...<p>THIS<p>Holy shit. This is such an obvious fix. And it shuts up those surveillance state goons immediately.<p>My God, why have we tried to summon up the ghost of 1984 when such a simple fix as this will do.<p>Parents can lock devices into "child mode" that emits "user is child" headers. Websites can then block.<p>The blast radius is zero.<p>Good God, we need to fast track this into browsers right now. If we hurry we might be able to point to this as the technical fix.<p>Once some of the infrastructure exists, OS vendors can hook into it.<p>Firefox devs - please do this right now. Please spearhead this.<p>I might have to vibe code an advocacy site for the spec and set up a GitHub / RFC process.
> Parents can lock devices into "child mode" that emits "user is child" headers. Websites can then block.<p>CA tried this with AB 1856. I wasn't a fan of this (neither was EFF) because of the privacy and tracking concerns of blasting the fact that the user is a child to all websites.<p><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/05/one-step-forward-two-steps-back-cas-ab-1856-exempts-open-source-expands-age-gating" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/05/one-step-forward-two-s...</a><p>It would better for the block to happen at the device level. That is, the browser knows it's on a child's device and has a whitelist of allowed sites.<p>There is already an RTA (Restriced to Adults) header where the website self-labels that it's for adults only and the browser can block it while protecting the user's privacy. I'd prefer expanding the use of RTA.
No offense but if you're proposing a solution that involves whitelists... that solution has already failed.<p>The web is too big and changes too much and that's before we get to the issue of applying laws to a whitelist based on different juristictions worldwide.<p>And I have to question, who would administer it? The parents? They won't. Google or Apple? Why do they want to deal with irate parents or culture wars around what is or is not on the list?<p>There is obvious increasing demand for this from parents, politicians are going to act on it, I think a "this is a child" header is the only one that actually really works. It works for the parents because it's easy to setup. It works for websites because they can cleanly identify a child and filter content if appropriate.<p>It seems to me that every other solution than a "this is a child" header is either impractical or way worse.
> that solution has already failed.<p>Yes, granted, a globally enforced whitelist probably wouldn't work. I'm referring to bespoke lists that parents control. I know plenty of parents that use this. e.g. here's Apple's feature:<p><a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/105121#:~:text=Prevent%20inappropriate%20web%20content,-You" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/en-us/105121#:~:text=Prevent%20ina...</a><p>> It works for websites because they can cleanly identify a child and filter content if appropriate.<p>This still doesn't solve the problem of different jurisdictions and culture wars of what is or isn't appropriate for kids. All this does is move the liability upstream to websites instead of the devices. That is, instead of the browser deciding what's appropriate, now Youtube, Reddit, etc have to decide. And, as we've seen with the OSA in the UK, typically smaller platforms can't handle the enforcement cost so they just shut down entirely.<p><a href="https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/" rel="nofollow">https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/</a><p>The larger platforms often use overbroad CYA measures and throw up age verification where they don't need to (Reddit has done this in the EU), or just ban minors (Anthropic and character.ai did this).<p>As far as blocking explicit content, a self-labeling requirement like RTA accomplishes the same thing as a "this is a child" header but without the liability CYA and without the privacy concerns.<p>Where the "this is a child" header solution could theoretically win is allowing kids to access websites in a limited child-safe way, e.g. going to Reddit in child mode automatically shuts off certain subreddits. But, as we've seen, it just doesn't work well in practice and usually frustrates parents by overly broad content policing and liability theater. Kids are also at different levels of maturity and I've seen them get frustrated when they're binned into age categories that they feel they don't deserve. e.g. a 12 year old might be plenty mature enough for the 13-16 age category.<p>But my real objection to the "this is a child header" is the privacy risk and surveillance risk. I don't think it's worth it.
This will work... if you think this is their true motivation, and the panopticon itself isn't the true end goal.
