Cookie policies; oh how we all shiver when we think of the number of hours we’ve wasted dismissing, hiding, ignoring and getting angry that we can’t open one damn page without a million and one bloody pop-ups, because you accidentally enabled cookies – Which of course turned on advertising, which of-course came from Google or Facebook, who know what you’ve searched so now your eternally stuck with search results for weird things on this news site…
Are cookies bad?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s good to have cookie policies. I don’t want Google or Facebook inserting identifiers into the page to get my data. But I don’t 100% understand why companies do it, like – just think for a minute – when was the last time you actually, on purpose, clicked on one of these adverts?
Probably, never? I didn’t come to read your news article, that’s probably paywalled, to also be hit with an advert for a 500 quid camera because I just so happened to look up my old model number last week.
It’s not just adverts, however, that these cookies are there for, they’re also there for tracking your internet visits. I personally couldn’t give a rats ass what other sites you visited or if you’ve visited my site before, I just want to know how many people visited the site and how many read my posts, or used my app, or used a certain function on it. I don’t need your personal data, and I don’t want it. It’s yours, keep it.
Unchecking cookies is exhausting
99% of sites however are punishing those of us that care about our privacy. The default? ALL COOKIES. Why should I go through seven different buttons and check boxes to stop you giving my cookies? Why is that fair? Why should I be punished for caring about being tracked? What happened to simple yes/no boxes?
We’ve all, for the most part, given up on reading or even caring about these cookie policies and just click yes, visiting 20 new websites a day is a lot of cookie policies to spend a minute per site configuring
I said however in the title that they’re ruining the internet, and it’s true. How many times do you go on a site now and just dismiss everything that pops up? Cookies? Bye. Cool or maybe even important information? Just another pop-up so bye. Promotion where you “Get $20 off when you spe-..”? Bye, I mean, oh shit, I didn’t mean to close that…
People are just dismissing notices now since they expect it to be rubbish or an advert, which hampers those who actually are trying to help you, like with onboarding flows on a website, or important alerts, which, yes, there are other ways of showing you but most of the time a pop-up will, or used to, grab your attention and notice.
So please, I beg of you all, stop with the damn massive, page covering cookie prompt with seven different settings and one million and one website that you share my data with. We can’t even install a plugin on our phones or browsers to stop you appearing, or we can, but it breaks some websites, I just want to read your damn article on some news topic that apparently I can only read half of because I have to pay for the rest. Ironically, you know this because you put a cookie on my device to know I’ve been on your site before…