There is an interesting detail buried within an article about cookie banners:

“I often hear people say how tired they are of having to engage with so many cookie pop-ups,” said Denham. “That fatigue is leading to people giving more personal data than they would like. The cookie mechanism is also far from ideal for businesses and other organisations running websites, as it is costly and it can lead to poor user experience.

“While I expect businesses to comply with current laws, my office is encouraging international collaboration to bring practical solutions in this area.”

She will raise the issue during a virtual meeting with leaders from the US, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Italy, the OECD and WEF. Each representative will suggest a technology or innovation issue on which they believe closer international cooperation is required.

Denham has indicated that a smoother mechanism for consent is already technologically possible and compliant with data protection regulations. No further detail was given on the mechanism, which was simply described as “an idea on how to improve the current cookie consent mechanism, making web browsing smoother and more business friendly while better protecting personal data”.

Very important to note fatigue being mentioned as a reason against consent being given to the person who would be most interested in the harms.

In this context of a data owner being undermined, read the start of that last paragraph again:

Denham has indicated that a smoother mechanism for consent is already technologically possible and compliant with data protection regulations.

If you haven’t already looked at how W3C Solid brings consent to the Web, now is a great time to start.

Also, I found it delightful that this article forced me into an ugly consent mechanism before I could read about why consent fatigue is real.