I agree, and I agree with the enthusiasm on which you bring in.<p>I've long since considered that the efforts for online child safety should be pointed at educating parents and spearheading some kind of certification of compliance for child safety of software and websites.<p>[this product is certified to adhere to EU:CSA]<p>Then you can block everything not certified, and the software that does the blocking would also be certified, the two major prongs you need (endpoints and sites working together: else they're blocked). The rest of the money goes to education for parents about this fact, and the dangers of not doing it, and how to do it.<p>This is super "easy" (when comparing to the effort it would take for putting backdoors in everything).<p>Which is why I think that the reason is definitely not child safety, and more about crime control.<p>Me talking about UK blocking people unless they ID themselves in 2013: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6979295">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6979295</a><p>Me talking about how its disingenuous because we have superior technical solutions to this particular issue last year: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010902">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010902</a>
That works well for controlled devices like phones, tablets, and TVs, but it’s much harder on desktops unless you expect parents to become IT administrators.
California AB1043, in other words
Make a website about that. I’ll spread it.
Or you could just stop spying on people.<p>No cookie banner is required for <i>functionally necessary</i> cookies.
It's great they're talking about it, but they should just do like California and DO something about it.[1]<p>> When the law takes effect in January 2027, Californians will see new privacy options in web browsers. When enabled, these controls will automatically inform websites of their privacy preferences, helping to protect personal information from being sold to data brokers and other third parties. This means they will be able to protect their data — like their browsing history, location data, purchase history, and personal interests — across the entire internet with a single step.<p>[1] <a href="https://cppa.ca.gov/announcements/2025/20251008_2.html" rel="nofollow">https://cppa.ca.gov/announcements/2025/20251008_2.html</a>
So much legislation about privacy that involves "oh those bad companies" that ends up putting the onus on the individual to manage it all.<p>I'm visiting a website, i don't want to make a legal agreement with every website ...<p>Social media bad for kids? Everyone hand over your ID at the door ...
Wow, finally. This would be a major quality of life update for browsing the web. As others have stated, not all sites merit the same preferences. Hopefully they can adapt a middleground of default settings with the ability to customize site by site.
As long as it's some automated signal, the User-Agent can use any logic it wants to send it without cooperation. The specifics of how to send the signal don't have to be legislated. E.g. Firefox's Tracking Protection has a global default a site-specific overrides, so it's very likely that they would do the same for this or just combine those features.
under what circumstances as user would I want to explicitly agree to have my browsing history sent to tens or hundreds of third party tracking aggregators?
I've seen people argue, with a straight face, that they prefer to get ads that are "relevant to them". Including here on Hacker News.
I don't disagree. The ideal state here is really layers of customation for the defaults. Options like reject all, or strictly necessary would be at the forefront. And then it's really up to the individual how they want to proceed when those options are not available.
If offered something in return, I guess
Ask that question to the 99% of people who click 'Allow All' on cookie banners.
Devil's advocate argument: if they were giving you something in return, and that could be cash, but it might also be "you can have this content for free".<p>In the UK a few news sites have changed cookie banners to "you can accept and see this stuff for free, or you can sign up for a subscription, which would you prefer?". It's the only time I hit accept (and then clear browser history).<p>If blanket preferences from browser signals became the norm, a segment might open up where you would configure preferences and a data broker would make sure you get something in return for your data. At minimum it might force paywalled publishers to consider that as a "lite" subscription option.
That's been ruled illegal in the EU, but EU sites still do it. Basically, the consent exception only applies if the user isn't coerced into it. Because coerced consent isn't consent.
> but it might also be "you can have this content for free".<p>ads don't require invasve and pervasive tracking
Effective ads absolutely require knowing more about the user than the context on the page it's a 1-2 orders of magnitude revenue difference for the publisher per-impression.
You seem to have missed the point. No ads dont require those things, but companies could start offering content in return for those things instead of ads.
As I understand it, it is the position of several DPAs that denial of access entirely (i.e. "consent or pay") could contravene the "freely given" requirement of GDPR in most cases, though this has thus far not been tested in court.<p>(see e.g.
<a href="https://iapp.org/news/a/cjeu-clarifies-cookie-consent-requirements" rel="nofollow">https://iapp.org/news/a/cjeu-clarifies-cookie-consent-requir...</a>
<a href="https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/edpb-consent-or-pay-models-should-offer-real-choice_en" rel="nofollow">https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/edpb-consent-or-pay-models-s...</a>
)
> but companies could start offering content in return for those things instead of ads.<p>Again, that is not a requirement. If your argument is that they give us content for free because of ads, <i>ads don't require pervasive and invasive tracking</i>. Or hiding stuff behind paywalls (since ads pay for it).
