Trying to make good laws is not easy, and trying to anticipate how companies will react to them is also not easy. Really, n a vacuum, I think I can forgive them for not anticipating that "people will put up so many banners that it will undermine our law and make it look like we wanted more banners rather than people not using tracking cookies".

Yes, that was entirely predictable, was in fact predicted, and was really the whole experience of the cookie banners which have already plagued the web for years before the GDPR.

For the GDPR to be effective, there will need to be several more rounds of “yes, we really need you to change”. It’s a big change in business practices, and businesses don’t like change when it come to their revenue. Lots of laws get passed and then not effectively enforced, and I can’t really blame businesses for not wanting to entirely upend their business model for something the EU might not care about in a few years.