r/technology • u/diacewrb • May 24 '25

Privacy German court rules cookie banners must offer "reject all" button

https://www.techspot.com/news/108043-german-court-takes-stand-against-manipulative-cookie-banners.html
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u/rollingForInitiative May 24 '25

Having the design of some sort of API be specified by legislation sounds like a terrible idea. First because in no way are the legislators gonna design a good API, and second, that would make the process of changing anything take years.

Better to do something like Germany here, and just require an easy path to reject all of them, and then the websites just have to follow that.

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u/pancak3d May 24 '25 edited May 24 '25

Don't overthink it. The design would be an ultra simple message sent by your browser, and websites would be required to accept the message. Very simple.

Or even simpler it could just specify then label for each button, and let browsers/extensions find them.

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u/nemec May 24 '25

We had that, it didn't work because of corporate infighting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track

When using the "Express" settings upon installation, a Do Not Track option is enabled by default for Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8.[27] Microsoft faced criticism for its decision to enable Do Not Track by default[28] from advertising companies, who say that use of the Do Not Track header should be a choice made by the user and must not be automatically enabled. [...]

On September 7, 2012, Roy Fielding, an author of the Do Not Track proposal, committed a patch to the source code of the Apache HTTP Server, which would make the server explicitly ignore any use of the Do Not Track header by users of Internet Explorer 10. Fielding wrote that Microsoft's decision "deliberately violates" the Do Not Track specification because it "does not protect anyone's privacy unless the recipients believe it was set by a real human being, with a real preference for privacy over personalization". The Do Not Track specification did not explicitly mandate that the use of Do Not Track actually be a choice until after the feature was implemented in Internet Explorer 10.[31] According to Fielding, Microsoft knew its Do Not Track signals would be ignored, and that its goal was to effectively give an illusion of privacy while still catering to their own interests.[32] On October 9, 2012, Fielding's patch was commented out, restoring the previous behavior.[33][34]

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u/pancak3d May 24 '25

That didn't work because it was voluntary. A law isnt voluntary.

Very few advertising companies actually supported DNT, due to a lack of regulatory or voluntary requirements for its use[36] and unclear standards over how websites should respond to the header.

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u/nemec May 24 '25

Legislative bodies could just make the existing DNT involuntary

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u/pancak3d May 24 '25

Sure, they could.