Consumers are informed, and they say “no” when given the choice. Respect their “no”.
Tracking builds a massive, exploitative, dangerous information asymmetry. You claim the cost to consumers is small; the aggregate cost is very clearly not small.
This should be an existential issue for websites, and it should force the closure of websites that can only exist through exploitative abuse of consumers.
No, they are not. They have no clue what they are not consenting to.
>the aggregate cost is very clearly not small.
$0 is small.
That's the point. If your position is that consumers don't want tracking and that it's harmful on balance, then just ban it altogether rather than incentivizing sites to use dark patterns to trick users into "agreeing".
But sure. Do tell me how it's the law that is the problem, and not the greedy leeches that present these dark patterns.
Don't worry though. A ban on dark patterns isn't far away. Once it's in effect I guess you'll blame the law for something else.
Exactly right. It reminds me of the Wells Fargo scandal where branch managers were given unattainable quotas and resorted to fraud to meet them. Incentives matter.
The "informed consent" framing of this issue is quite ridiculous. When someone is asked to pay for an item at the store, we don't say that they should also have the choice to take the item for free, and only pay for it if they want to. We recognize that, individually, most people would rather pay less, but that we collectively benefit when businesses are profitable. The situation with cookies is even worse, because unlike with money, most people have no idea what a website even uses their data for.
Th EU trying to rewrite the issue as concerning "consent" is thus idiotic, and innevitably lead to the cookie banner issue. If you think tracking is bad, then ban it, and let websites figure out how to target ads and improve their product without it. If you recognize tracking as overall beneficial, then permit it, and throw out this charade of informed consent. The EU can't make this decision themselves, so they expect every single individual to make this decision for themselves, every time they visit a website. This despite the average individual having no idea what their data is even being used for.
The issue is existential for websites, since it concerns their ability to remain profitable. As such, the website that stays in business longest is the one that can coax the most people to hand over their data. It is entirely inevitable that websites would go up to and beyond the letter of the law in pursuing this.