In theory, website owners could do as GitHub did and remove inessential cookies and get rid of annoying banners: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ But in practice, website owners are worried about breaking laws and aren't experts and just follow what they see everyone else doing, and so put up banners. So in practice, the regulations are indeed the ultimate cause of annoying banners, even if in theory those are avoidable in some cases. The people who introduced the regulations were able to look at the ecosystem of website owners and predict that the consequences of the regulations would be the vandalism of the internet by banners that we've seen over the last few years.
It's not the EU that's causing the fear of breaking laws. It's the ad tech industry that is instilling that fear by fostering the "you need a cookie banner on your site now" FUD. If Joe Schmoe thinks he needs a cookie banner for doing nothing and puts one up, then from a user's perspective, all sites are equally bad.
Compare with "Ask App Not to Track" in iOS, which is enforced by the OS and actually means something. The tracking industry hates that one because it shows them for what they are (not all apps need to throw up that screen) and they don't get to blame the EU for it.
It's literally the EU that created a worthless regulation that hasn't meaningfully helped anyone.
I wish more browsers would just include extensions that automatically accept and hide these warnings. It's stupid we have to do this but this is the world we live in.
Yes, there's a cargo cult mentality (encouraged by the big players who would like everyone to believe they are just doing the same as the average wordpress blog), but one way of counteracting that is to educate website owners like the above posts aim to. It's important to realise this isn't just a consequence of the laws being passed but poor understanding of them, which is in part deliberately propagated by those who object to the law.
> But in practice, website owners are worried about breaking laws
That is weird argument. If one genuinely cannot bother to read the law or does not feel capable of fully comprehending the law why don't they simply consult a lawyer? Hiring professional accountants is somehow standard practice.
> And the alternative is to have to pay lawyers every time I want to start a business on the web?
I thought it was pretty commonplace to hire a lawyer to draft various application, bylaws, policies and stuff like that when founding a company, online or not.
> Yes because reading and interpreting an 11 chapter 99 section law is really simple…
GDPR really is very simple at the core: you are not allowed to collect personal information, unless. 99% of it are definitions of those exceptions.
> I thought it was pretty commonplace to hire a lawyer to draft various application, bylaws, policies and stuff like that when founding a company, online or not.
No it’s not. You can go to nolo.com and pay less than $300 to get incorporated
Even if you choose to hire a lawyer to do it, it’s a relatively simple process and it would cost a lot more to hire a lawyer who knows the technicalities of something like the GDPR and whether it’s applicable to your website.
Should I also include the lawyer in my product planning meeting?
> GDPR really is very simple at the core: you are not allowed to collect personal information, unless. 99% of it are definitions of those exceptions.
If it’s so simple, then why is it 99 sections and 11 chapter.
I would say yes, all businesses looking to make money need to invest money into all sorts of things to do this, including a lawyer. Even the smallest business should consult with counsel during the product design phase to ensure what they are building is legal. This doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable. Every company I have ever worked for, large and small, has had at least one lawyer weigh in on the product. You'd be careless not to.
No all businesses that want to make money do not hire a lawyer to vet their businesses and especially not their website design. Neither do they need to.
And you really don’t see why all of the ridiculous regulation in the EU might be part of the reason that no meaningful tech company comes out of the EU.
In theory, website owners could do as GitHub did and remove inessential cookies and get rid of annoying banners: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ But in practice, website owners are worried about breaking laws and aren't experts and just follow what they see everyone else doing, and so put up banners. So in practice, the regulations are indeed the ultimate cause of annoying banners, even if in theory those are avoidable in some cases. The people who introduced the regulations were able to look at the ecosystem of website owners and predict that the consequences of the regulations would be the vandalism of the internet by banners that we've seen over the last few years.