The EU does not act like the US - if there's a piece of law, there is guidance on how to comply with that law. You follow it and you're safe, until someone publishes updated guidance.
A number of companies are betting that doing something short of what the guidance recommends will still result in a compliant website. They are in a situation where, if they attract the attention of a regulating body, they may be fined.
And what if your cat walks across the keyboard and accidentally consents, but you never even realized it? Should there be a consent banner across the top at all times? Or what if you are drunk when you are surfing the web and didn't understand your rights when you accidentally consented (drunk people can't consent - the website raped your privacy)?
But this discussion is full of examples of "consent" dialogues that clearly are made to trick users into making a different choice than what they want. In such cases showing the logs and dialogues would demonstrate that a valid consent was not obtained.
It's not a novel thing - for example, I recall that many years ago website opt-in patterns were being reviewed in the Ryanair case where the consumer rights agencies analyzed their website order process where a bunch of 'dark patterns' were used so that people accidentally "opting in" to things they did not want to. There's an administrative process that determines whether your process is honest or tries to cheat users into "agreeing" to things they don't intend to agree. In the latter case, you'll be forced to change how your stuff works.
i am sure there are many databases out there which i am marked as having consented it, although i did no such thing. the standard is to make it hard to express your desire to opt out despite the rules requiring entirely the opposite.
E.g. at the launch of GDPR a local major supermarket chain tried to use a bunch of dark patterns for their loyalty card program (mostly offline) process so as to continue their tracking, they were forced to change last year. It's clear that issues like that have a much larger impact on privacy of people than some foreign news website, and that's prioritized accordingly.
For the major multinational social networks, the delays are (intentionally?) caused by the lack of capacity in the Ireland data protection agency, as many of these multinationals have their EU HQ in Ireland because of tax purposes, so all their cases are being handled there and that means that enforcement for them is going to take a long time. But if I look at random local websites today and compare it to what was happening a year ago, the dark patterns are not prevalent anymore. They appear occasionally, but they're really rare now locally.
Person: "I swear I didn't consent! I didn't even see the dialogue! My cat must've walked across the keyboard and accidentally consented"
Ok, you're the judge, what's your call?
Should the dialogue force you to have to type: "I've read and consent to the terms ..." ?
If the company refuse, or if the user claims he was tricked into agreeing, then there is cause for further investigation.
And it's not going to be a judge from the start, but whatever organism is charged with compliance. Then, if they have a case, a judge gets involved.
How is this even possible without setting up a video meeting where a consent officer interviews you and quizzes you to make sure you understood your rights and what you were consenting to?
This seems like an exceedingly onerous thing to demonstrate