Sometimes I do it to reward the website for being less shit than most websites.
Even well meaning bodies like TFL (Transport for London) have cookie warnings that impede the actual access of the website.<p>Need to look up a bus time? Full screen cookie consent with accept buttons drawn OFF THE SCREEN.
<i>> automated signals that would communicate your privacy preferences between your device and websites or apps</i>0<p>Sounds good, as long as it covers the "legitimate interest" bollocks⁰ that is often hidden in inconvenient UI nests as well as the basic preference.<p>-------<p>[0] "we see your preference not to be stalked, but we want to anyway, click again for every partner to reconfirm you don't want them following you around"
> Tired of misleading cookie banners? The EU Commission has finally proposed a solution: set your privacy preferences in the browser once, and never see another banner. Unfortunately, the tracking industry is pushing back – and so far, they’ve been successful.<p>> ...<p>> You may think that EU privacy law requires cookie banners. But the law is clear: online tracking is prohibited by default.<p>That's an excellent idea... lets see how its implemented on <a href="https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en" rel="nofollow">https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en</a><p>Oh... there's a cookie banner.
Actual title: "Stop the tracking circus. Kill the cookie banner!"<p>;dr<p>The "cookie banner" is an interactive method used by "adtech" companies to try to get user consent, as required by EU law. The forced interaction makes this method annoying<p>Google and other "adtech" companies are lobbying EU Member States to vote against giving users a means to non-interactively deny consent
I always wondered though why a website in the eu, for the love of their users, won't just drop cookie usage and instrusive third party scripts. Just do analytics on the backend and don't set any cookie, except for tokens in authenticated areas
You can't even save user preferences (like language or other settings) without showing a cookie banner. Edit: I was mistaken. You can't save inferred preferences, but can save explicit user-saved options.<p>And for a serious website, front end analytics are kind of a necessity to understand how users interact with pages and improve the experience. Note that it certainly doesn't require tracking the behaviour of <i>individual</i> users, just understanding how controls are used in aggregate.<p>I know it seems like you could work around this with careful design and maybe focus groups and such, but I can tell you we regularly uncover surprising insights from (aggregate) trends in front-end events.
That's not true and is a very common misinformation people repeat online. You can save user preferences in cookies without any consent banner, if the cookie isn't used for tracking.<p>See here[0], page 6:<p>> As stated in Article 5(3) ePD: ‘This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service.’<p>0: <a href="https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/documents/2024-10/edpb_guidelines_202302_technical_scope_art_53_eprivacydirective_v2_en_0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/documents/2024-10/ed...</a><p>As long as you do not share that info with 3rd party, and the user requested it, you can store via cookies pretty much whatever you want without the need for a consent screen
I always wondered why a grocery store in the eu, for the love of their users, won't just drop money usage. Just give out food for free, except for alcohol.
That's what I'm doing with a service I made. But I don't have any ads, and ad-supported websites can't easily do that.
This just doesn't make sense. EU regulations are already making progress in improving online privacy: (a) No cookie banner required for functionally necessary cookies, (b) there needs to be an option to refuse tracking cookies in the cookie banner, (c) the dreaded cookie banner appears only the first time you visit a site.<p>I would say, we are like 80% there. Yes, there are still some dark patterns employed by cookie banners, trying to trick you into accepting tracking. But they are not too hard to make out. And they can be fixed by tuning the regulation a bit: Require the opt-out to be the first choice and the only one with highlighting.<p>Ad tracking is not going away tomorrow. If we ever are going to get rid of it, we first need legislation to defang it so it stops being a cash-cow. "Tracking prohibited by default" is a great end-goal, but we are not there yet.<p>Reading between the lines, it appears that there is some new solution proposed to "automatically communicate your privacy preference". That's nice, but when e.g. the Do Not Track header was tried, it just fell flat. So until this new solution is implemented and adopted, I'll take my websites with a cookie banner, thank you.<p>It is an unfortunate choice that the campaign obsesses over the cookie banner, instead of trying to actually advance the solution that would make it obsolete.
