That would place the plugin authors in a potentially dicey position legally-speaking.

The publisher is trying to adhere to a law (for better or for worse) by giving the user visibility into technologies and data usage.

A plugin hiding that by default can lead to all sorts of nastiness.

Hiding the popup simply means the site cannot legally set unnecessary cookies. Which they don't if you just ignore the popup or click its close box. That's effectively all the plugin is doing, so it's a perfect solution. It might annoy the site owner, because they would really like you to click "Yes" but it's perfectly legal for them to never get that "Yes" and just never send you cookies.

> Which they don't if you just ignore the popup or click its close box.

The majority still sets the cookie, by using implied consent. In best case they don't set anything if you Decline but most don't even do that. The banner is then merely an information popup about cookies in general.

Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23523294

Yes so the website owner is in a dicey legal position, not the plugin author.

Yes, but the statement that simply ignoring the cookie banner will result in no cookies being set is still wrong. The reason being that almost no sites are compliant.

They are violating the law. There is no implied consent, except in the mind of people whose income depends on there being such a thing.

I know. I'm not saying it's compliant.