Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites

The problem here is not the law, but malicious compliance by websites that don't want to give up tracking.

"Spend Five Minutes in a Menu of Legalese" is not the intended alternative to "Accept All". "Decline All" is! And this is starting to be enforced through the courts, so you're increasingly seeing the "Decline All" option right away. As it should be. https://www.techspot.com/news/108043-german-court-takes-stan...

Of course, also respecting a Do-Not-Track header and avoiding the cookie banner entirely while not tracking the user, would be even better.

No, the problem is 100% the law, because it was written in a way that allows this type of malicious compliance.

Laws need to be written well to achieve good outcomes. If the law allows for malicious compliance, it is a badly written law.

The sites are just trying to maximize profit, as anyone could predict. So write better laws.

But the law never allowed this. Enforcement just turned out to be an issue due to the enormity of it all.

Also, please remember that in Europe there is no such thing as "the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law." The intent of the law IS the law.

If you can't enforce the law, then it is a bad law. Also, this is a problem that naturally solves itself over time, so no law was ever needed. The UX of the web degraded for everyone after GDPR was passed and that I think everyone can agree on.

If people care about privacy, then over time they will migrate to companies and services that respect their privacy. Government laws are broad based policies that always lack nuance. This is why it is better to let markets drive better outcomes organically.