Mostly automation -- you don't have to actually craft the list. It will just spot stuff it thinks it should be blocking and do so. And if you need to correct it (uncommon in my experience) the UI for doing so is right there next to the address bar. Also, it's capable of just blocking cookies for some sites, which is nice when they're hosting common J's libs/fonts or something, and blocking them outright would break the page.

I ran Privacy Badger for a while. It is very good for finding out who is setting 3rd party cookies or using alternatives to cookies (eg. localstorage with unique identifiers). Rather than using a list, my understanding is it uses heuristics based on what cookies are set, whether they are 1st vs 3rd party, their expiry time and the like.

The good thing about privacy badger is that you don't have to care about the contents of ads ('acceptable ads') or how much you like a particular site ('please unblock us in your ad-blocker).

If a site has parts with 3rd party tracking cookies then I just don't see it.

The downside of only using privacy badger is that you do see some ads. At the moment I find that level of ads acceptable.