Nah, we just need enforcement so people actually have a way to opt out rather than being fobbed off with dialogs like "apparently we have to display this annoying popup to tell you we are using cookies because this is how the internet works now. [whatever, just take me to the page]", or "more options" buttons that take you to a never-ending maze with no actual way to opt out.

Actually stamp down on the sites taking the piss. Without teeth, GDPR is useless, but so would any other toothless solution be.

Many sites actually do follow it properly, i.e. they have the popup tell you that tracking ads are all OFF and if you want you can ENABLE them to get more relevant ads, but you are free to just dismiss it.

Once one of the big players that don't do this and instead have it e.g. opt-out are actually fined, I suspect more sites will begin to behave correctly.

I think it worked wonders with GDPR which exposed all this pus. Unfortunately, there EU has been too slow acting on it. Only British Airways has been slapped with a significant fine so far.

Marriott were fined £99m in the same week as BA in the UK, and Google were fined €50m in France last year, both under GDPR.

Ah, I forgot about Marriott.

The problem with fines against Google (and Facebook, too) is that it's peanuts for them. They just factor this in the same category as "legal costs", and it never affects them even remotely.

GDPR opt out rate is well well under 1%.

Cause at this stage opting out included navigating many stages of dark pattern and deceptive pages, including semi hidden links and fake slow progress bars. Even on the biggest sites.

If, and I say If, these gangsters ever get hit with major fines, and we get the simple yes/no option that a few pages have, then it will be better.

Right now, the ad industry (or should i say Mafia) is trying to actively circumvent this legislation

What does that even mean? GDPR requires companies to request that people opt in to information gathering.

And in reality, as long as no fear-mongering fines are handed out, companies will try to bypass it.

There would be ways to get control over this, but law is slow.

I rarely see opt in GDPR popups, it's typically "accept tracking" or "more options...", the latter seemingly sending you down an infinite rabbit hole. Well, now that I think about it, this might count as opt in, but this is definitely a dark pattern.

This is supposedly not allowed under the GDPR, but we're going to have to wait a while before this is actually tried in court.

It's not, the consumer advocate in Norway has already released one report on the subject [1, PDF]

Pushing all this through the legal system will take some time but the watchdogs in different countries are not sitting idle.

[1] https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/201...

The other thing I often see is an "accept tracking" button, and a tiny "more options" link that just goes to a page explaining how to switch off cookies on your browser. I'm pretty sure that's not OK with GDPR as well.

IANAL, but this is not entirely true. Under GDPR data can be used by claiming "legitimate interest" [0]. In the case of legitimate interest, the user needs to opt-out rather than opt-in.

0: https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/legitimat...

1% of 1 million is 10k people.