> those in charge of the cookie banners really believe that they protect the interests of the user
As other commenters have pointed out, these are mostly legal requirements. In most cases, the user would be better off with no banner and less cookies.
> What can they choose but "agree to everything" or look at some gray text through a gray overlay?
You can leave the website. The intrusiveness of these banners correlates negatively with the quality of what you're trying to read, so in most cases it's a good reminder that you shouldn't even be on this website to begin with. In the rare cases where you do need the content, tools such as uBlock Origin can still help make it for this one time. Contrary to other commenters here, if a website is bad enough that I need to do that on a regular basis, I just stop visiting the website.
> There are definitely people in the HN crowd who can understand the different options offered by cookie banners.
You're assuming it's worth anybody's time to even read these. It's not.
As other commenters have pointed out, these are mostly legal requirements. In most cases, the user would be better off with no banner and less cookies.
> What can they choose but "agree to everything" or look at some gray text through a gray overlay?
You can leave the website. The intrusiveness of these banners correlates negatively with the quality of what you're trying to read, so in most cases it's a good reminder that you shouldn't even be on this website to begin with. In the rare cases where you do need the content, tools such as uBlock Origin can still help make it for this one time. Contrary to other commenters here, if a website is bad enough that I need to do that on a regular basis, I just stop visiting the website.
> There are definitely people in the HN crowd who can understand the different options offered by cookie banners.
You're assuming it's worth anybody's time to even read these. It's not.