Companies could just reduce the amount of tracking data they're trying to harvest - then they wouldn't need a banner. If you're annoyed then be mad at the company - not the law trying to offer you some way to protect your data.

> I also recognize that websites don't need the banner if they aren't trying to track me

And I recognize that there is a non-trivial cost to knowing if you need the banner or not, and people are likely to ask their web designer/dev "Hey, where's the cookie banner?" and then pay for the subsequent cost of implementing that because it's cheaper than expensive lawyers.

It is like blaming government for policy to make cigarette packaging unappealling.

Every company wants to spy on you using cookies and sell you data or target ads. cookies banners are warnings to protect your data from these greedy companies.

> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.

Yeah, just like it's the EU's fault sometimes that the police cuts of roads when a drunk driver collides with another car, it can impossibly be the fault of the driver themselves.

Maybe try to point the blame in the direction of the ones that are A) showing you the banners in the first place and B) refuses to remove them and instead decide to inconvenience you

You know, like we do with every other single thing.

Besides, GDPR has nothing to do with those cookie banners, you're yet another example of people not understanding how any of these things work, yet find it valuable somehow to point blame in some direction, even if they don't understand the fundamental reasons things are the way they are.

I'm sure you also think EU is the same as Europe, as that tends to also be a common misconception among the people who don't understand the cookies banners or GDPR.

First, cookie banners are associated with a totally different legislation, not GDPR, and they began appearing long before GDPR existed.

Second, the EU is not to blame for cookie banners. Companies doing tracking via cookies are to blame. They always have the option to not have a cookie banner--just don't do the things that require cookie banners. They deliberately choose to do these things, and then people complain about the banners.

If you want to be pedantic, the companies who track us across the internet with all of these third party tracking cookies on every website are the enemy here, not informed disclosure and consent.

Yes, the EU passed the ePrivacy directive in 2002. It was terribly broken (didn't actually address the problem it meant to), and resulted in malicious compliance of "cookie banners".

The EU then learned from these mistakes and passed the GDPR in 2016. The GDPR is quite on point - it directly addresses the problem, preempts the foreseeable ways which companies could sidestep such regulation, and didn't succumb to lobbyists looking to install backdoors.

The US could learn a thing or two from the EU regarding legislation.

> The EU is to blame for cookie banners on basically every website on the internet.

This is the most low-rent complaint imaginable and it boggles my mind how I keep seeing it made straight-faced. One time I literally timed how long it took me to dismiss a EU cookie banner, it was about 350ms and only needs to be done once per site. All this outrage is over 350ms and I cannot take it seriously.