Here's the full text of the bill (Articles 88a and 88b):<p><a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52025PC0837#:~:text=articles%C2%A0are%C2%A0added:%C2%A0-,‘Article%2088a,-Processing%20of%20personal" rel="nofollow">https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...</a><p>As written, this doesn't eliminate cookie banners completely, only if your browser is sending a Do Not Track header or similar. That's unfortunate news if you use fingerprint protection - those send default headers, so you'll still be bombarded with cookie banners. Hopefully existing anti-fingerprinting solutions will offer a "default headers but with Do Not Track" option.
Okay, but you can quite literally just delete the cookie banner. Cookie banner forces websites to ask for consent, no cookie banner = no consent = less tracking since they usually hold off on ALL tracking until you interact with the cookie prompt.<p>I have personally never ever had any problems with the cookie banner since Brave deletes them with 100% accuracy, there's sometimes where a site will refuse to function properly, but it's usually sites I don't care about anyway and if I HAVE to get it working I disable brave shield, turn off all tracking, consent and turn the shields back on.<p>It is unfortunate that most browsers cannot implement this as it goes against what the companies behind the browsers want. Deleting the cookie prompt would stop people from occasionally just accepting all cookies and opting into tracking after getting tired of it.
Would have gone harder without the Corporate Memphis/Alegria art which is the art always used to try and convince you to hand over your tracking rights.
I still don't get why every website has a cookie banner by default. I am data controller for several companies and have lots of exposure to GDPR. All my websites have no cookie banner, as they are not required.<p>I guess that most companies just chuck it up there as a default so they dont have to read the law, or maybe they are all actually harvesting and selling personal data and therefore require cookies? Who knows.
Don't underestimate the argument of "just to be on the safe side". Someone running a business who doesn't know a lot about cookies will often just put a banner on as an easy arse covering mechanism even when not required.
Perhaps someone could publish a clear A/B test on how many views/conversions you lose by having a cookie banner?
Or they had their site developed by an agency and the cookie banner is just part of their standard scaffolding for a new site.
Let businesses who don't know what they're doing be outcompeted by businesses who know what they're doing.
> I guess that most companies just chuck it up there as a default so they dont have to read the law<p>I think most companies just don't give a fuck about user privacy and therefor have to show one. There are of course exceptions. But I don't know how many of them have been actual (for-profit) companies.
If you use social media pixels, ad tracking, or performance analytics tools like Google Analytics a cookie banner and consent is required. If not, then not.
Side note: there’s plenty of Analytics tools that don’t require cookies. Plausible (<a href="https://plausible.io" rel="nofollow">https://plausible.io</a>) is one of them, there are many others.
Not affiliated, just a happy customer.
> I guess that most companies just chuck it up there as a default<p>50% that, and 50% that <i>way</i> more companies than you expect are harvesting and profiting from your data.
I’ve made a few sites for work that aren’t our primary focus. The sites used cookies for login and for “required purposes” (storing in progress state). We did all the tracking on the backend, no cookies or client side trackers.<p>On our go-live form there’s a question “do you use cookies” and it’s yes/no. If you say yes legal block the site from going live without the pre approved cookie banner…
> We did all the tracking on the backend<p>Just checking, you do know that still counts as tracking and may fall under GDPR rules? GDPR was never just about cookies.
Sounds like your legal department is broken. You should fix that.<p>I mean that both in the sense of "you, plural" (your company should fix that) and "you, personally" (because diffusion of responsibility is a real issue, and someone needs to actually do it).
> I guess that most companies just chuck it up there as a default so they dont have to read the law, or maybe they are all actually harvesting and selling personal data and therefore require cookies?<p>That has been my guess as well. If you run npm install half-the-internet you have no idea what's in there, so just slap on that cookie banner for good measure. Of course the real problem is not knowing what's inside your application, but the thought process is "eh, if a blanket cookie banner does the job then that's good enough for me".
At this stage, it's easier to block them with uBlock and move on.<p>I don't have a lot of confidence for legislative solutions. Although I admire people who keep trying.
