Its a shame the EU became laser focused on cookies, which can be managed technically by browser settings, and not on dark patterns like these. Or how US consumers complain about being able to subscribe to a service via the web but must call a customer service person to cancel, often with a lengthy wait, dropped calls, and being transferred to a sometimes rude 'retention specialist.'

There's so much more pressing than just cookies imo.

Contrary to popular belief, GDPR has nothing to do with cookies and isn't even about the web specifically. It is - as it says right in the name - a General Data Protection Regulation.

The very long and well-sourced wikipedia article doesn't even contain the word "cookie": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...

> 3. The data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time. The withdrawal of consent shall not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Prior to giving consent, the data subject shall be informed thereof. It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent.

This if from article 7 of the GDPR [0]. Clearly the situation described involves a much harder time withdrawing consent than giving it - which goes against the law.

I may have misunderstood what you meant but how is this being laser focused on cookies? This articles applies beyond the Internet anyway.

[0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Oh man this makes my blood boil, another reason ill never thouch MS again is they they removed the cancel xbox live subscription button for NZ subscribers and I assume other locales where they didnt have some law forbidding it, the feature to cancel was there but they decided if they could to hold you hostage and made you call and waste lots of time via as painfull process as possible to cancel