> But give it time, and years later most if not all restaurants and customers have accepted the new situation, offering an overall better experience for everybody involved. And I think that's what will eventually happen with the cookie law now that the GDPR has made more obvious and annoying the whole process.
I really hope that, but right now, I'm not optimistic. With smoking and restaurants, even if the tobacco industry was involved to some extent, it was not singlehandedly funding the whole restaurant business. The main business model of restaurants - people pay to have great food, drinks and a good time in general - is independent of smoking. In contrast, a large part of the modern web seems to be built on ads and tracking as its very foundation.
I agree that's where the metaphor falls short... I wanted to talk about how these big changes in regulations, affecting how mostly everybody had been doing business until that moment, tend to be strongly rejected by affected parties, but they tend to be worth it on the long term, and people end up getting comfortable again under the new rules.
But you're right that in this case the problem is that most websites have been "cheating" by supporting themselves on shady stuff, and now that rules and laws are being reviewed to cut this possibility out, here comes the crying.
I really hope that, but right now, I'm not optimistic. With smoking and restaurants, even if the tobacco industry was involved to some extent, it was not singlehandedly funding the whole restaurant business. The main business model of restaurants - people pay to have great food, drinks and a good time in general - is independent of smoking. In contrast, a large part of the modern web seems to be built on ads and tracking as its very foundation.