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As shown in e.g. Could the cookie banner please be made less intrusive? and multiple answers to We’re adding more user controls for cookie consent the current cookie banner design is less than ideal.

Could this be exposed in my profile preferences, for several reasons?

  • Some browser configurations (e.g. ad blockers) do not work well with the current configuration. Requiring us to lower our shields just to say "no thanks" to things those shields are up to protect us against is disingenuous at best.
  • The current design hides these settings and makes it hard to review them.
  • This makes it easy to implement preferences network-wide, so that we don't have to go in and click the same configuration manually into 200+ sites ... imagine the nightmare if we later decide to change one of the sliders, and need to reconfigure manually on all the sites where we have already accepted our previous preference?
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  • 17
    Can't agree more! Hope they listen to reason.
    – Pourko
    Commented Mar 31, 2021 at 5:18
  • 3
    A small rant: when I see a new feature, it's rather something bad than good. Cookie banner idea for registered users is a terrible idea. Consider showing us notification "Check your setting we have added something new [link to the post with announcement]" and setting default to a minimum.
    – Sinatr
    Commented Mar 31, 2021 at 15:47
  • There's currently a 'cookie settings' link at the bottom of the page, isn't that a more logical place for it than a profile? Because that way you can even access it repeatedly without having a profile.
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented Mar 31, 2021 at 18:14
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    @Tinkeringbell What about not having to do that repeatedly across 200+ sites/4-something domains? I'd prefer having it in my preferences.
    – Ollie
    Commented Mar 31, 2021 at 19:18
  • @Tinkeringbell That link doesn't do anything at all for me in my current browser (Iridium); as in, it doesn't even notify me that something was blocked, it just doesn't make anything happen.
    – tripleee
    Commented Apr 6, 2021 at 4:43
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    This is related to a bug around the cookies pop up that the team is already looking into. We're investigating this as part of that.
    – Rosie StaffMod
    Commented Apr 7, 2021 at 13:49
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    To still revisit @Tinkeringbell's comment, having (working) cookie settings on every page is quite anathema to what I'm trying to argue makes sense for most registered users: Configure once, forget forever, across all Stack Exchange sites. Secondarily, find these settings where your other settings and preferences are if you ever want to review or reconfigure them.
    – tripleee
    Commented Apr 7, 2021 at 13:53
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    Hey folks, I'm moving this back to [status-review]. Unfortunately I haven't been able to follow the paperwork to determine what the internal status of this request. It will need some further investigation to determine what the appropriate state of this request is, as well as what our current plans are. For that reason I'm sending it back to the start of the [status-review] process.
    – Slate StaffMod
    Commented Oct 3 at 17:45
  • 2
    @Slate I've said it before, but thank you again for keeping us apprised of where things are, even when the update is "no idea where this is at or "this has stalled for the time being".
    – Robotnik
    Commented Oct 3 at 23:07

2 Answers 2

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For registered users, we're working on storing cookie preferences against your account so that your preferences are saved across our different domains. That will save you from having to set preferences for each domain.

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    What is the need for cookie consent for logged-in users in the first place? Haven’t we already accepted that you handle our personal information by creating an account?
    – Cris Luengo
    Commented Apr 28, 2021 at 1:11
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    Is there an update on when this might be implemented? I find it annoying to have to repeatedly accept cookies (my usual browser deletes cookies when I close it), on every browser, on every device. It is me, the person, that accepts the cookies and not the browser.
    – 1201ProgramAlarm
    Commented Jun 6, 2021 at 16:51
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    Update: This seems to have been implemented as of September 9, 2021. I still get the cookie preference dialog when I first open a page, but once I login it goes away. And after login when I navigate from SO to a SE based site I don't get the dialog at all.
    – 1201ProgramAlarm
    Commented Sep 10, 2021 at 17:03
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All the mess could be avoided by actually tackling the real problem: The banner. Making it decent is actually the only possible a solution; all else, including this request, although welcome and helpful, is but a clumsy work-around.

Still, the staff refused to make it less of an annoyance and gave no serious justification for it, the real one being that Stack wants to make money by tracking visitors. A small banner is ignored — that's what they learned from the previous version of the banner, which was an unobtrusive footer. This new banner occludes content, thus users have no choice but to dismiss it to move on.

To add up, there is no "reject all" button (proposal), a nice strategy to induce users to give "consent".

The new cookies banner has been launched several months ago. Many bugs have been filed since, as well as several complaints on its intrusiveness. One would expect Stack Exchange to value enough its community to at least have sorted out this obvious request beforehand. But nah.

A reliable work-around for now is to use an ad-blocker. For example, these Ublock directives clean up much of the rubbish in the user interface, respectively the banner, the big "sign up to join this community" header, and the Teams advertisement:

askubuntu.com##.js-consent-banner
mathoverflow.net##.js-consent-banner
serverfault.com##.js-consent-banner
stackexchange.com##.js-consent-banner
stackoverflow.com##.js-consent-banner
superuser.com##.js-consent-banner

askubuntu.com##.js-dismissable-hero
mathoverflow.net##.js-dismissable-hero
serverfault.com##.js-dismissable-hero
stackexchange.com##.js-dismissable-hero
stackoverflow.com##.js-dismissable-hero
superuser.com##.js-dismissable-hero

askubuntu.com##.ps-relative.js-freemium-cta
mathoverflow.net##.ps-relative.js-freemium-cta
serverfault.com##.ps-relative.js-freemium-cta
stackexchange.com##.ps-relative.js-freemium-cta
stackoverflow.com##.ps-relative.js-freemium-cta
superuser.com##.ps-relative.js-freemium-cta
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