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Ask HN: Why don't they remove the cookies (and hence the banners)

6 points by jorisboris ↗ HN
I get it if you're an ads-driven website

But why do agencies, municipalities, (government) railways or other non-ads driven websites need to have cookies, and hence the frustrating banners?

My hypothesis is they want to be "better safe than sorry" but maybe there are real marketing purposes behind it?

some examples: https://www.mckinsey.com https://www.london.gov.uk https://www.ns.nl (Dutch railways) https://www.britishmuseum.org

12 comments

[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 48.2 ms ] thread
CharlieDigital
Likely metrics and tracking of traffic flow (origin, dest, etc.)
yen223
User-preference cookies (e.g. light mode vs dark mode) are not "strictly necessary", and therefore probably still require consent under GDPR
shinryuu
Though they are necessary for the given functionality.

So let's say that by default you have a light theme. If the user selects a dark theme, you need the cookie. Then my reading is that no banner would be necessary.

meiraleal
why would someone store it using cookies in place of local storage?
aristofun
You are asking the question from the wrong side.

The right side is - why those bureaucrats are so stupid, short sighted and people hating that we have the frustrating banners even on harmless websites.

jorisboris
We can’t change the bureaucrats but I would expect private companies to have more common sense and customer focus to avoid these shenanigans
drweevil
Nope. It's the companies. https://www.bitecode.dev/p/there-is-no-eu-cookie-banner-law
aristofun
Nope.

It's useless bureaucrats that scare companies so they don't want to waste time and money figuring out all the nuances and put themselves at risk of getting sued.

XCSme
If a law can not be properly enforced, especially without having poor consequences for the majority of people, then it's a bad law.
leros
I don't use a single cookie in my landing pages or product, but I still have the cookie banner because so many of the marketing tools track through cookies.
hbh187
Removing cookies would reset consent and preferences, violating regulations and frustrating users with repeated banners