Ask HN: Is Cookie Pop-Up Protection a Good Idea?

3 points by pipo234 - 299 Days, 18 Hours ago Hacker News

On my Android phone I've been using Duck Duck Go's browser for a while. By default it visits sites "incognito" and aggressively purges cookies.

Of course this results in sites not remembering your (GDPR) privacy preferences which would in turn result in those pesky pop ups every time you visit a site. To mitigate this, DDG offers a feature to automatically handle the popups:

   When DDG detects cookie pop-ups on sites you visit it can automatically set your cookie preferences to minimize cookies and maximize privacy, then close the pop-ups.

Technically, it's far from the simplicity of something like DNT header, but it works reasonably well on a (small) majority of websites. I think this is because those websites use a standardized dialog, the remaining sites still require manual interaction with the pop-up.

What I've noticed recently in my own behaviour is that I tend to dismiss or ignore search results that DDG's pop up feature doesn't recognize. I.e.: I have a bias toward preferring sites that either don't have cookies, don't have cookie pop-ups or have cookie pop-ups that immediately disappear automagically.

So my question is: what if these kinds of tools gain wider adoption? Would that cause traffic to significantly decrease for sites with non-standard pop ups? And could that ultimately incentivize websites to tailor pop-ups to not annoy users? Any are downsides?