They’re not lazy, they’re maliciously compliant.

Often times they're not even compliant.

It's a lot easier to dislike GDPR when you don't live in a country that benefits from it, but it still annoys you.

Excellent points, but the cookie banners were a response to the ePrivacy Directive, not GDPR. In fact the banners predate GDPR by about a decade! I know this because I decided to make my own banner that was slightly less annoying about five years before GDPR was a thing.

Funnily enough most of your points are still correct precisely because, as you say, "most people wholly equate GDPR with the cookie banners".

gorhill says in its GitHub page that you can donate to the maintainers of the filter lists.

Makes such a useful piece of software, and is also wise enough to set boundaries to protect himself from the toxic pressure of open source development.

What a G.

Does that kill just shorts or everything you mentioned in your comment?

I thought hover play functionality can be turned off in youtube settings?

But as I was typing this, I realised it's useful for non logged in youtube, I assume.

I've used uBlock to get rid of everything: the homepage (leaving only the search bar; so no stupid video suggestions), the upcoming videos and the comment section. I go on Youtube to watch the videos I know I want to watch, not find new videos. I know this sounds a bit radical, but it works well for me.

And their tip didn't work to remove the cookie banner on their site

I hope, EU legislation will force websites to accept a global “Auto-decline”/“Minimum-possible” configurable in the web browser, in which case no banner can be shown. IMO, that’s how it should have always been.

The banner is a stupid solution. Tracking and ad profiles should be completely banned instead.

There is also "consent o matic", banner does appear but go away in less than a second and auto decline as possible. Does not work on 100% of website but still does a good job.

you can use it to bypass facebooks login popup(without logging in)

What's funny is I didn't even know any of this because I already have PopUpOff lol

That's Substack platform fault.

On the flip side, it's a good way to test if it works.

Usually anything related to GDPR.
I believe California has a similar law framework.

Essentially websites are obligated to ask for consent of storing cookies.
Usually they can be denied and you won't have a personalized experience (e.g. dark mode wont be persistent between page visits) but it should not prevent you from viewing.
It's just companies will pressure you into accepting them by utilizing dark patterns and try to coax you into accepting the most privacy invasive options (and selling your data to >500 advertisers)

Website operators don't want to have to display cookie banners

This is false. If they didn't want to display the banners they could literally remove them, there's absolutely nothing requiring them as long as they don't track your behavior. They refuse to give up tracking so they add the banners to annoy visitors and hopefully trick some of them into accidentally opting into tracking. It's an abusive manipulation of a loophole in the GDPR. If they really hated the banners they could just not track you but they rather make it your problem.

Websites did it to themselves by abusing cookies to track users. Instead of consent popups though, the EU should have just blanket banned tracking in general.

If website operators didn't want to ask for consent, they should stop trying to profit for your behavioral data. But they want to sell your data and have de it from you. That's the only thing not allowed. There are plenty of sites that use cookies and don't need to show a consent banner.

I'd honestly be so much happier if it was a permission request similar to e.g. accessing location or microphone access, for a number of reasons:

• would be easier to manage as it would end up being a single interface handled by the browser instead of a per-website implementation
• no differently worded, intentionally vague bullshit options that are designed to entrap the user
• no struggle finding the enable/disable option after clicking either accept or decline
• the ability to automatically provide a default answer that gets around to the fucking popup blocking 2/3 of the page