The reason why companies implement those banners is that a banner talking about cookies sounds much nicer than saying: We want to create a profile of every detail we can find on you and auction that out to an advertisement network, press OK here.
GDPR could have added a law against misrepresenting the profiling under the umbrella of a "cookie consent", but that would just be Whac-A-Mole legislation. Companies would just wrap the consent banner under some under pretense.
A govt legislation that would actually work in practice would be to ban the practice of collecting and selling personal data. No consent, no popup, just a law making it illegal. That would have the desired practical effect and no annoying banners would ever be written. It would also be much harder politically to get accepted and people would complain that EU are draconian for not allowing consenting adults to go into an agreement where they trade personal data for service.
Personally however I would prefer if EU did just that. Ban it. Make databases of personal data toxic to have and the liability if anything leaks be high enough that in practice a company like a news papers will do something else in order to earn profits.
> The reason why companies implement those banners is that a banner talking about cookies sounds much nicer than saying: We want to create a profile of every detail we can find on you and auction that out to an advertisement network, press OK here.
The reality is even worse. The site operators would have to say "we want to give your data to google and others so they can create a profile of everything you do online."
If an individual site would track how one navigates their site and see click paths that might be tolerable to some degree. (Till they use that to increase dark patterns like booking.com's "only 2 rooms left and 5 people looking at this") But giving it away, into central databanks is baaaad
GDPR could have added a law against misrepresenting the profiling under the umbrella of a "cookie consent", but that would just be Whac-A-Mole legislation. Companies would just wrap the consent banner under some under pretense.
A govt legislation that would actually work in practice would be to ban the practice of collecting and selling personal data. No consent, no popup, just a law making it illegal. That would have the desired practical effect and no annoying banners would ever be written. It would also be much harder politically to get accepted and people would complain that EU are draconian for not allowing consenting adults to go into an agreement where they trade personal data for service.
Personally however I would prefer if EU did just that. Ban it. Make databases of personal data toxic to have and the liability if anything leaks be high enough that in practice a company like a news papers will do something else in order to earn profits.