It's technically stupid in the first place.<p>It's YOUR browser, a locally running software on a physical computer YOU own which memorize the cookie key-value pair a remote host told YOU to memorize and YOU return the same value later. It's YOU who allowed the cookie. If YOU don't want to allow the cookie, YOU simply not allow it.<p>You are technically 100% control on cookie. These JavaScript implemented in-page UI has no guarantee to respect your wish. But you have a power to disable it.
It's not quite the same thing since the same cookie used for login (doesn't require consent) could be used for tracking (requires consent). But also, basically nobody cares.
"Cookie banner" is a colloquial name; not a technically accurate description of what the banners are for.<p>GDPR is not about cookies; it is about tracking. Whether the tracking is done through cookies or through other means makes absolutely no difference.<p>You can prevent some tracking via your browser, but definitely not all of it.
This has nothing to do with cookies, and everything with pervasive and evasive tracking.<p>E.g. storing your precise geolocation for 12 years: <a href="https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541</a>
Cookie banners are just a kind of ad. If you're at the site, the demand you have for the content on the site is probably close to inelastic (especially on services websites). The site exploits its effective monopoly on the content to raise prices to the user (in this case your time, attention, and experience).<p>There is ZERO cost to abusing the user over, and over, and over again by asking for permission to track them.<p>We shouldn't have the cookie banners at all because NO company should be able to do anything with tracking data. Just ban the use of user data by companies and most of SillyCon Valley's garbage behaviors are fixed.<p>Similarly, I should never get "terms of service updates" from digital companies because there should be no changes that they can make. You can provide the obvious service that you're providing; you can't aggregate my data for any purpose other than directly serving me; you can't aggregate my data with that of other users; if you retain my data for any other purpose, the government should take percentages of your revenue. I shouldn't have to wade through the BS that the mercenary corporate lawyers cook up to extract value from me.
Also there's a big difference between the sites that easily allow you to simply reject whatever their premade cookie settings are. And, the sites that <i>only</i> allow you to use them after you've accepted (example, politico.eu). Or, the sites that do have a 'reject' option, but you have to click through multiple screens and then manually reject each individual option.<p>Sites that easily allow you to simply reject everything are then a short hop, skip and a jump into browser settings where you auto-reject all cookie/tracking nonsense
I think this would be a net benefit, but I can see an issue. A lot of news sites today do "accept tracking, or pay us, or you can't access the page". The orgs doing this are reputable-ish so I assume it's considered legal, on some level at least.<p>So now they'd have a new popup that says "reconfigure your browser to accept tracking, or pay us, or you can't access the page". Which isn't really an improvement.
And guess who makes the most of devices and the most popular browser, I already see post install "Get most of the browsing experience by agreeing to these defaults."
is there an extension that modifies the cookie, changes values randomly? This will pollute their analysis with junk.
This ones a little tough. Advertising through trackers is a massive portion of how sites get revenue. Going back to the old days would decimate this space, and have widespread effects on the internet (though im not sure it would be noticed by most of us anymore with how dead the internet feels now)<p>I guess what I'm saying is, there is no good solution here. I don't want every site I visit to require a usage fee just to browse. Imagine if slashdot turned into WSJ with a paywall for every article.<p>Kagi already does something like this, and cool - if you use it enough, maybe its worth a subscription. I dont find myself googling (searching) much anymore, so paying to do so just becomes something i need to find a way around. Like API token usage for AI, using it is like making a new recipe in the oven every time. You expect it to work but you have to invest the time and money into the attempt before you can find out the results (whereas you dont have to do this on free chatgpt, google search with ai, etc as comparison). Too much investment without guarantee of results. I'm fine without that guarantee as long as im not wasting my time and money upfront.<p>Anyways, thanks for letting me rant
Every website that you visit and decide the article is worth reading, means a human spent time working on the content, and people spent time building the website. Reading on the Internet has a cost associated with it, whether its your privacy or your dollars.
I kinda of agree with you - there is no good solutions if we are only changing one or two things at a time .<p>I am kind of wanting to f around and found out. I missed the old internet were most of the big websites are run by hobbyist. I know some of them may not be able to pay the bill without ad.
