In many jurisdictions requiring blanket acceptance of cookies to access the whole site is illegal, eg https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/direct-marketing-and-pr... . Sites have to offer informed consent for nonessential cookies - but equally don't have to ask if the only cookies used are essential. So a popup saying 'Accept cookies?' with no other information doesn't cut it.
You don't need consent for functional cookies that are necessary for the website to work. Anything you are accepting or declining in a cookie popup shouldn't affect the user experience in any major way.
I know a lot of people who reflexively reject all cookies, and the internet indeed does keep working for them.
For those who are interested. Things that can change are:
- ads are personalized (aka more relevant/powerful to make you want things).
- The experience can become slower when accepting all cookies due to the overhead generated by extensive tracking
In essence, there should be no relevant reason for users to accept cookies. Even accepting and rejecting should be equally easy. The only problem is that companies clearly prioritize pushing users to accept cookies because the cookies are valuable to them.
I don't. I see a few sibling comments who don't accept them either. And now I'm curious to know if there's a behavioral age gap - i.e. have the younger crowd been defacto-trained to always accept them?
Don’t most websites require you to accept cookies?