The crazy thing (to me) is that governments can still get all of those billions without the undue influence. Instead of bribes, they can charge fines, taxes, fees for regulatory inspections, etc. When you write the law, you don't have to just shrug when things are obviously broken.

Random side note: how is Belgium to live in and what would it look like to live there right now? Asking for a friend.

Edit: thanks for al the information. I'll move onto learning more about the country and it's people's history.

From time to time, important news gets overshadowed by other headlines, even though it could have a profound impact on our (online) world. To most of us, few things are more bothersome than the dreaded cookie banners. On countless websites, you’re confronted with a pesky pop-up urging you to agree to something. You end up consenting without really knowing what it is. If you try to figure out what’s going on, you quickly get lost among the often hundreds of “partners” who want access to your personal data. Even if you do give your consent, it’s questionable whether you truly understand what you’re agreeing to.

From time to time, important news gets overshadowed by other headlines, even though it could have a profound impact on our (online) world. To most of us, few things are more bothersome than the dreaded cookie banners. On countless websites, you’re confronted with a pesky pop-up urging you to agree to something. You end up consenting without really knowing what it is. If you try to figure out what’s going on, you quickly get lost among the often hundreds of “partners” who want access to your personal data. Even if you do give your consent, it’s questionable whether you truly understand what you’re agreeing to.

From time to time, important news gets overshadowed by other headlines, even though it could have a profound impact on our (online) world. To most of us, few things are more bothersome than the dreaded cookie banners. On countless websites, you’re confronted with a pesky pop-up urging you to agree to something. You end up consenting without really knowing what it is. If you try to figure out what’s going on, you quickly get lost among the often hundreds of “partners” who want access to your personal data. Even if you do give your consent, it’s questionable whether you truly understand what you’re agreeing to.

Random side note: how is Belgium to live in and what would it look like to live there right now? Asking for a friend.

Edit: thanks for al the information. I'll move onto learning more about the country and it's people's history.

Someone from a developing nation told me that hating advertising is absolutely a luxury of only wealthy nations. Without ad supported formats LATAM, EMEA, and APAC would have far less access to entertainment and information. It made me reexamine how much of my thoughts on this are privileged.

Cookies are old news. What about browser fingerprinting which can track you across websites? https://www.amiunique.org/

There's basically no easy way to safeguard against it without making browsing nearly unusable.

Cookies are old news. What about browser fingerprinting which can track you across websites? https://www.amiunique.org/

There's basically no easy way to safeguard against it without making browsing nearly unusable.

Random side note: how is Belgium to live in and what would it look like to live there right now? Asking for a friend.

Edit: thanks for al the information. I'll move onto learning more about the country and it's people's history.

1. Please. Need this. Thanks
2. Would this work in any court of law?
3. I’ve learned recently while the CEO has a lot of control, they are not ultimately in control. The executive board is. Everyone on the board should be jailed and barred from starting a business for 25 years or the length of the sentence, whichever is greater

I know the human tendency is to think in extremes, but I would prefer to have a system that is as balanced as possible, or at least one that affords adecuate protections to all parties involved.

The issue I have with the "just don't do anything illegal" argument is that depending on how the illegality is defined, it can be used as a tool for bad actors. Take for instance something like the afformentioned 50% penalty with mandatory jail time for repeat offenders, if I decided that jim's furniture store shouldn't exist anymore, I would only need to find some tiny thing wrong with their data handling, like for instance, assuming this specific hole exists, that they asked for contact info before it's needed for purchase verification. Now they may lose on this minor infraction, and pretty much any small business will die a horrible death without half their revenue. Meanwhile the mega corps will likely find some workaround do to their high priced lawyers, but even assuming we make a rock solid definition, they still just cycle the ceo immediately, because no one will want to be an active ceo when they are one court case from jail.

I agree with the sentiment, but that harsh of an enforcement method is overkill, the penalty should be a fine, not jail time, because otherwise it could be abused to an insane extent, and 50% will immediately bankrupt pretty much any company immediately, most well structured businesses could probably sustain fines on the order of 40%, I do like your inclusion of percentage based penalties, but realistically with 2-5% fines, any ceo will be removed from their company after the first or second offense, and the company will bankrupt if they sustain more than a couple fines in a year.

Edit: after doing the math on some actual companies, I believe 2-5% is too low, realistically 5% is the lowest that would actually change business dealings, and 25% will make a company just barely dip into the red. For this reason I think 5-15% should be the goal post.

You will have your tor-connected 1024x768 anonymous window and you will like it!

Simple:

1. make "no" the default answer when asking
2. massive fine, in the order of 50% of total revenue, the first time you get caught to be paid before the eventual appeal, which if lost raise the fine by 50%. If not paid in 90 days, the CEO goes to jail until it is paid. From now on for 2 years the company must show that it follow the law.
3. mandatory jail time for the CEO the second time you get caught with no option for parole or any other alternative sentence like a fine or whatever.

Or any other solution where the eventual punishment cannot be considered just business cost.

I know, almost impossible...

1. 'No' is already the default, that's why you get the banners, to trick you into opting in. There are a couple of filters that you can enable in uBlock Origin to get rid of (most of) the banners.

IIRC there were hospitals in the US that violated HIPAA by accident because they used the Meta Pixel to aggregate useful information on their website, but which was also sending more information than they knew to Meta. So, it does “just happen”.

Meta is doing it knowingly though so….

Someone from a developing nation told me that hating advertising is absolutely a luxury of only wealthy nations. Without ad supported formats LATAM, EMEA, and APAC would have far less access to entertainment and information. It made me reexamine how much of my thoughts on this are privileged.

Cookies are old news. What about browser fingerprinting which can track you across websites? https://www.amiunique.org/

There's basically no easy way to safeguard against it without making browsing nearly unusable.

But why unusable, why does a browser have to leak language, window size, time, extensions? Can't those be spoofed?