The Consent Maze
In the dock: A news site you opened once, for one article
The crime
"Accept all" is one fat button. "Reject all" is a scavenger hunt through 812 "legitimate interest" toggles.
The fix
Two buttons, equal weight, same screen: Accept all · Reject all. Refusal in one tap or it isn't consent, it's attrition.
The law it breaks
Asymmetric effort as coercion — the GDPR's own guidance says refusing must be as easy as accepting. Making it harder is the dark pattern, not the compliance.
The banner is legally required. The maze is not. When “Accept all” is a single glowing button and “Reject all” hides behind Manage preferences → Vendors → 812 partners → toggle each “legitimate interest” off by hand, the design has made refusing so expensive that most people accept just to read the article. That’s not consent. That’s exhaustion, monetised.
The honest version is trivial and some sites already ship it: two buttons, equal size, equal weight, on the same screen — Accept all and Reject all — and the “manage” link for anyone who wants the dimmer switch. Refusal has to cost the same as agreement or the word “consent” is doing a job it wasn’t hired for.
(We don’t run one of these, because we set zero cookies. That’s Rule 2.)