I can vote for who decides things in the EU.

I have no say in how Google, for example, does their business. I'm way too poor for that. I'd need literal billions of stock to get Satya Nadella's phone number =)

Good for you, I can’t and now I have to deal with endless pop ups about cookies.

The cookie popups are just the dark pattern that companies decided to use to avoid using those sweet, sweet money from selling your private data. They were never prescribed by GDPR.

That was not mandated by the GDPR but implemented by companies trying to punish users in the hope of a backlash and cancellation of the law

All the GDPR is asking is: "if you want to use some PII, you have (1) to ask consent (2) to accept user decision"

Others implementations may have included: respecting "Do Not Track" signal implemented in browser or just... not using PII at first to sell personal datas to advertiser to make more money than selling untargeted ads (so no popup needed)!

As a European citizen, I am affected by plenty of American politics even though I can't vote.

The only reason you get the pop ups about cookies is because the sites you visit that display those popups prefer to do that instead of respecting your privacy.

It’s literally malicious compliance.

Try this if you haven't already; https://consentomatic.au.dk/

I find it very useful on firefox for android, since those buttons are often tiny.

Good luck getting the personal phone number of an EU Commissioner. You can't vote for who decides things in the EU. You can vote for MEPs but they don't decide things. The DMA represents the desires and priorities of the European Commission, a body carefully placed well beyond any form of democracy and whose membership isn't even close to representative of the actual continent.

If the EU Commission were influenced by voters, their priorities would follow what people say they care about in the EU's own opinion polls:

https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3218

"Europeans tend to think that the most important issues facing their region at the moment are the cost of living (31%), the economic situation and unemployment (26%), and health (26%)."

No surprises there. People are feeling poor. They want more jobs and more money. A normal democratic government response would be trying to woo companies to Europe to create jobs, train locals and create economic success. It would also be lowering taxes and encouraging the creation of local startups in any way possible. That's a standard recipe that's been used many times throughout the world in response to economic discontent. But the EU isn't a normal democratic government so it spends its time on fiddling with iOS, something that doesn't even show up on polls at all because nobody cares.

It's for this kind of reason that French voters are likely to send the RN to the European Parliament in large numbers in the next election, mirroring the same pattern seen all over Europe:

https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/france/

The RN is an explicitly Eurosceptic party whose only specific policy on the EU is to oppose it. Sending it to Brussels will change nothing because the European Parliament doesn't matter, but it does send a strong message of discontentment and a desire to use whatever meagre powers the Parliament has to slow the Commission down.

> Good luck getting the personal phone number of an EU Commissioner. You can't vote for who decides things in the EU. You can vote for MEPs but they don't decide things.

Replace "EU commissioner" with "government minister" and you've just described the UK, where we also don't elect the people who decide things (the cabinet).

Most are citizens rather than subjects and EU elections are at the start of June.

s/Most/All

EU is totally representing me by taking this stance, so there's that.