The case for banning cookie banners
4/7/20261 hr 18 min
Cookie banners — those pop-ups that appear on practically every webpage demanding you accept their tracking systems — are one of the most consistent low-grade annoyances of life online. But Kate Klonick, a professor and writer, argues they're actually much worse than that, and the only plausible solution is to get rid of them entirely. After that, The Verge's Allison Johnson tells us about her AI-enhanced Google Maps experience, and why the new Ask Maps feature has the potential to be both incredibly cool and incredibly creepy. Then, she helps David answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about whether E Ink phones might solve all our problems. Vote for The Vergecast in the Webby Awards! A vote for The Vergecast is a vote that Brendan Carr is a dummy, that buttons are good, and that party speakers rule the world. Voting is open until April 16. https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/shows/technology Further reading: Ban Cookie Banners: A Case Study in Tech Regulation by Kate Klonick Kate’s website Google Maps is getting AI-powered ‘Ask Maps’ feature and more immersive navigation I let Gemini in Google Maps plan my day and it went surprisingly well TCL’s new Nxtpaper phones have a dedicated button for maximum monochrome Boox Palma 2 Pro review: one step forward, one step back Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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First 90 secondsDavid Pierce· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of clicking agree on pop-ups on the internet without ever reading a word of them. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I got a new phone. Um, I know I told you I was done with this wild phone experiment that I've been on, and that's true, but that doesn't mean that I don't get needlessly excited about some wacky new idea about how phones are supposed to work, especially if they're supposed to save me from using my phone too much. The new one I have is, is called the Side Phone, and the idea is basically it's like a, a minimalist Android phone, but it has attachments for the bottom half. So essentially, imagine a BlackBerry, but you can lift off the keyboard, and it just has sort of individually replacement parts. So you, you can have one that looks like a, an actual kind of full keyboard, but then you can also put on just number keys if all you wanna use it for is to make calls. But the one I think is most fun is it has an iPod-style click wheel that you can just stick into place, and suddenly you have a thing that looks like an iPod. I find this so charming, and I love the idea of a phone that can be lots of things, but tries very hard to only be one of them at a time, and you have to be like, "I am using my phone as a camera now, so I'm gonna attach the thing and use it as a camera," and it's less useful as everything else. And then you're like, "Well, I'm gonna use it as a music player now." And it's not everything to everyone at all times, even though it can do lots of things. I think it's very cool. I need to test this phone a bunch more. I have a bunch of questions about how this hardware