The EU's cookie-law is often made light of here, but there's a difference between essential and non-essential cookies.

The non-essential cookie warnings for most intents and purposes can be read as "This site will track you".

Sites using essential cookies don't have to put up a warning.

Following third party links, I now often decide that particular content is not that important when the warning pops up. It also serves as a rudimentary filter for lower quality content.

So cookie warnings being everywhere tell me a tale about the sorry state of the Web, and not a joke about bureaucracy gone haywire.