Every time you see such a cookie consent pop-up, you know you are on a website that has accepted to share your data with some data collecting entity. That they are willing to hand over parts of the page content to be filled by a 3rd party. And allow that 3rd party to aggregate and sell their visitors data to the highest bidder. So stop blaming "the EU" and ask yourself if this is the internet we want.

The ad/tracker "industry" used the same tactics to ruin the DNT (Do Not Track) flag that we had years ago. Because they simply don't WANT to give users an option to just say no. And they have convinced their customers that "enhancing" the web with these popups is the only acceptable way to work. And these customers just accept that.

To make this very clear: user/visitor consent is only needed for data typically going to 3rd parties. All cookie laws, including GDPR and CCPA, allow essential first-party cookies to be exempt from collecting user consent before performing their actions. So the simple, non-persistent session cookie on your site DOES NOT need a consent popup AT ALL. Regardless of what the ad/tracker "industry" tries to insinuate.

And finally: This is all IMHO. My personal frustration. The web wasn't created to be an invasive data collection engine in the hands of a few. It became what it is for many reasons. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Do your little part. Create static pages whenever that's sufficient. Resist including external scripts/tracker stuff. We can return to a #BetterWeb :) Yes, I am that optimistic!