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Whenever I click the Accept all cookies button on the cookie consent banner at the bottom of the page, it disappears, but then it reappears again as soon as I navigate to another page or reload the same page.

I am logged in and have had an account for years. I don't visit Ask Ubuntu very often so I don't know how long this has been happening. But I do recall seeing the consent banner a few days ago and accepting it then, which is why I was surprised to see it again today.

I am not blocking cookies or other local storage. I did try clearing cookies and logging in again, but the consent banner continues to reappear on every page despite repeatedly clicking Accept all cookies. I also tried clicking Customize settings but the only effect was to briefly show a spinner, and then do nothing I could see. Clicking it a second time had no effect at all.

This does not seem to be happening elsewhere on the network, but I also don't know if any other site has such a banner.

My browser is Firefox 84.0.2 for Fedora.

When testing with Firefox 84.0.2 on my Mac, I noticed that clicking the Accept button sends requests to the cookielaw.org domain. This domain is blocked on the Linux machine. It's not clear why such a request would be sent there at all. That domain is listed in several lists used by ad blockers, including (according to uBlock Origin) AdGuard Annoyances, Fanboy's Annoyance and Easylist Cookie.

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    It's a network-wide thing being rolled out on AU first: We’re adding more user controls for cookie consent. Also, I can't reproduce in chromium on Arch nor with firefox 84.0.1. Can you confirm this happens to you in an incognito tab with no active axtensions?
    – terdon
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 19:08
  • Well it isn't happening on Firefox 84.0.1 on my Mac, and didn't happen when I updated it to 84.0.2. So I expect something is different between them. I'm not entirely sure what that may be, though. I'll dig into it.
    – Michael Hampton
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 19:33
  • @terdon OK, after getting into it with the web developer tools, it looks like on the Linux box, the ad blocker is blocking cookielaw.org, while it is not (yet) blocked on the Mac. I'm not sure why cookie consent requires connecting to this third party website. When I click the Accept button, in both cases the request is sent to that web site, not as far as I can tell to any SE network site.
    – Michael Hampton
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 19:35
  • Ah, nice find. I hate third partyu cookies...
    – terdon
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 19:38

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Disable your ad blocker (temporarily!) and try again. A lot of ad blockers and cookie blockers and content blockers block the underlying cookielaw.org site.

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    That is indeed what happened. Which just leads to the question of: why is cookie consent being sent to a third party?
    – Michael Hampton
    Commented Jan 13, 2021 at 1:44
  • @MichaelHampton I believe that's an issue beyond the scope of what I know, but this third party has a portal mechanism to track ongoing consent and compliance - cookiepro.com/products/cookie-consent - whether SE is using this or not. This doesn't however necessarily count as a bug in SE but rather third party blocking mechanisms (uBlock Origin for instance will block data that's third party on sites NOT on the site itself if configured as such)
    – Thomas Ward Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2021 at 4:22
  • I might have to take that larger question to meta.SE then.
    – Michael Hampton
    Commented Jan 13, 2021 at 4:53

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