Did anybody ever understand what cookie consent really meant?

Not long ago, after it was bought by Avast, I wrote about the I don’t care about cookies browser extension, which had proved a disappointment to many of its users, concerned about the Czech company’s poor reputation for protecting privacy reputation.

Now, another browser, Brave, has begun offering its users automatic blocking of cookie consent notices, preventing any communication with the system sending the message. This option is generally considered the safest, given the doubts about the treatment of our information if we click on the “Manage my cookies” option.

The many arguments around this issue demonstrate only one thing: that the laws designed to control the use of cookies on web sites have been a failure that the vast majority of users regard as an annoyance.

The law concerning the use of cookies, the ePrivacy Directive, was first passed in 2002 and subsequently amended in 2009, and obliges websites to obtain users’ consent for the use of cookies. Its immediate effect was to turn web browsing into a hellscape where accessing a web site triggers a complex contract in the form of a pop-up that forces the user who wants to access information to supposedly review it and make a series of decisions, in the context of an endless list of possibilities with generally very diffuse and…