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.
Problem is not the law, but that the companies implemented it in as annoying of a way as possible to get people pissed off about the law and force it to be dropped, or for what actually happened which is that it’s too much work to not opt-in to the cookies which essentially makes it opt-out not in.
And the idea to remove the requirements for “simple statistics” or whatever terminology they use will just get abused by using other illicit tracking tech to link the cookies to uniquely identify a person anyway. So it will effectively make the popups unnecessary in any circumstances and still allow tracking for marketing and surveillance.
Ghostery is a fantastic Firefox plugin. No more stupid questions.
The law requires them to make a one button option to deny all.
Google got fined millions of dollars for making it two clicks. And then they changed it to one click “reject all” after that.
Some websites do it right. They have a “reject all” button, and that’s that. But then there are others where you have to deselect a whole shit load of checkboxes just to reject the fucking cookies. Sometimes they even have a “Pay to reject” shit. WTF. Ugh.
That’s illegal. Report it to the government. Google got fined millions of euros just for making it two clicks on YouTube.