They did not mandate consent banners. Websites are completely free to either A) not collect private information or B) Only track users on an opt-in basis.

Their nanny state is leaking.

What’s “nanny” about at least trying to do something to fight the omnipresent tracking?

We can criticize the solution, sure. We can also criticize the end result. But the intention was a good one and it was worth doing imo because at some point something has to be done.

>But they decided to mandate the absolute most annoying, user-hostile mechanism possible.

Which parts of it are user-hostile? The consenting part, or the opt-out part?

No, unscrupulous adtech businesses have ruined the internet. I had a business website that would not track users, and thus needed no cookie banner. If more business owners (especially the large ones) would stay away from shady practices they know full well their own children would object to, I'd say the web would still be a fine place today.

Actually, it's a bit more nuanced than that, because merely by using the #1 analytics solution, even without shady practices on your part, you already put your visitors' data at risk. Other example: embeds. I used Vimeo rather than YouTube to embed videos, using their rather honest do-not-track option, but went the extra mile and disabled localStorage for them, to ensure no data whatsoever was left. So almost all business owners need to actively want to protect their users' privacy, but this is a consequence of a few big players' explicit choices. See above.

[edit: style]