EDIT: I didn’t realize the anger this would bring out of people. It was supposed to be a funny meme based on recent real-life situations I’ve encountered, not an attack on the EU.

I appreciate the effort of the EU cookie laws. The practice of them just doesn’t live up to the theory of the law. Shady companies are always going to find a way to be shady.

    • purplemonkeymad@programming.dev
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      IIRC the EU also ruled that burying the rejection options under additional links counts as a violation. Hence why Google now has a Reject button next to the accept button. Most sites still do that.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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        Because they rest safe in the knowledge that you rarely if ever get taken to court for it. There are millions of web pages, it needs people to take action to do something about it, and just clicking “Yes all of them” to access the content you were just trying to get to is a far better solution in most situations than hiring a lawyer and investing a few years of legal proceedings, nevermind the money.

        • relevants@feddit.de
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          There is an organization called nyob (I think) pushing back against that and going through the courts to have more sites penalized for their violations. The process is slow, but I see more and more pages adopting the required “reject all” so there seems to be some pressure on them.

    • Sysosmaster@infosec.pub
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      even worse offenders are the ones with tick boxes for “Legitimate Interest”, since legitimate interest is another grounds for processing (just ads freely given consent is one), the fact you got a “tick” box for it makes it NOT legitimate interest within the confines of the GDPR.

      it also doesn’t matter what technology you use whether its cookies / urls / images / local storage / spy satellites. its solely about how you use the data…

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
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      why are the EU the only people that bother to actually govern in a modern and helpful way

    • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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      But what are they going to do about it?

      “Here’s a fine, if you don’t pay it your site can no longer operate in the EU”

      “… ok”

      • Knusper@feddit.de
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        The EU is an important market for many websites, so yeah, that is usually what happens.

        • Steeve@lemmy.ca
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          We’re specifically discussing websites that refuse to load in the EU anyways as per the post

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            I understood the post as those webpages only refusing to load, if the user declines Cookies. So, they do still want to benefit off of those EU users, who click “Accept”.

    • ecamitor@beehaw.org
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      They found a way around: accept all cookies or pay 2€/months. And it was decied legal by GDPR authorities

    • GreenMario@lemm.ee
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      Then half the web violates it or there is One Pixel button that closes the damn popup.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        Yeah, it is great here.

        Either the website is great and doesn’t ask anything.

        Or it asks for cookie consent, which you can decline in 1 click.

        Or it pulls one of those “break the website” tricks which will get them sued sooner or later.

        Or they block access to EU members, at which point you know they only exist to extract your data anyway.

        • twistypencil@lemmy.world
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          I think it would be a worthwhile research project to find out how many users just click through these, accepting what the website wants you to accept by default. It effectively operates like a EULA for every single website, which produces overall fatigue and lack of care. When you’ve visited 20 sites in one day, you just start being irritated by having to constantly make a decision before you can view any content, and just mash whatever button you need to proceed.

      • Faresh@lemmy.ml
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        I also live in Europe and almost all websites display a dialog that asks you to choose cookie preferences. However, it seems that some few websites, mostly german (spiegel.de, gutefrage) that give you the opetion to browse with ads and cookies or pay. I do not use those websites and I imagine it is not legal.

    • Touching_Grass@lemmy.world
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      I’m working hard to make sure all websites do that.

      You will be internet free in 5 years. Yes, I wear a cape

  • Scoopta@programming.dev
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    I refuse to go to sites that do this, I also refuse to go to sites that block adblock…and specially the sites that detect and block private browsing, that one shouldn’t even be a thing

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      Sites that block adblock - I have network based filtering I’m not going to take the time to specifically figure out what ad providers you’re using (which is probably that same as everyone else) just to unblock your shitty site.

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      The fun part is that websites that do this are illegal in the EU

      They need to start flexing that 4% revenue / year fines

      • Big P@feddit.uk
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        I hope one day they just start fining everyone doing it all at once

        • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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          And i hope they start using that sizing thing at airports to keep people from carrying on their massive samsonite tuba-sized suitcases and jamming them into the entirety of the overhead storage.

          But we can’t always get what we want.

    • Ignotum@lemmy.world
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      I don’t use adblock, and yet i keep getting “disable adblock to view this” messages, fuck this shit

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          I did have adguard set up, but i disabled it thinking it could help with this issue, which it sadly didn’t

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        Most browsers block some ads by default as well as some other privacy protections nowadays. I’m guessing whatever sites you’re hitting have advertisers so scummy they’re blocked by default

        • Ignotum@lemmy.world
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          Might be, might be

          I’m using Firefox and might’ve set a couple of the privacy settings “too high”, haven’t checked those in forever

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      Why the fuck would they prevent private browsing? I use that a lot to be sure the session is closed correctly.

      • Scoopta@programming.dev
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        There’s lots of newspaper sites in the US, that do this. They’ll be like “wanna use private browsing, make an account, or go visit from normal browsing.” Idk why they do it but they do. Apparently there are discrepancies in the way browsers handle persistent storage features between private and non-private browsing that allow for detection

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    I’m pretty sure breaking your website with no cookies is against the rules, actually. It’s either serve the EU with GDPR-compliance or GTFO entirely.

    Yeah, you could still just break the law, but as usual there’s a cost to that one way or the other.

    • Vuraniute@thelemmy.club
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      this. and honestly I wish more websites followed the “serve under gdpr or don’t have a European marker”. A random blog once wasn’t available in the EU because of GDPR. And you know what? It’s better than them violating GDPR and the EU doing nothing.

    • Big P@feddit.uk
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      Tons of companies break the cookie law already, but enforcement seems to be rare

      • akulium@feddit.de
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        Doesn’t enforcement work by letting competitors sue you if you don’t follow the rules for these things?

