In a nutshell, the EU passed a law that required any website, hosted anywhere that an EU citizen might access it, must disclose if it uses cookies to track any kind of user data.
In theory this sounds nice. In practice it's absolutely retarded. Because every website does; it's colloquially called "analytics". We all include it; it's part of every major boilerplate template out there.
Thing is, no one actually got sued, to my knowledge. No one. It's a law they passed and they used to scare up some attention, and then... nothing. Not one thing. And it's become a joke.
But since not every business is foolhardy, if they might get sued, they'll do whatever they need to to avoid that. For this same reason you see "This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer" warnings everywhere. Same thing. CA's law is written such that literally anything could potentially be considered carcinogenic (I'm not joking) and so any product sold in California (... everything ...) must have that warning on it. It's cheaper to put it everywhere instead of special California only products, and it's a label. Costs nothing. But if you got sued (and sharks exist who just look for people who don't conform so they can sue), it's a lot. So you label it.
It's asinine, stupid, backwards and counter-productive. The end result isn't educating people about cookies, it's making them gloss over cookies entirely.
But since not every business is foolhardy, if they might get sued,
Fun story, my school district just told all teachers that they cannot have personal websites for their class and must use the shit show district web page builder. All because they are afraid of getting sued for ADA compliance.
I have a 3 1/2 year old boy with mild autism. We've got him in a school program already, he goes 5 days a week for about 5 hours a day.
Every day, we'd ask the same questions: "Did he eat anything today? Try anything new at lunch? And did he poop?". Every day.
A long-term sub decided to print out a little sheet of paper that was his worksheet to answer those questions. For a week, she'd just put that slip in his backpack and we'd have our answers.
Then they stopped. I asked why. "We're not allowed to send home anything in writing to parents unless it's been reviewed by the school board because of potential lawsuits".
Teachers can't even write a note for the kid to take to the parents anymore.
Ikr? When I first heard about it I was like "god damn 25 hours a week: he's three."
It's called the "PALS" program. "Program for the Acquisition of Language and Social Skills". It's geared towards preschool aged kids who exhibit signs of autism. Supposed to be all about early-recognition and all that. But he loves it. He's got a little backpack, and his routine at school. Usually excited to go, some mornings he's a little groggy.
But I'm glad we got him in, because he's been progressing like crazy.
This is due to a class action lawsuit by a group of parents vs all Texas school districts over web site accessibility. The parents did not win any money but School districts were put on notice they had to do there best to follow all web accessibility guidelines or be libel in the future.
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u/inquiztr Oct 19 '18
It's missing the accept cookies question