But there have also been other events and developments that did (and do) help / educate people, and now the cookie banners help those people realise how utterly widespread the problem actually is.
It's slow, but awareness is growing, and even the ridiculous cookie banners play some part in it. Also, being ridiculous on the internet is not a failure state, there's quite a tradition of it.
My understanding still is that cookie banners are a huge waste of time.
The GDPR doesn't say: "If you post an obnoxious banner on your site you are allowed to continue as before".
AFAIK, and no one here has proven me wrong so far it says something like:
- there needs to be a clear reason for why the customers data should stay with you or your partners
- except for health care, jail etc there needs to be clear voluntary opt in
They are already fining companies and I guess the reason not everyone is feeling it yet is because the wheels of justice grinds slowly.
Edit: that said, I see why it might look different as some companies are quite brazen in their noncompliance.
> The GDPR doesn't say: "If you post an obnoxious banner on your site you are allowed to continue as before".
The cookie banners have nothing to do with GDPR. That stems from Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy directive: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX...
The old cookie banners where more static I think, only pointing out that they were using cookies instead of giving you any option at all.
Voluntary opt in can work together with targeted ads:
- the customer can opt in to receive more relevant ads (hopefully). A note on the page with an explanation and a way to actively choose targeted would probably be OK with me and I guess some people would choose it.
- or the customer ignores the notice and get general or hopefully contextual ads
The current in-your-face-and-defaults-to-track-if-you-follow -the-defaults system however is not voluntary and not opt in IMO.
I generally don't think the banners educate or help anyone and folks are happy to hit accept and roll on. Not much has changed.
As for if people run a site based on add revenue or not is sort of an entirely different issue / I don't think folks would like the results.
My guess is: They are not happy. They accept it because a lot of effort is put in dark patterns to make it seem unavoidable.
Also a lot of effort seems to have been put into making the opt-in alternative the default - to the point where I'm not comfortable calling it opt-in any more.
I'm a big fan of regulation to maintain good markets / good practices.
I'm very sympathetic to the spirit of a lot of EU policies, but the actual laws seem a lot like "old man who doesn't understand internet writes law" and at best whiff entirely at the point.
Example, I think it is terribly misguided to think people care / read cookie banners and they're not helping / educating anyone.
I don't doubt there are a lot of conservative POVs regarding regulation on HN, but I propose that just as often folks are running into a sort of "narcissism of small differences" where I share a lot of the values those laws have .... but man it irks me to see them swing and miss so badly.