So if you want to run a BBS for say vintage motorcycle owners, you have to move to a country without such laws and make sure to never set foot in any country that does?

No, you just have to host it there and use a VPN. Like all piracy sites are done right now.

If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy.

Oh oh. You ISP has detected non sanctioned use of an unauthorized VPN service. The police is on its way.

It seemed unlikely to me that cookie banners would be a thing across the whole internet if nothing else because no website operators would put them in. How wrong was I.

All they need to do is popularize the idea of "if your website doesn't do X, it'll place lower on google" and people will do anything.

My websites still don't have cookie banners and the police still hasn't come to my house. And the websites uses cookies like every other website always did.

Ironically 99% of them don’t meet legal requirements. They serve no purpose.

The purpose is to make people think laws like gdpr are bad for people, rather than bad for the surveillance industry.

Cookie banners aren't across the whole internet.

You really only need the banners if you're doing privacy-impinging things.

Much like the GDPR notices that a small industry of 'compliance' product companies sold seemingly to everyone as necessary, they aren't if you're only using cookies for functional reasons and not tracking people. Unfortunately that leads to lower margins for advertisers and we can't have that.

People are downvoting this, but the objective is precisely that.