Cookie banners exist because it is a dark pattern companies use to get you to opt into marketing cookies by making the easiest thing the worst choice.

This could all be handled by settings in the browser, only if the sites themselves listened to the users' browser preferences.

In the US all the age verification legislation is written by data broker companies that want to mine this data. The government also wants to be able to have access to this information by proxy.

It’s not written the way it’s written because they’re oblivious it’s written the way it’s written because it’s plain lobbying writing the bill.

For example, there’s little in the way of protections in how the age verification would be protected or prevent the analytics from being sold

Tech companies could have headed off this legislation 15 years ago by just solving the problem as Bender suggested. But they wanted to pretend they had no social responsibility to not deliver filth to children, and so now the legislators are involved and they get to deal with that. I have no sympathy.

Also should have been easy to design an OAuth like flow where the government that seems to care so damn much about age verification to attest someone's age in a privacy respecting way - only yes/no if the person is of the desired age.

But then again if it was to protect children, better support for voluntary age control would be so much more useful as most minors use devices managed/owned by their parents.

But then similar to cookie banners it is just about enabling surveillance

I was referring to the intern being able to add the header. Politicians need financial incentive. I don't have the resources to lobby them. I think that might require a philanthropist should there happen to be one that lurks on HN. There are some interesting people that lurk here that we sometimes learn about.

They can't do anything today as it is a federal holiday but they could do something tomorrow.

Like how browsers made a do-not-track feature that got ignored by websites because there was no consequence?

DNT exists, not even that is honored by websites. There is no need for a cookie banner for technical cookies.

This is misinformation stemming from disinformation propagated by organized industry retaliation to the law. Cookie banners are not and never have been required by law, they are intentional harassment designed to make users oppose laws that actually just say “you may not track users without their consent”. A good faith implementation would be simply nothing, because no explicit consent is required when you’re actually using cookies for honest purposes.

Most of those banners are in violation of GDPR. The law isn't necessarily the problem, although it could have been done better.