This tends to be an unpopular opinion here, but I agree completely. We had almost gotten rid of popups entirely, and now we have something worse, a required annoying banner that often causes the whole window to redraw and move around.

Since untracked ads pay 80-90% less than tracked ones, they are borderline required by every site that requires advertising to survive (most websites).

In a way I'm sure it's added to vendor lock in, any random Google result you click is guaranteed to hit you with the banner, which on mobile is especially annoying when since they're also required to be prominent (ie take up half the screen because everything in that law is incredibly vague).

The ad/pop-up blockers need to start also blocking the dumb modal windows for this. It might be easier too, there's financial insentive in breaking the blocker

uBlock Origin does this. Enable the "I don't care about cookies" list.

It breaks some sites, notably German sites.

My guess is that the original intent of the legislation wasn't to force users to click about 20 buttons in order to opt-out (IANAL but this seems to run directly counter to the mandate that it must be as easy to withdraw consent as it is to give it?). I agree that the current experience sucks, although unlike you I'd prefer not to be tracked. That being said, the EU has shown that it continues to iterate legislatively on issues around privacy - see the recent Digital Markets Act, for example. I guess my point is that legislation doesn't always get it right the first time, but I'd much rather see an evolutionary approach to fixing a problem than simply throwing up our hands.

> How do I grant universal consent to be tracked so that I can browse the web in peace

There's a browser extension that automatically rejects cookies on these popups - https://consentomatic.au.dk/. I've found it works for most websites.

> There's a browser extension that

The problem with browser extensions is... you have to trust them.

That's a valid concern. This extension is open source [1], if you were to want to see what's happening under the hood.

[1] https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic

Thanks for the recommendation! I am indeed sketched out by most extensions that require the all-hosts permission but this one does seem pretty legit so I'll give it a shot.

This is a fair concern. The particular extension is developed by Aarhus University, which is a major university in Denmark. Not a guarantee it won't do anything bad, but it should give you more comfort than any random extension developer.

I’m sure anyone installing an extension to make it easier to be tracked doesn’t care what the browser extension is doing either.

There's a sense in which cookies can't do any harms besides tracking, while a browser extension can do much worse.

As I understand it, the GDPR did not make web browsing a worse experience. Rather, folks tasked with compliance at a few companies came up with a horrible solution that probably doesn't actually comply, and everyone started copying it. GDPR requires consent; it doesn't require you to come up with the most obnoxious way to obtain it.

Can you think of another way to implement it that wouldn't be just as obnoxious though? I feel like anything that could be perceived as unobtrusive could just as likely be seen as trying to hide or minimize the presence of the banner which might be construed as a violation of the law.

I feel like EU regulators should have worked with web standards committees to add a technical means and requirement to classify cookies. Then browser vendors could allow users to choose which types of cookies they are willing to accept from which websites.

> Can you think of another way to implement it that wouldn't be just as obnoxious though?

A link to a page where visitors can opt-in would work just fine and not be obnoxious. The banners are obnoxious not because it's impossible, but because the very idea of consent goes against the business' goals. Or their just lazy: You don't need PII to track marketing performance, and if you aren't unnecessarily collecting PII, you don't need to ask.

> I feel like EU regulators should have worked with web standards committees to add a technical means and requirement to classify cookies.

Hardly anyone would use it, because most companies aren't seriously interested in getting consent. They are interested in data, and consent is merely a hoop to jump through.

There's currently hullabaloo regarding the Global Privacy Control HTTP header as a spiritual successor to Do Not Track. It's already enforceable in California under the California Consumer Protection Act and the specification suggests they are also targeting GDPR compliance (although I don't know how close/feasible that is).

If it were to see widespread adoption then all you would have to do is change a setting in your browser.

There are browser plugins to accept all cookies