Manchester, 1965, photo by Shirley Baker.

There’s a new champion in town! 👋🎉 Zen Elite FEI Dressage World Cup™ Final - Grand Prix Freestyle YouTube video by FEI

youtu.be/0EAjPjKwP-Q

In fact hardly any tracking uses fingerprinting & even those that do use cookies as well. Tracking on the stateless web has to use persistent client storage (i.e. cookies, localStorage, indexedDB etc.), & websites have to protect their users from tracking
see my thread @klonick.bsky.social

Certainly banish the banners, the CCPA opened the door with text calling for respecting opt-out signals in a "frictionless manner".
But CMPs are necessary. Regulators such as the CPPA are now demanding they must be effective, i.e. actually stop the tracking. European DPAs need to do that also. 7/7

We of course still make certain that non-essential storage is blocked by default. We also use a cookie to only show the banner, if it is enabled, on first-visit. This purpose was recognised as essential (exempt from the prior consent requirement) by the Article 29 Working Party back in 2011. 6/7

These new entrants, many US based or using US VC finance, no longer blocked cookies or restricted tracking in any way. The banner became the ineffective annoyance it is today. Customers now expect it, so we reluctantly retained the option but we switch it off if DNT or GPC is set. 5/7

We suggested during our work on Do Not Track that the "consent button" could be a standardised part of the browser "chrome", making the "explanation banner" redundant - but this was never taken up.
When other companies entered the CMP space, they copied the UI & made the banner compulsory. 4/7

The "explanation banner" was an option to explain what the button was for & where is could be found, e.g. lower right, in the footer, etc. This was necessary back then because nobody knew what the button was for. 3/7

... storage items e.g. cookies. If you agreed to the puposes of non-essential cookies you could click "accept" which unblocked them, or if not you clicked "decline", or simply closed the panel which left them blocked. 2/7

Cookie banners are a component of Consent Managment Platforms. CMPs are supposed to block cookies and trackers, & only unblock them when users have given their consent. In the first CMP (ours as it happens), you could click an unobtrusive button to see a panel describing the purposes of 1/7

It is for parents to raise their children. Not platforms.

The European Age Verification App is ready ↓

link.europa.eu/HmnrJc

@hennavirkkunen.bsky.social

Witness the breathtaking moment as two juvenile blue whales surface together in the ocean. A rare glimpse of these magnificent giants in their natural habitat.

👇

"Most shockingly," he noted, "Google certifies CMPs that fail to block Google's own cookies."

Meta, Google, Microsoft plus others ignoring privacy opt-outs, US audit finds; widespread breaches of GPC rules; consent checks fail at scale as US$5.8bn liability looms | Mi3 Meta, Google and Microsoft are still tracking users even after they explicitly opt out - and they are not alone - according to a sweeping privacy audit in California that suggests the industry’s compl...

👇
www.mi-3.com.au/15-04-2026/m...

Your Cookie Banner Might Be Working Against You: Two Compliance Traps to Avoid The plaintiffs’ bar has been ramping up lawsuits for alleged violations of state and federal wiretapping laws (e.g., California CIPA, Florida SCA, Federal

Call Baycloud.com For genuine consent tools👇

In the US: "Your consent management platform must clearly say what it does and do what it says... once a user opts out, the analytics and targeting trackers must stop"
In Europe: No Tracking unless you opt-in
dataprivacy.foxrothschild.com/2026/04/arti...

The silent coup How AI captured Westminster

This is a story about power, about politicians becoming distracted by a shiny new thing, without stopping to ask what it might cost.
www.newstatesman.com/technology/2...

EU law designed to abolish bad incentives was introduced in 1990 but corporate lobbyists & shills, financed mainly by US VC & public tech co's, undermined it, using their money to capture regulators & create a compliance ecosystem based on gestural distraction.

Not the whole tech industry, just the Surveillance Marketing industry - a result of allowing bad incentives e.g. behavioural advertising facilitated by unrestricted processing of personal data.

i'll just point out for those who say the verdict is low (multiplied by thousands of plaintiffs) - the jury found negligence. if they maintain the behavior, it won't be negligence; it'll be intent

At baycloud.com we find mass surveillance & tracking of personal healthcare data is also widespread in Europe.
It's not enough to help a few stop tracking on their own devices.
Websites must be responsible.
We develop tools for them to genuinely respect citizens privacy, not just pretend to.

Digital sovereignty isn't just a buzzword – it's the future Linux Foundation Europe boss predicts EU will run as fast as it can from US tech companies Opinion  You want to know who's even sicker of President Donald Trump than American liberals? European governments and companies who are realizing that putting all their eggs in one US basket was a stupid move.…

Digital sovereignty isn't just a buzzword – it's the future

The big tech ad-tech companies will not like it because they want to make it hard for users to refuse, but that is the point. Tracking should be rare and business models that rely on surveillance need to feel their unpopularity.

This is easier in Europe because users can only be tracked, (i.e. only truly essential cookies), if they have opted-in. Californian law incorporated the idea via their "frictionless manner" provisions on respecting Opt-Out signals. govt.westlaw.com/calregs/Docu...

Privacy law could stop people being bombarded with "let us track you" banners by requiring sites to only prompt for consent with an unobtrusive but recognisable button or link, i.e. no banners or pop-ups.
We demonstrated this when we introduced the very first consent platform back in 2011.

Blue-eared Kingfisher (Alcedo meninting) 16cm (6.3in) "The Blue-eared Kingfisher has recently drawn significant attention, captivating photographers with its striking plumage & elusive presence" Kelvin Leong. Thank you Kelvin for sharing this photo taken in Singapore #kingfisher #singapore #wildlife

Great podcast. This UK state alignment with US big tech interests actually started way before DeepMind, when their lobbyists & shills conspired to wreck ePrivacy & EUDP. See our blogposts going back to 2011 baycloud.com/blog/listall...

„A recent analysis […] found that the AI-generated summaries, which appear above Google search results, are accurate around 91 percent of the time […] translating to tens of millions of wrong answers that the AI Overviews are providing every hour.“ 🤯

Great read on the commodification of education that we’re currently witnessing (& have been for some time!) sad to see education, & by extension learning, something that makes us human and is a human right, be exploited & commodified, & “dummified”. Hate that for us!!!

in a decent society someone like Mark Zuckerberg would have been tarred and feathered when he first created Facemash, but instead the world has elevated this man into prominence, and his company is endangering women and children the world over