May we can figure out something once we leveled the playing field
It's a "Dick over".
What does enforcement of not having these banners look like? Wha tif people just... didn't.
This should just be a browser setting with a per site opt-in when more data collection is needed. Just like you can enable notifications, webcam etc... or set it to always deny.<p>Why the fuck do people have to keep stating the same preference over and over again. This is a hellscape of bad government AND corporate policy colliding.
Yes please!
> he EU Commission finally proposed a solution to the cookie banner problem: automated signals that would communicate your privacy preferences between your device and websites or apps.<p>It wasn't on EU Commission to "finally propose a solution". The soluton has <i>always</i> been there.<p>Somehow, Google, aka world's largest tracking and advertising company incidentally making the worlds' dominant browser and completely dominating all web standards, couldn't be bothered, and instead was pushing crap like FLoC
> Somehow, [...] couldn't be bothered<p>Google knows if you can set this once it's game over for their adverting business. At least with the cookie banners, there's a possibly you won't refuse every banner.<p>Especially those banners that only have "Accept" or "More options" with all those checkboxes to clear.
Every time a Cookie banner pops up, I want to kill it forever
The insanity around cookie banners is a good target.<p>> Tired of misleading cookie banners? The EU Commission has finally proposed a solution: set your privacy preferences in the browser once, and never see another banner.<p>Fortunately, if you have uBlock Origin, you can enable Easylist cookie notices under annoyances and avoid most of them. Combine with blocking third-party cookies, and the problem pretty much disappears.<p>The fact that the EU tried to regulate this stuff is a shame, because regulation is not a good remedy. End-users have agency here. The solution is to enable end-users to have control in their browser (which they always did, so it's an issue of education, like so many things).<p>Shame that Google is trying to kill uBO though. Extremely pleased that Brave continues to support it.
If it's not cookies, it will be something else. IP addresses, tracking pixels, browser fingerprinting.<p>The Do Not Track header is the only technology needed. The rest is compelling companies to obey it.
Didn't know that about Brave, but it's moot for me since Firefox also supports it and these days I find that Firefox is the better experience, not Chrome or even Chromium.
Usually government mandating something is concerning cause it seems to favor the government for its existence. However with EU commission its actually interesting combination, its representing multiple individual governments at once which somehow works good for the citizens.<p>Overall this is a common sense solution. The challenge is that a significant industry makes money by collecting and selling data. It makes it harder for businesses who depend on it, they are going to get creative and will eventually come up with some dark pattern to circumvent it.
It would have been funny to get a cookie banner on this site. They missed a good opportunity.
As if the DNT thingy didn’t exist…
Mozilla removed DNT as of Firefox 135, after 13 years since introducing it in 2011 with Firefox 4<p>In 2024 Mozilla acquired Anonym from former Meta executives and decided to introduce PPA: <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?q=privacy+preserving+attribution" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?q=privacy+preserving+attribution</a>
The problem of DNT is that Internet Explorer 11 set it to true as default, and then all companies started ignoring it on purpose.
DNT tried to do this without any legal backing which was obviously stupid.
No, please don't!<p>It's great. The current law forces people that don't give a shit about user privacy to have a banner (or any other way of asking for consent first) while giving everyone that cares and everyone not wanting to spy on their visitor a free pass.
uBlock Origin with all "annoyance" filters enabled. I haven't seen a cookie banner in years.<p>Another good one to have the "hide Youtube shorts" filter, featured on HN a while back.
There is Consent-O-Matic.<p>Also I wanna know when websites don't give a shit about my privacy and therefor have to show a cookie banner. While theoretically not consenting should mean not collecting blocking it altogether and modifying page content might mean "all bets are off". If the website expects you to have made a decision that might wrongly consider it consent.<p>Consent-O-Matic says "I don't consent".
Does this still work on new chrome versions?
Still works on Chrome 150, but it is the last supported version. Chrome 151 is being released on July 28.
I think so yes, but Firefox is probably still better.
That didn't work for me and so now I've added the specific cookie banner options. it's in the filter lists
The solution would be for browser to send do not track header and have that header be respected.<p>But we can't have that, can we ? They will lobby to hell and back for that to not happen
I am old enough to remember Do Not Track and its failure and problems associated with it. What's new here? Why wasn't it adopted in the first place for GDPR?
