---
title: "Europeans Spend 575 Million Hours Clicking Cookie Banners Every Year"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/europeans-spend-575-million-hours-clicking-cookie-banners-every-year-icoydklzu
source_url: https://legiscope.com/blog/hidden-productivity-drain-cookie-banners.html
type: article
source: "Hacker News"
published: 2024-11-14T23:28:25.549Z
updated: 2024-12-08T20:38:22.441Z
tags: ["tech-news", "privacy", "gdpr"]
reading_time: 7
upvotes: 10
comments: 5
language: en
---

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# Europeans Spend 575 Million Hours Clicking Cookie Banners Every Year

**[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 7 min read · 10 upvotes · 5 comments

## Summary

European users spend around 575 million hours annually on cookie banners due to the ePrivacy Directive 2002/58. These banners, aimed at enhancing privacy, often lead to minimal privacy benefits and significant productivity loss, costing the economy an estimated €14.375 billion annually. This highlights the need to revisit and potentially revise current privacy regulations to mitigate these issues.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://legiscope.com/blog/hidden-productivity-drain-cookie-banners.html>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@colers25** · 3 upvotes

> Economic costs as calculated by an ape. Can all these cretinous twits stop pretending like we're all coked up lunatics trying to make every second count.
>
> Typically speaking, most of the time lost is inevitably just page orientation time. You'll gain almost nothing by removing the banner. If we have to use this standard of economic cost, then every ad provider should be arrested and locked up for economic terrorism.
>
> This is of course omitting how this author has the insight of a child and doesn't seem to recognize that
>
> 1. A lot of websites do not need a cookie request due to adhering to...

**@martinszeltins** · 0 upvotes

> I use a Chrome extension that removes those cookie banners for me.

**@dodibtw** · 0 upvotes

> There is no way this guy just said cookie banners made the us lose 14B€ 💀💀💀💀
> Some people need to go back to high school so they can find out that this kind of scenario isn't as simple as the author makes it.

**@karlosbubi604** · 0 upvotes

> Friendly Reminder that there is no EU law mandating cookie banners if you collect only data you need, but also any data you need. Also there is no need for users to "accept the privacy policy". It's just comapnies choosing to be abnoxious and/or irresponsible and blaming "big stupid govt."

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---

Tags: [#tech-news](https://daily.dev/tags/tech-news), [#privacy](https://daily.dev/tags/privacy), [#gdpr](https://daily.dev/tags/gdpr)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/europeans-spend-575-million-hours-clicking-cookie-banners-every-year-icoydklzu)