Especially on mobile some of these cookie management screens I've seen lately are HORRIBLE. If you're gonna make me click on every single partner to opt out of their tracking, I'm just not gonna use your site.
As far as pre-ticked boxes are concerned, they do not signify consent [0], effectively taking the legal base [1] for processing PII in many cases. It's a bit more ambiguous in the actual law: "It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent." [2] If consenting can be as easy as clicking the "I agree, have my soul" button, withdrawing consent must not require clicking through dozens of checkboxes and should be just as easy.
[0] Recital 31, Sentence 3: "Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity should not therefore constitute consent." https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-32/
[1] Article 6 (1) "Processing shall be lawful only if [...]" https://gdpr-info.eu/art-6-gdpr/
[2] Article 7 (3) Sentence 4 https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/
This isn't happening because websites are falling over themselves to comply with GDPR. This is the case because websites explicitly want to make opting out as difficult as possible. Somehow a large portion of web content creators have gone astray and confused locking users in a metaphorical room against their will with "consent".
I really want to get rid of all the cookies/GDPR popups.
If I can't do that on mobile in under a minute I simply close the website. So far nothing of value has really been lost.