So DNT back again?
Uhm…<p>> The solution: automatically communicate your privacy preference<p>Would be lovely and would happen if it weren't for… wait for it… Google and whole effed up ad-busines:<p><a href="https://ppc.land/eu-council-drops-cookie-signal-after-google-lobbying-eur-40-50-bn-at-stake/" rel="nofollow">https://ppc.land/eu-council-drops-cookie-signal-after-google...</a><p>F*ck google and other BigTech…
I expanded Polish politics names and what I saw made me vomit. Will never send email to those fuckups.
Keep fighting! For now: browser plugins.
This initiative is ignorant and idiotic.
The authors don't even understand the purpose of cookie banners.<p>1. Making tracking impossible/illegal would NOT kill cookie banners, since you need them to record consent for other purposes as well, such as embedding a video from a third party like YouTube.<p>2. The GDPR explicitly prohibits site-owners from making cookie banners misleading. The law is already there, it is just not very well enforced.<p>3. "This results in up to 90% of people saying “YES” – even though only around 3% actually want to be tracked online"
This claim is grabbed out of thin air and can be dismissed as such.<p>4. "The solution: automatically communicate your privacy preference"
This is nonsense because it does not actually solve anything, because you need to record consent for a variety of purposes, not just analytics/tracking.<p>5. Killing tracking would kill the value of ads (since they are not targeted anymore), resulting in a reduced ability for small businesses to advertise and a hugely increased amount of ad spam everywhere.
Few targeted ads > Many untargeted ads<p>Unless you want an internet where advertising is no longer possible, this solves nothing apart from stroking a few activists ego.
The captchas are worse imo (from an usability standpoint) especially the newer Cloudflare infront of everything to check for bots trend.
Even if you communicated your preferences sites would still want to ask for an exception to them. At least you won't see them ask for consent if you preapprove it.
how about:
-if we really don't like targeted advertising, just outlaw it
-then let websites do whatever they want with our cookies so long as they aren't targeted advertising<p>instead of building websites and writing laws over the span of decades that just seem to want to ban targeted advertising but don't actually do it. FFS.
All browser providers have been required by international law[1] to send such a cookie popup suppression signal as set by the user, or one substantially like it, since July 18, 2026 and all web sites have been required to obey it or a superseding Internet standard:<p><a href="https://stateofutopia.com/laws/2/law2.html" rel="nofollow">https://stateofutopia.com/laws/2/law2.html</a><p>This is not a proposal, it is duly ratified international law that applies to "Every Browser Maker making a Browser available anywhere" and "Any site anywhere that receives a valid signal".<p>The EU Commission had until July 18, 2026 to modify its laws:<p>>"The site shall not display a banner, modal, interstitial, or other prompt requesting a choice already expressed by the signal. It may optionally provide a “Cookie Settings” or “Privacy Settings” link. This Law overrides all laws requiring such a display. Where any country or supernational entity has a conflicting law, it must rectify the Law within 30 days not to require such notification."<p>Therefore, insofar as it has not rectified its laws not to require such a notification, the EU Commission is in violation of international law as of 8 days ago.<p>Under section 7.3, "The State of Utopia may order compliance, require corrective updates, suspend non-compliant distribution, and impose civil penalties. Fines may be levied in any amount for continued non-compliance." so we can fine the EU Commission whatever you guys want ($1 billion? $10 billion? whatever four and a half millennia are worth) and just distribute the collected fines among you all as cash payments.<p>[1] Here is the announcement of the law 38 days ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585778">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48585778</a>
Doesn't this lead to an all-or-nothing approach?<p>I don't want randomnewssite to track me. But a favorite online store...I do want help with recommendations.
You would presumably be logged in to your favorite store site, and they would be using your identifying session to make recommendations, not anonymous tracking cookies.
Then sign in, thats enough signal for them to track you
Just disable cookies on your browser by default, and enable it for the sites that you need to log in to.<p>Ironically, this has the effect of cookie banners reappearing every time because they cannot place a cookie that says that you have rejected them.
