Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Harvard Journal of Law and Technology
Publication Date
2025
Volume
Vol. 39, No.1
First Page
415
Abstract
Few experiences on the modern internet are as universally reviled as the cookie banner. They clutter websites with pop-ups, interrupt user flow, make information harder to access, and demand repetitive, meaningless clicks. What was once heralded as a tool to advance individual autonomy and privacy has, in practice, become a daily annoyance that breeds cynicism with the very concept of consent itself. Cookie banners do not empower; they weary. They do not inform; they obscure. They do not prevent surveillance; they normalize it.
The tragedy of the cookie banner is that it embodies the best intentions but worst solutionism of modern regulation: the fantasy that complex problems such as digital surveillance can be solved by forcing individuals to click “I agree.” At best, this fantasy has produced a regime of performative compliance that neither informs users nor limits data exploitation and degrades internet usability. But at worst, it has crowded out more substantive reforms by offering the illusion of protection while leaving surveillance capitalism intact. Government can point to the highly visible cookie banner and declare its promise met in addressing data privacy issues. Industry, now that a compliance solution has been agreed on and normalized, prefers a known system with which they can easily comply and are unmotivated to push for a reform. While users, faced with endless click-throughs, learn not to assert their rights but to surrender them reflexively. In this sense, cookie banners are not merely bad design. They are a cautionary tale of regulatory failure. Born from European data protection laws, exported worldwide through market forces, and mirrored in other government regulations, banners represent the triumph of ritual over reality in technology law.
To this end, this Article argues one thing and one thing only: that cookie banners should be abolished. They do not protect privacy, they erode meaningful consent, and they impose unnecessary costs on information access, usability, and even the environment. Most of all, their existence stands in the way of future progress and a new regulatory solution. In order to understand how regulation can go so wrong — and how to move beyond it — this Article traces the history of cookie banner mandates, catalogues their failures, and makes a simple plea: to end cookie banners so that the law can move towards new interventions to protect individuals’ privacy with something more than a hollow click.
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Available at: https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/volumes/volume-39