Cause at this stage opting out included navigating many stages of dark pattern and deceptive pages, including semi hidden links and fake slow progress bars. Even on the biggest sites.

If, and I say If, these gangsters ever get hit with major fines, and we get the simple yes/no option that a few pages have, then it will be better.

Right now, the ad industry (or should i say Mafia) is trying to actively circumvent this legislation

What does that even mean? GDPR requires companies to request that people opt in to information gathering.

And in reality, as long as no fear-mongering fines are handed out, companies will try to bypass it.

There would be ways to get control over this, but law is slow.

I rarely see opt in GDPR popups, it's typically "accept tracking" or "more options...", the latter seemingly sending you down an infinite rabbit hole. Well, now that I think about it, this might count as opt in, but this is definitely a dark pattern.

This is supposedly not allowed under the GDPR, but we're going to have to wait a while before this is actually tried in court.

It's not, the consumer advocate in Norway has already released one report on the subject [1, PDF]

Pushing all this through the legal system will take some time but the watchdogs in different countries are not sitting idle.

[1] https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/201...

The other thing I often see is an "accept tracking" button, and a tiny "more options" link that just goes to a page explaining how to switch off cookies on your browser. I'm pretty sure that's not OK with GDPR as well.

IANAL, but this is not entirely true. Under GDPR data can be used by claiming "legitimate interest" [0]. In the case of legitimate interest, the user needs to opt-out rather than opt-in.

0: https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/legitimat...

1% of 1 million is 10k people.