How Cookie Banners Backfired
Summary
One prevalent consumer response is what two communications professors, Nora Draper and Joseph Turow, described in a 2019 paper as “digital resignation.” That is a state of mind in which users know full well that their data is being appropriated and monetized — and know as well that they are being manipulated online — but don’t feel that they can do anything about it. In California, a ballot initiative strengthening the state’s privacy laws passed in 2020 with 56 percent of the vote, despite the usual opposition from the big tech companies. In the meantime, privacy activists like Mr. Schrems believe that the real answer is to create easier ways for consumers to make decisions — simple, infrequent ones — about how they are tracked. Mr. Schrems, for instance, is working on ways to eliminate cookie banners entirely by crafting software that would send automatic signals from your browser. It could work like browser settings that block pop-up ads rather than asking a user to make that decision for every website, removing the need for multiple clicks on intentionally complex banners.