This is not a good thing indeed, because it's terribly naive. Passing a law that more or less forbid huge companies the very same activity that gets them the bread and butter. What are they expecting to happen? That the companies will surrender their business, just as that?
Fundamentally, the solution to cookie warning spam is simple: Stop letting these companies disclaim their way out of unethical business practices. Start making those business practices illegal and shut down companies built around them.
Companies built on surveillance capitalism should be shut down. Full stop.
What business practices? Cookies aren't just used for ads. You could get rid of adtech and not have any change in cookie notices because of how the laws are written.
Not all cookies are functional or ad related. Also the EU cookie directive requires you to inform users that cookies are being used regardless of the reason why.
I'm pretty sure most sites that asked me to allow cookies in the past week were not "companies built on surveillance capitalism". Youtube rarely asks me about this and to be quite frank I don't mind adds on youtube nor that they are targeted adds - even if they are rather poorly targeted - I'm not sure why this should be illegal.
I think whatever problems the cookie laws that got us all the popups are trying to solve would be better solved in conjunction with some technical changes. Like I could say in my browser what sort of cookies I allow - or set up some rules. Sure sites can just break the law and disregard this - but they can do it now anyway by just saving cookies even if I click "don't allow" or "decline" on the dumb popups.
Yeah, that's basically how it should happen. In California, there's ample precedent for taking products off of the market when they're shown to harm consumers, and if that happens to kill off manufacturers who aren't diversified, then so be it. Are you really going to be sad if Facebook can't survive CCPA?
On the other hand, we also have things like Prop 65 warnings that have become so commonplace that they don't really impart useful information. Any useful signal is totally overwhelmed by noise. Putting the same warning on a restaurant that serves french fries and a pack of cigarettes diminishes the usefulness of the warning (unless parking garages, coffee, and fried food are actually significant carcinogens?)
CCPA isn't just about warnings, though. CCPA also affects the data-harvesting abilities of businesses, and requires that a business be prepared to explain which personal information is stored and for what purpose.
I suppose that, to draw a better analogy with Prop 65, the requirements of Prop 65 did supposedly cause some manufacturing materials, certain dyes, rubbers, foams, and plastics, to be drastically removed from the marketplace. The story of lead alone is worth considering; as usual, lead was in the pipes. [0] We are not expecting a wave of cookie warnings, and indeed CCPA's language doesn't allow for it. Some businesses will have to alter their practices; some products may have to be withdrawn from the market entirely. The worry that children might get used to clicking through EULAs and giving away their data has already been shown true by the previous generation of Internet users; at this point, we are merely trying to curb the damage continuing to be dealt and done.
And remember: For every ingredient that needs a warning label, that ingredient also can't be dumped into streams or rivers. It's not just about a prettier warning label on the product, but about real improvements to the manufacturing process.
