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.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't have my cookies (some kind of webview of an app), I am punished with more popups.Am I expected to look at every one of those dialogs and figure out what I have to click to "customize" my tracking?Then there are the technical problems; one of those consent "solutions" that you see around actually shows a spinner while your "preferences are being saved". Sometimes it never closes.I am frankly already so tired of this that I don't even care to look which of the buttons says "Agree" and which one says "Refuse". 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 "what if I click the wrong thing" is a permanent companion of their computer use.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?