The Americans peppered it with useless pop-ups because they want to try and make people think that regulations empowering users is annoying.

Just look at the amount of Americans that think that they have to request permission to use cookies. Disinformation is a powerful tool.

I bet on legal safeguards, not on conspiracy. Because for most companies a chance of a lawsuit is a chance of instant bankruptcy.

Is there a better effort done elsewhere?

Governments have always lagged to regulate corporations, either because of conflicts of interest or plain incompetence, which is especially true for Big Tech.

But at least the EU is trying to some extent, which was GP's point.

> No they just made it peppered with useless popups.

The popups were a workaround the web adopted due to the lack of technical details in the law, but the law itself isn't to blame. There have been many fines handed out, which is a step in the right direction, at the very least. We should celebrate any step towards protecting citizens from corporations, not scoff that it's not perfect.

The lack of technical details was a good one. The pop ups was the solution the industry chose.

They could have gone with the do not track header, but they didn't although they still could and it would be okay within the concept of the law which just requires consent for tracking.

I agree, and nearly everyone on this forum could come up with a better technical solution. I'm not familiar with how the GDPR came to be, but presumably they had technical advisors, and still took this approach. Maybe it was due to corporate pressure, maybe incompetence; we can only speculate at this point.

I'm hopeful that the laws will keep evolving in response to citizen needs, but I'm still glad I have some control over the data companies have on me, however limited that may be.

Those useless popups are there because websites still want to track their users. They aren't needed if only technically necessary cookies are used.