Thread by @spenley

I thought the spirit of #GDPR was supposed to be that it should be easy and simple to control how my data is used by websites. Yet this is what I had to go through in order to do that when I tried to read a @HuffPostUK tweet... (1)

First, I had to NOT press okay on this screen. Instead I had to press "here". (2)

Then I had to find the "Privacy Dashboard" option in this very very very very long page of links. (3)

Then I had to remember which service had just provided the story (do I have to do this for every one of these as and when I first go to their site?) (4)

Prove I'm not a robot. (5)

Now I've got to go through every one of these controls and turn them off individually. (6)

Don't click OK! Click the slightly less obvious option (7)

Now I get to select which advertisers I want to say no to. (8)

No - don't click "Done". Otherwise you've okayed all the advertisers. Click the much less obvious "show". The first one, not the second. (9)

Deselect them all, deselect them all. (10)

Make sure you also, on the same page, click "other partners", otherwise you'll have meet loads loads more switched on. (11)

Now to the second option of 6. (12)

Switch it off. (13)

And to the third option. (14)

Switch it off. (15)

Oh, did I mention in on a train, so connection is not brilliant. So the whole thing stops. (16)

Wow, going back gives me a different "gone wrong" screen. (17)

And would you believe, there's a third "gone wrong" screen, which suggests to me I have to start all over again. (18)

Having gone through all those steps again, time to turn off some more options. (19 (although really about 34)

)

(gotta correctly nest those parentheses)

Switch this one off (20)

Back to the dashboard (21)

I actually think I missed a couple of options, because I'm lost. Switch this off anyway. (22)

Back to the dashboard. No obvious OK button. If I press the Back button on my phone, I start to go back through all the previous options. So instead I press X. (23)

And by now the tweet I was interested in has disappeared down my timeline and I've lost interest. (24)

Is it just me or is this process designed to make us just click OK and consent to giving our data, either by mistake or out of sheer frustration?! This is not what GDPR was for, and this seems to me to be sticking to the letter of the law, but nowhere near the spirit.