Reject all should be one click, here is why
If accepting takes one click and rejecting takes three, your banner has a problem, one that regulators have already fined some of the largest companies on the internet for. The fix costs nothing, and in practice it tends to help consent rates rather than hurt them.
What regulators keep flagging
European data protection authorities have been consistent on this point for years: consent must be as easy to refuse as to give. France's CNIL fined Google and Facebook heavily in 2022 for exactly this asymmetry: a prominent accept button next to a refuse flow buried behind extra steps. In its cookie banner taskforce report, the EDPB recorded that most EU authorities see a layer offering accept with no way to refuse as falling short of the ePrivacy rules. A banner where rejection requires a trip through settings is not a grey area anymore.
Why dark patterns backfire
The tempting logic is simple: make rejecting harder, harvest more consent. In practice the tactic buys you three problems. The consent you collect is legally fragile, because consent obtained through obstruction does not meet the freely given standard. The measurement built on it inherits that fragility. And visitors are not fools: banners that feel manipulative get dismissed with whatever button is fastest, which is often reject when it is visible and accept when nothing else is. Random noise either way, not a decision. The honest levers work better, and we walk through them in how to raise accept rates without dark patterns.
What a fair banner looks like
Three options on the first layer, equal weight: accept, reject, preferences. Plain language about what data is used and why, not a wall of vendor jargon. No pressure loops, no repeated prompts on every page view, and a way to change your mind later that is easy to find. That is broadly what regulators describe, and it happens to be what visitors describe as respectful when you test it.
One clear choice, either way. No maze of toggles between you and no.
The counterintuitive part
Teams assume a visible reject button collapses consent rates. It does not have to. Clarity builds the kind of trust that makes people comfortable saying yes: a banner that reads like a sentence, states plainly what is measured and offers a genuine choice. People say yes to things they understand.
For the visitors who still say no, you respect the choice completely. Consent Mode v2 tells Google what they chose, and where your account meets Google's eligibility thresholds, modelled conversions estimate part of what they leave out. Declined visits stay out of your reports: modelling is an estimate, not a way around the choice.
Velo ships with reject all on the first layer by default. It is the right call legally, and it is the right call commercially.
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