I completely agree. People calling for an immediate 4% fine are ignoring that killing companies is bad for the economy. If a “pitiful” fine of $200,000 fixes the behavior, why fine the living daylights out of them?
I’m just wondering why the fines have been so “slow” to happen. Enforcement Tracker[0] lists only 533 of which the majority appear to be against individuals (such as “Doctor”, “Private person”, etc.) I just figured there would be more by this point.
As a person who calls for these, my reasoning isn't that they should dismantle the entire web because of it[0] - but that destroying a few small businesses and seriously hurting some big ones would set an example for all the rest to fall in line. Right now, companies seem to correctly reason that they're statistically unlikely to be noticed and fined.
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[0] - Even though my belief is that advertising industry in particular is a social cancer and absolutely needs to be torched down to the ground.
These dark patterns we keep seeing shows that the sites didn't do their homework and is trying the usual weazel way of getting past on "you clicked accept so now you are stuck.". Consent can only be given knowingly, if you hide it in the fineprint (or behind a "show more" button) it's not valid according to GDPR. To invent things like selling customer data to third party and call it fair usage of private data is not ok either.
The agreement has to be easy to understand and very short. And it has to be presented close to the actual entering of data or the accept button. No hiding, no shenanigans, no trying to fool with colors or design. It's that simple.