Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

This destroyed the world wide web, which was the major driver of the internet as a consumer application. I'm referring to the experience of intelligent & creative publishers sharing content openly on the web. This did far more to destroy the world wide web than ads or tracking

Has Facebook ever not been hidden behind a login? Because even if that doesn't count as "intelligent & creative publishers", it certainly set a much harder trend to get around than the banners.

Ads/tracking didn't destroy the web per se - besides the performance impact - but did/do destroy people's privacy.

Hm. Could've sworn it had one back in 2009…

I think you two are talking about different things and are both correct. Facebook indeed had a login page back then, but you could use direct links to read public posts. Today it's roughly the same, but when you go to a direct link it shows a "Login Wall" that pesters you to sign up.

If your site has no tracking, it does not need a cookie banner in the EU. AFAIK Wikipedia or Archive of our Own have none.

The only reason this exists is because of the ad/tracking parasites that infected the entirety of the internet.