I do judge. It makes me a bit less receptive to Frogwares' message, that they do this on their company blog
This is totally not ok. There's should always be a way to opt out, it's not allowed to just block the site in case people don't want to agree. This has been reaffirmed in court several times. But nothing seems to be done to enforce this.
Nope, same message.
One example: PayPal has a huge banner (often blocking the "pay now" button) asking for permission to use my data for targeted ads, and there's no way to dismiss it other than agreeing to it. So I leave it there forever, and every time I use PayPal I have a little bit more of a negative impression of it.
It's also good to know about them when I'm sharing links with friends - I'll be very hesitant to share one with someone who I know is using a mobile browser, because they definitely won't have the tools to avoid tracking like this.
I'd much rather know about tracking this way (the list of 20 blocked scripts) than they other (they already ran, but at least the site popped up a banner)
The ability to opt out does not suffice to satisfy the GDPR, even if I could find how to do it.
> This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.
First off, assuming consent and saying it's "to improve your experience." Maybe they're not doing any targeting... nope, wait, they're loading tracking pixels. And their privacy policy says they use cookies to "...help customize our marketing offerings."
Okay, now how about opting out? Click "Read More" which takes you to... their privacy policy. Some sites at least bury information about how to disable browser cookies entirely in their privacy policy. Here even that is nowhere to be found; no mention of how you could prevent their cookies from being set in your browser at all. (Setting aside the fact that disabling cookies globally in your browser is so obviously not a sane way to avoid tracking on a single site, so even that would be woefully insufficient.)
I can only assume folks in the EU are seeing something that actually asks for consent, because this would be so far from compliance over there it's not even funny. Hoping the US gets real online privacy laws soon.
> You can opt-out if you wish.
No, practically speaking, you cannot.