Malicious compliance. You do not need a cookie to "store" the fact you have rejected them. They can simply assume you have rejected them from the lack of cookies. They can store a cookie once you (have gone out of your way to) accept them.
Unless disabling cookies means treating all cookies as session cookies (meaning you can still be followed within a session), this has the fun side effect of breaking pretty much every CAPTCHA firewall like Anubis, Cloudflare Turnstile, and any other that relies on cookies.<p>Unfortunately this means you have to view a lot of the web through archive.today or web.archive.org - I would know because I have uMatrix configured this way.
Session cookies for non-whitelisted sites is a nice balance between usability and privacy.<p>Session cookies for all sites would be fine if passkeys weren't like "We support passkeys. Do you want to use a passkey? Press ok again to use your passkey. Do you consent to using your passkey? Now please authenticate yourself to use the passkey... √ Thank you for using passkeys. Press ok to continue."
Honestly I've found that it's often the local businesses that shoot themselves in the foot more by this.<p>I disable cookies for Amazon because I need to login; if a local business wants me to buy from them directly they need to:<p>1. Not give me a CAPTCHA or cloudflare shit<p>2. Give me free shipping and a lower price than Amazon minus 5% cashback that I would get on Amazon<p>3. No registration needed to check out<p>and I'll buy from the local website. It's really not a high bar, they need to learn to not shoot themselves in the foot.<p>As for the news websites -- bleh. If they want me to read it, make it easy to read. As in, I click into it, show me the content. If I get a popup, banner, anything that covers up the content, I bounce. I'll get the news from social media anyway. If they'd rather I get it from their news website, they need to learn to not make me bounce.<p>I'm not opposed to advertising if they want to get revenue from that, but it should not track me, not cover up content, and not load megabytes of JavaScript to do it.
you can be tracked without cookies - the cookie dialogs are about tracking and processing of personal data in general.<p>-> not really sensible
Just configure your browser to ask for cookies for that store only?
can we also kill the dark pattern of "accept all" and "choose your preferences" ?
or we could glass the continent
Finally yes yes yes.<p>I've wanted the option to select your cookie preferences once and forget in a brower for ever.<p>I assume the reason this wasn't done initially was corporate pressure (most people would opt-out of everything by default).<p>1.2 billion exposed users × 8.17 years×365×3 banners/day×4 seconds÷36 is roughly <i>10-15 billion</i> human hours lost to dealing with damn cookies since GDPR took effect on May 2018.<p>That's about 17,000 human lives.
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No need to kill the cookie banner. Just change the system so that everyone in every organization who supports cookies and other forms of user tracking and engagement will have every detail of their own existence and their family's existence broadcast in real time globally 24/7/365. Anyone who tries to opt out is jailed under 24 hour surveillance for a minimum of one year.<p>EDIT: It's obvious that people really hate this option. Maybe too many here have their incomes too closely tied to the metrics that cookies are designed to collect. It could also be that it is an unrealistic option for everything except the most extreme societal changes.<p>If you are old enough and look back far enough you may remember the time before all this bullshit like I do. Once marketing and advertising get involved and gain power in an organization, things tend to go to shit fast.
Hypocrisy is the name of the game in SillyCon valley. Push YouTube autoplay slop on kids globally, but no ipads for children of the tech elite. Computer-based instruction for public schools, but 2:1 teacher:student ratios in the local private grade schools that cost as much as an Ivy League University. Etcetera.
The EU has been on a decade-long crusade to destroy the internet.
I think you'll find that's Google and Meta.<p>Just step back and ask yourself what each side of that debate is trying to achieve and why. What is motivating them? Why are they motivated in that way?<p>Don't just recite what you "know", think, look, research, figure it out. It might sound good to have a one-liner like this in your back pocket, but do you <i>really</i> believe it after looking at the publicly available information that it is their real intention to conduct a "crusade to destroy the internet"?
Advertisement has been on a decade-long crusade to destroy the internet.
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This is conflating different things. They are trying to use people's annoyance with the banner THEY caused to build support for another legislation.<p>Cookies were never a problem. Just get rid of the banner.<p>This other legislation should pass/fail on its own merit.