        • Big P@feddit.uk
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          The cookie consent banner has to allow you to opt out of cookies as easily as accepting them

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              Yeah, I think it has to default to off but I believe the banner they show shouldn’t make it harder to continue with it being off rather than turning it on

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        I’ve heard stories about some of the big guys getting hit with sizable GDPR fines. I don’t really know the full extent of what they do but I do imagine there’s someone that makes it their job to prosecute GDPR violations.

    • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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      It’s more about the big boys. If they act in a way that breaks the GDPR, now the EU has a stick to hit them with.

  • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
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    Your meme is funny, but people genuinely use these arguments to be against sensible EU laws, hence the response I imagine.

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    Yeah being unable to open… checks notes local news websites from the US has been a real deal breaker

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    That’s gotta be quite some website you visited, if it didn’t load at all without cookies. As someone from Germany, who mostly rejects every sites cookies, except for the essential ones most of the time, but sometimes outright rejects all cookies, I’ve never encountered a website that refused to load upon doing that.

    Not defending any webpages that do do that, just contributing my personal experience.

    Also: this for chrome or this for fiefrerfx

  • hdnsmbt@feddit.de
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    That’s fine. People who don’t care about cookies will accept them anyway and those who do care about cookies will know not to visit that site anymore.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    I feel like people would have responded to this meme better if you didn’t depict the European Union as an NPC

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        People complaining about the cookie law don’t understand the issue.

        The law doesn’t state that websites have to show a cookie banner. It states that if a website wants to track you with cookies, they have to ask permission.

        You can get websites (like lemmy and wikipedia) that don’t ask for cookies, because none of them try to track you.

        So if a websites demands cookies or they don’t allow access, it is a clear sign that the website only cares about your visit if they can invade your privacy for profit.

        Meaning it will just be a dumb clickbait website with no decent content anyway, that you should just skip.

      • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world
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        The businesses who are actually doing this shit and not the people actually trying to solve issues in the world lmfao.

  • drkt@feddit.dk
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    Oh boo I can’t visit American propaganda websites what a loss to my European life style

    • MDFL@programming.devOP
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      I have run into this recently on several non-US, non-news sites. Your comment is propaganda.

          • Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz
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            Infowars tells you Nazis are something you disagree with? Haven’t heard from them in a while. Would have thought they’d quietly drop the Nazis are evil thing.

        • MDFL@programming.devOP
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          I absolutely do. Spreading the idea that news sites are all propaganda and the only entities involved in this kind of practice is, in itself, propaganda.

            • MDFL@programming.devOP
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              You’re right. I wasn’t clear in my comment. Saying all US-news sites are propaganda is propaganda. I’m not sure how that changes anything.

              • smollittlefrog@lemdro.id
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                They didn’t say that either. Where do you get this idea from that they’re talking about (all) US news sites?

                They said “American propaganda websites”. That may include some news sites. It may also not include some news sites.

                The most you could infer from their statement is that only American propaganda websites violate the GDPR.

                Of course websites exist that violate the GDPR and are not American propaganda websites.

                But the vast majority of websites commiting severe violations of the GDPR that an average European encounters will be American propaganda websites.

                (Believe it or not, Europeans don’t often visit websites written in Russian or Chinese.)

              • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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                It’s a lost cause, the EU circlejerk is too strong, as clearly everything is a utopia over there with nothing wrong.

                GDPR is a good idea, but still very flawed in practice which they really don’t like to admit anything wrong for some reason.

    • Oddbin@lemmy.world
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      There’s a medical website that appears in top searches (forget the name) that does it too but yeah, mostly seems to be news websites but not the big ones. In most cases Unlock Origin or the like can hide the panel they throw up to choose if you really need the info or archive or 12ft ladder can get you the info.

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    Serious question: I know that there are tracking cookies and the user should be able to decline those,but most sites have an auth cookie that stores you’re credentials. The devs can store it in a different place like local storage but thats really unsecured.what can the devs do in this situation when the user decline all cookies?

    • GuroGuru@lemmynsfw.com
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      The EU is not stupid. They categorized cookies into the necessary ones for site-usage and those that aren’t. So developers just categorize their session cookie (rightfully) as necessary and that’s it.

      • sip@programming.dev
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        well, they can be disabled by the user and the site simply won’t work.

        • shastaxc@lemm.ee
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          He means they are exempt from the EU law that says the use must be presented with the option to disable it

    • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
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      The eu rules are mostly about unnecessary cookies. Most web devs just copied whatever everyone else was doing and now there’s this standard of having to accept cookies but the EU doesn’t really enforce it like that

    • Kevin Noodle@lemmy.world
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      Usually the prompts are specifically for tracking cookies, not essential ones for login. Alternatives without cookies:

      • URL sessions
      • Tokens
      • OAuth/OIDC third party
      • Local/Session Storage (ditto - mind the risks)
    • nothacking@discuss.tchncs.de
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      The GDPR is not “cookie law”, it only prohibits tracking users in a way not essential to the operation of the site using locally stored identifiers (cookies, local storage, indexed DB…)

      Storing a cookie to track login sessions, or color scheme preference does not require asking the user or allowing them to decline.

    • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
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      What the dev can do if user decline processing of personal data is not store such personal data in cookies or anywhere.

      Or even better, do not track the user so the consent would only be needed in for example registration form.

  • Gamey@feddit.rocks
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    I generally agree with the statment under that image and it’s certainly a funny meme but also Illegal, sadly the enforcment is a joke but that’s not really the laws fault!

    • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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      No? If a website refuses to load because you refused tracking cookies, it’s still illegal under GDPR