This bill requires Web browsers to have an easy-to-find (and use) setting for consumers to send an opt-out preference signal by default to every site and app they interact with.
Doing this at a browser level has always been the sensible method, instead of requiring it at the site level.
Fighting the uphill battle yet again. And yet again, this is gonna fail because many, if not most websites will either ignore it completely or find a workaround to keep selling your data. After all, what are they gonna do, sue every company that does this? Not to mention that Do Not Track is already a thing, and it doesn’t work because any site that relies on ads for money isn’t gonna stop tracking you just because you asked nicely, and the ones that do are already more respecting of user privacy anyway.
GDPR gave us the cookie banner that both consumers and website owners hate. Legislation absolutely can affect change.
Not to mention, the GDPR has teeth… I don’t know if ignoring the opt out would be a GDPR violation, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
And while the laws aren’t remotely in the same jurisdiction, no browser is going to provide a different version just for California, so European users will likely get this as well.
At its Dec. 8, 2023 board meeting, the agency noted that browsers that natively support opt-out preference signals (Mozilla Firefox, DuckDuckGo, and Brave) currently make up less than 10% of the global desktop browser market.
