<story><title>Google fined €150M, Facebook €60M for for non-compliance with French legislation</title><url>https://www.cnil.fr/en/cookies-cnil-fines-google-total-150-million-euros-and-facebook-60-million-euros-non-compliance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danuker</author><text>By forcing every website to implement the same functionality for cookie prompts.&lt;p&gt;They are legally enforcing the reinventing of the wheel.&lt;p&gt;It could have been done at browser level, which would have been a relatively negligible cost of compliance.</text></item><item><author>joosters</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Agreed. The way the EU has handled this is naive at best.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;How so? The law is explicit that it should be just as easy to refuse the cookies as it is to accept them. Companies are ignoring the letter of the law anyway.</text></item><item><author>PontifexMinimus</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s a shame there aren&amp;#x27;t more big fines for shitty sites, like stackoverflow.com, that punish people who don&amp;#x27;t accept all cookies by prompting on every visit.&lt;p&gt;Agreed. The way the EU has handled this is naive at best.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; These large sites know exactly what they&amp;#x27;re doing. They&amp;#x27;re hoping people will become fed up enough to just accept, or they&amp;#x27;re hoping there&amp;#x27;ll be enough accidents where people click &amp;quot;Accept all&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s rather shitty.&lt;p&gt;Yes, and there need to be new regulations to prevent them from doing this. Something like:&lt;p&gt;(1) all web browsers should have a setting allowing users to accept or reject advertising&amp;#x2F;tracking cookies.&lt;p&gt;(2) this must default to not accepting them.&lt;p&gt;(3) in headers of http GET&amp;#x2F;POST requests, if the user allows advertising&amp;#x2F;tracking cookies, it should indicate this; if the user doesn&amp;#x27;t allow such cookies, it should be silent.&lt;p&gt;(4) all websites would be forbidden from using advertising&amp;#x2F;tracking cookies unless explicitly permitted&lt;p&gt;(5) all websites and web browsers would be banned from nagging the user or giving them a worse user experience for not allowing advertising&amp;#x2F;tracking cookies&lt;p&gt;(6) The spirit of these regulations is that users need do nothing and they will automatically have a tracking-free experience; any work-around by companies attempting to find a loophole in this is a violation of the regulations.&lt;p&gt;(7) Violation of any of the above would result in heavy fines; and if infractions continue, further crippling fines would be levied.</text></item><item><author>johnklos</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a shame there aren&amp;#x27;t more big fines for shitty sites, like stackoverflow.com, that punish people who don&amp;#x27;t accept all cookies by prompting on every visit.&lt;p&gt;If that&amp;#x27;s not bad enough, having an &amp;quot;Accept all&amp;quot; button but requiring another click to have the option of refusing, then making us manually select each category to turn off, then confirming, is certainly not symmetric.&lt;p&gt;These large sites know exactly what they&amp;#x27;re doing. They&amp;#x27;re hoping people will become fed up enough to just accept, or they&amp;#x27;re hoping there&amp;#x27;ll be enough accidents where people click &amp;quot;Accept all&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s rather shitty.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>foepys</author><text>The EU does not want to say how it has to be done. It&amp;#x27;s a bad idea to put something into law because changing the law is incredibly slow. They only do that when the market failed over a long time.&lt;p&gt;See smartphone connectors where they will demand USB-C soon. When the news hit HN quite a few people were calling EU anti innovation.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google fined €150M, Facebook €60M for for non-compliance with French legislation</title><url>https://www.cnil.fr/en/cookies-cnil-fines-google-total-150-million-euros-and-facebook-60-million-euros-non-compliance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>danuker</author><text>By forcing every website to implement the same functionality for cookie prompts.&lt;p&gt;They are legally enforcing the reinventing of the wheel.&lt;p&gt;It could have been done at browser level, which would have been a relatively negligible cost of compliance.</text></item><item><author>joosters</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Agreed. The way the EU has handled this is naive at best.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;How so? The law is explicit that it should be just as easy to refuse the cookies as it is to accept them. Companies are ignoring the letter of the law anyway.</text></item><item><author>PontifexMinimus</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s a shame there aren&amp;#x27;t more big fines for shitty sites, like stackoverflow.com, that punish people who don&amp;#x27;t accept all cookies by prompting on every visit.&lt;p&gt;Agreed. The way the EU has handled this is naive at best.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; These large sites know exactly what they&amp;#x27;re doing. They&amp;#x27;re hoping people will become fed up enough to just accept, or they&amp;#x27;re hoping there&amp;#x27;ll be enough accidents where people click &amp;quot;Accept all&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s rather shitty.&lt;p&gt;Yes, and there need to be new regulations to prevent them from doing this. Something like:&lt;p&gt;(1) all web browsers should have a setting allowing users to accept or reject advertising&amp;#x2F;tracking cookies.&lt;p&gt;(2) this must default to not accepting them.&lt;p&gt;(3) in headers of http GET&amp;#x2F;POST requests, if the user allows advertising&amp;#x2F;tracking cookies, it should indicate this; if the user doesn&amp;#x27;t allow such cookies, it should be silent.&lt;p&gt;(4) all websites would be forbidden from using advertising&amp;#x2F;tracking cookies unless explicitly permitted&lt;p&gt;(5) all websites and web browsers would be banned from nagging the user or giving them a worse user experience for not allowing advertising&amp;#x2F;tracking cookies&lt;p&gt;(6) The spirit of these regulations is that users need do nothing and they will automatically have a tracking-free experience; any work-around by companies attempting to find a loophole in this is a violation of the regulations.&lt;p&gt;(7) Violation of any of the above would result in heavy fines; and if infractions continue, further crippling fines would be levied.</text></item><item><author>johnklos</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a shame there aren&amp;#x27;t more big fines for shitty sites, like stackoverflow.com, that punish people who don&amp;#x27;t accept all cookies by prompting on every visit.&lt;p&gt;If that&amp;#x27;s not bad enough, having an &amp;quot;Accept all&amp;quot; button but requiring another click to have the option of refusing, then making us manually select each category to turn off, then confirming, is certainly not symmetric.&lt;p&gt;These large sites know exactly what they&amp;#x27;re doing. They&amp;#x27;re hoping people will become fed up enough to just accept, or they&amp;#x27;re hoping there&amp;#x27;ll be enough accidents where people click &amp;quot;Accept all&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s rather shitty.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Filligree</author><text>It could have been, and doing so would have been perfectly compliant. It&amp;#x27;s not the EU that made them not do that.</text></comment>