Blame the stupid EU cookie law for that though, not the sites. Cookies can actually be very user/privacy friendly, since they provide a way to retain user preferences without requiring an account to tie them to.

> Cookies can actually be very user/privacy friendly, since they provide a way to retain user preferences without requiring an account to tie them to.

Enable cookies at that point then, don't turn them on globally for everyone.

> Blame the stupid EU cookie law for that though, not the sites.

If every site didn't turn on cookies by default as if they're somehow needed to read a text page a didn't contain a billion trackers then there would have been no law in the first place.

The need for this law lies squarely at the feet of the sites themselves, the industry has shown no desire to regulate itself.

The intention was to highlight just how many sites use cookies to trace your movements that you might not realise. Clearly it didn't work well, and led to the reasons for a lot of the GDPR

They are also entirely voluntary - which the EU would've known if decision makers had visited their browser settings once.

The notice is only for cookies used for non-essential tasks (like analytics) and doesn't have to be shown for things like login sessions. Your browser can't distinguish between those.

The cookie notice policy led to the worst imaginable actual outcome: A state in which you either accept cookies (incl. third party) by default or you will be haunted by numbing "reminders" that cookies exist. Usually taking large parts of your small screen estate.

Prior to that you could just disable them if you liked.

One can say that policy makers had good intentions - certainly. However, I can not imagine a valid evaluation that wouldn't conclude this policy as failure.

I don't disagree that the policy was a failure, I just disagree with your specific point made in the previous post.

Hmm. I'm not sure I can follow.

The browser not being able to distinguish between essential and non-essential cookies does not change the fact that cookies are and were entirely voluntary.

Right, but there's no reason to think the legislators didn't know that, because their goal was not to prevent the use of all cookies.

They thought that sites would stop using tracking cookies. But most sites use google analytics.

There are several blocklists specifically curated to adress the EU cookie nag:

http://prebake.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list

AFAIK some prominent cookie notices are also part of the Fanboy Annoyances list: https://easylist.to/

The only prominent nags that are not very well targeted with those lists are in webapps like reddit mobile. Primarily because of their dynamic, non-descriptive ids.

Yep, I've used "I don't care about cookies" for a couple years now I think, it's been great. It's very rare that I see these pop-ups.