> How much corporate propaganda are people consuming that legislators are seen as wholly responsible for the bad behavior and malicious compliance actions of corporations
Why do I need to be "consuming corporate propaganda" when I just hate that I need to dismiss banners on every news website, when I didn't have to before the regulation?
I don't care about being tracked. But now that all websites need to cover their asses in response to regulation, I'm forced to figure out which button I need to click on to read content, and these websites don't even appear to save my preferences whether I agree to be tracked or not.
Objectively, the outcome of this regulation is that my experience is worse. Are the companies bad actors? Sure! Sounds like the EU should account for companies' bad behavior instead of forcing the internet to be more annoying.
The experience you describe is the fault of websites which chose to make things that way. The article goes into more detail on this point: There Is No Cookie Banner Law.
It's important to note that we didn't have to go through the banners after the law, either. We only had to go through them after website operators intentionally picked the most disruptive and annoying popup to serve us. We can blame them. They chose to add it when they could have legally not added anything at all.
> Again, from the perspective of users, the experience got worse post-regulation.
Your right, the experience got worse.
But the underlying point is there two ways this could have gone. The GDPR simply mandated that if companies track you they have to get your informed consent. So one way it could have gone is companies didn't track anonymous users.
Notice this doesn't apply to non-anonymous users. By definition once you've logged in you've revealed who are and agreed to a far more onerous privacy statement. So one way companies could comply is just to make you log in to see some content (and track you that way), and not bug you otherwise.
But they didn't go that way. They insist on tracking you regardless. Perhaps you don't agree, but I find this even more annoying because I install tracking blocking extensions and that breaks some sites. To me the world would have been a much better place if they had just gone along with the intent of the damned law and not tracked people who are try to remain anonymous.
To be fair it's not so bad. Firefox dismisses the cookie banners for you [0], and I have extensions that block the worst of their effects. If you are using a browser from an ad company and are complaining about cookie banners (which almost to the man use a deceptive UI to encourage you to accept them all so the ads work better), then I don't have a lot of sympathy. Me rejecting as many cookies as I can then blocking their trackers the worst possible outcome for the web sites trying to garner some ad revenue of course, but shrug, the industry could have acted in good faith, and didn't.
Again, from the perspective of users, the experience got worse only after websites decided for themselves to add annoying cookie banners. Not after the regulation.
> make them go back to being less annoying
That is a request between you and them (the websites), unless you're talking about legislating a banner-less opt-out, or maybe just willing to file a complaint against the website with a data protection authority, if the banner is already illegally annoying.
Websites have the right to annoy their users with cookie popups, with or without the GDPR (ironically , the GDPR actually has some protections here, websites simply break the law). Unfortunately, it seems many are choosing to exercise that right because they make money doing so.
Why do I need to be "consuming corporate propaganda" when I just hate that I need to dismiss banners on every news website, when I didn't have to before the regulation?
I don't care about being tracked. But now that all websites need to cover their asses in response to regulation, I'm forced to figure out which button I need to click on to read content, and these websites don't even appear to save my preferences whether I agree to be tracked or not.
Objectively, the outcome of this regulation is that my experience is worse. Are the companies bad actors? Sure! Sounds like the EU should account for companies' bad behavior instead of forcing the internet to be more annoying.