Europe’s cookie law messed up the internet. Brussels wants to fix it. – POLITICO
www.politico.eu

The European Commission aims to reform the EU’s cookie consent rules that have cluttered websites with intrusive banners asking for permission to track user data[1]. The initiative seeks to streamline data protection while maintaining privacy safeguards through centralized consent mechanisms[1:1].

Cookie consent banners emerged from the ePrivacy Directive (Cookie Law) and GDPR requirements, which mandate websites obtain explicit user permission before collecting non-essential data through cookies[2]. Current rules have led to widespread implementation of pop-up notices that interrupt user experience and often employ confusing interfaces.

The proposed changes reflect growing recognition that the existing approach has “messed up the internet” while failing to provide meaningful privacy protection[1:2]. Rather than requiring individual consent on every website, the Commission is exploring solutions like centralized consent management to reduce banner fatigue while preserving user privacy rights.

  1. Ground News - Europe’s cookie law messed up the internet. Brussels wants to fix it. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Transcend - Cookie Consent Banner Best Practices: Optimizing Your Consent Management Experience ↩︎

  • jokeyrhyme@lemmy.mlEnglish
    37·
    11 hours ago

    Instead, ban the collection of non-essential data, and also ban the targeting of advertisements based on user profiles/history

    Only select advertisements to display based on the immediate context, exactly like printed newspapers and magazines

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      3 hours ago

      That is the right way, ads are a legit manner to create incommings if they are contextual, but not if they are abusive and surveillance based, tracking and logging the user activity. As in YT, it’s not the problem to have ads in the page or as banner at the border of an video, but it is, that the interrupt an conciert documental with several no scippable long ads, popups to use Premium, clickbaits and other crap, which serve nobody, less the author. In this case using an adblocker is mere selfdefense and legit to cut this crap and nags. A good manner is eg. how Bandcamp do it, there you can freely listen almost every song or album, without ads, and there you can buy and download it when you want, paying direct to the artist and Bandcamp an revenue. Or as Vivaldi does, using afiliate links and search engines added by default, which pay an revenue to Vivaldi, if the user use these, who is free to delete those which he don’t use. These and similar methodes are a legit and ethical way to create incommings, without putting in risk the right of privacy of the user, selling his data.