Tired of dealing with popups begging you to accept cookies? Blame the EU. In 2018, Europe unleashed a groundbreaking privacy law called the GDPR that, among a billion other things, makes websites ask permission before tracking you with cookies. A lot of companies switched their whole systems over rather than building special European versions of their websites. It’s a privacy improvement, but the downside is the web bombarding everyone on the planet with cookie popups. EU regulators know this sucks, but now they’ve got a genius plan to fix the nightmare they created: they’re going to ask nicely and hope corporations just agree to do better. Problem solved.
EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag that he and his colleagues understand the popups are annoying, but they’re unveiling a new “cookie pledge” that he thinks is going to make it all better. (Credit to Techspot for translating it for my plebeian, English-speaking eyes.)
Starting this spring, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) is going to ask major platforms including Amazon, Apple, Meta, and TikTok to sign on to a new optional agreement in which they promise to improve the cookie popup crisis. Then, the whole rest of the internet is supposed to voluntarily follow the tech giants’ lead. You gotta hand it to those EDPB boys—this is a fool-proof idea.
The pledge includes a number of stipulations, including a commitment to only asking you about cookies once a year and more transparent communication about how websites and platforms spy on you. As we all know, most businesses are benevolent organizations that will sacrifice anything to make life better for consumers, so this should all get taken care of pretty quickly.
The real problem here is that the biggest effect of the GDPR is forcing companies to ask permission to do creepy things with your data, rather than banning most of those things outright. Make no mistake, the GDPR made serious improvements to Europe’s data situation, and those wins spilled over to internet users all over the world. There also have been some serious pro-privacy moves in Europe along the way, including an ongoing battle that could prohibit companies such as Meta from forcing you to consent to data harvesting if you want to use a platform in the first place.
More recent tech laws, however, have actual teeth. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) already forced Apple to stop using its pure-evil lighting cable and switch over USB-C for example, a win for everyone who doesn’t want to carry 15 cords everywhere they go. The Digital Services Act (DSA) also has a ban on dark patterns, the wonky name for a website’s attempts to trick you with manipulative design—like the cookie pop-ups that make you jump through hoops if you want to say no, for example.
For years now, cookies have been at the epicenter of an internet earthquake that’s fundamentally changing how the web works. It’s not just the GDPR. Google recently embarked on a campaign that should ultimately destroy tracking cookies used for targeted advertising. Sadly for you, other cookies will remain, including some that are absolutely necessary for basic functions including keeping you logged into a website. Thanks to the GDPR, companies need to ask permission to use those as well, so Google’s move won’t fix the popups plaguing your digital life.
The EU, the giant tech companies, and everyone else knows the cookie popup situation can’t stand. Among other things, it makes consumers hate websites, and it leads to so-called “cookie fatigue” in which exhausted internet users just click the “I accept” button to get things over with. At some point, we’ll see a solution to this problem, but one thing’s for sure: the answer isn’t a gentle request for corporations to do the right thing.