Brendan Eich Writes to the US Senate: We Need a GDPR for the United States
The practical effect of GDPR seems to me that I have to click away about half a dozen consent popups every day. Sometimes a cookie warning in addition to that.<p>If I use Private Browsing (to protect my privacy) I am punished with more popups. If I open a website within a browser shell on mobile that doesn&#x27;t have my cookies (some kind of webview of an app), I am punished with more popups.<p>Am I expected to look at every one of those dialogs and figure out what I have to click to &quot;customize&quot; my tracking?<p>Then there are the technical problems; one of those consent &quot;solutions&quot; that you see around actually shows a spinner while your &quot;preferences are being saved&quot;. Sometimes it never closes.<p>I am frankly already so tired of this that I don&#x27;t even care to look which of the buttons says &quot;Agree&quot; and which one says &quot;Refuse&quot;. I just click on whatever I see. I know for certain that for less experienced users (my parents), every additional button to click is just another hindrance to achieving what they need to do. The thought &quot;what if I click the wrong thing&quot; is a permanent companion of their computer use.<p>These are very real, very concrete negative effects of GDPR. Is there something that we gained to make me feel better next time I am annoyed with all the popups?