Yes, I don't doubt web developers would mostly prefer not to be bothered and just keep doing what they've been doing. Much cheaper than doing a system audit to figure out if you're GDPR-compliant, concluding with your lawyers that you have no idea if you're GDPR-compliant, and putting up a cookie banner nobody wants just in case. That's assuming you can afford lawyers.
At this point, it's safer to partner with a host that'll manage all that stuff for you than run an independent site. Which, ultimately, the Googles of the world love to hear, because they can afford the lawyers.
The GDPR is an amazing bit of jiu-jitsu to build a moat around competition. All the big names have to do is spend a pittance every so often to stay in compliance and they win the market, while small operators decide the risk ain't worth it because "Just don't collect user data" is actually quite hard to guarantee on a system built atop infinite cheap copying and arbitrary site access.
Not even the apache default logging config is GDPR-compliant. I don't know how anybody expects indie site admins to keep up.
Welcome to the new normal. Enjoy your cookie pop-ups.
Now we can deny consent, know that they're legally required to respect our choice and enjoy the fact they can't punish us for it by denying service. Whole world needs to adopt and expand upon these laws, and also ramp up enforcement and start fining all these non-compliant cookie banner-displaying web sites out of existence.
They don't get to flip that script. They're not entitled to data about us. It's our information, they don't have an assumed right to collect it for any purpose no matter how benign. That they even think they can do it is offensive. The audacity of these people. Any data we do give them is to be used for our benefit. It's not meant to fuel some surveillance capitalism nightmare.