alt Hacker News> Disclaimer: I work on a consent product.
Forgive me for immediately untrusting you on the matter because the reality distortion field must be strong. Cookie banners are an absolute crystal clear evil and there is absolutely no leeway for a different opinion here.
(Tracking is also an undisputed evil)
> Consent banners don't have to be awful, I promise.
False.
They absolutely have to be awful because that's the whole premise of the law. You have to get user's consent. In order to force the user to make a choice you have to make it more annoying than it is annoying to read your content while ignoring the popup. The only way to conform to the law is to make users' experience on your website miserable.
> true at a certain (small) scale, when you have hundreds of millions [...] this is impractical.
True.
However it is also impractical to actually use the consent dialog. Because all the trackers and tools that different teams are adding to the site - they have to communicate with the cookie popup somehow and no living programmer would be bothered to even think about it. Nothing good for the world comes out of presenting and respecting the cookie popup ().
Thus I see fake cookie consent popups that are actually ignoring users' choices.
() On my site I do my best to respect the user's choice and do NOT track them once they hopefully reject.
Why are you tracking when it's an undisputed evil? Reality distortion indeed.
Is getting consent interruptive? yes. Is that worse than not getting consent? Also yes.
Since you don't appear to want to give up the undisputed evil of tracking, then consent is what's left to you. You've made the same choice as everyone else.
I'd encourage you to respect GPC and DNT, so the (roughly 20%, depending on audience) of users that have it enabled can automatically opt out of your tracking without the "crystal clear evil" of a consent banner. Remember that in California you need to show some display that their consent choices have been observed.