The problem is that GDPR doesn't go far enough. It should completely prohibit third party tracking without the possibility to agree to it. Third party cookies/tracking simply should not exist.
Id be willing to bet that there is a large overlap of people who dislike tech company layoffs and people who have this sentiment about 3d party tracking.
The problem is they picked the wrong parties to be responsible. It’s not the websites that are doing the tracking. The websites are merely asking to save a cookie. It is the users’ own web browser that is storing the cookie and sending the cookie back to these websites. It’s the browsers that should be regulated if anybody but it’s a lot easier to regulate the little guy than to regulate Google and apple.
The GDPR goes far enough and even prohibits dark patterns and annoying the user into accepting. Making the "decline" option harder to find is not compliant for example.
The problem is a chronic lack of enforcement that allowed websites (and entire companies such as TrustArc/etc) to implement these malicious pseudo-compliant solutions and get away with it, at the expense of everyone's privacy and sanity.
