P.S. One of the benefits of the website tracking prompts is that if I can't turn off all tracking right there and then on the page then I know that that company treats visitors as the product, not the customer.
As a EU citizen and person directly involved with GDPR consequences, I also strongly disagree with the view that GDPR is either ineffective or not worth it.
The media are naturally happy to go along with the big tech vs people narrative too. The BBC even ran an article about all the great things the European Parliament has achieved in the run-up to the European elections that described Article 13 as one of its successes and summarized the controversy as follows: "Supporters say the rule helps to ensure that artists, musicians and other creators are fairly compensated. But tech companies say it will destroy user-generated content." They pretended the remarkable public backlash which got many MEPs (though not enough) to vote against it just didn't exist, turning a demonstration of how little say the public had into a success story for European democracy. It's not like this was even a European Parliament achievement in the first place; the details of the bill were dictated by Germany and France and MEPs merely ignored voters' complaints to rubber-stamp it.
GDPR doesn't do anything for consumers except annoy them. The vast majority, and I do mean the vast majority of consumers, don't care about internet "privacy" - as defined by web geeks - even one tiny bit. Most users actually want not only tech firms but the entire world to know what they had for dinner last night, what their favourite TV shows are and what random thought popped into their head 30 seconds ago. Products that focus on privacy all fail in the market because nobody cares.
The idea that the EU has to protect people by passing ultra-vague "privacy" laws is paternalistic nonsense. It no more enhances my privacy or my life than clicking through a million cookie warnings has done: I have exactly the same amount of privacy as before, but now my internet experience sucks. Does anyone in the Commission care? No, why would they? They got to tell themselves they did something good today, whilst ignoring that they did nothing of value.
Let's be clear again: nobody cares about internet privacy. In the EU's own polling the top concerns people in Europe have are:
1. Terrorism
2. Immigration
3. The economy/jobs/state of government finances
The orderings of these move around over time but the top 3 are pretty stable. This year year climate change appeared too.
Internet privacy/online advertising doesn't appear anywhere in the list of top concerns. Go look at the Eurobarometer results and see for yourself.
So why is the EU spending so much time on this? Because they don't want to tackle people's actual concerns: they either don't know how or what people want is incompatible with EU ideology. For instance Immigration is still the biggest concern people have by far, but the EU wants lots more of it so the people's concerns will be ignored.
Personally I also like the GDPR and cookie walls on websites. When I get one I cannot get rid off by clicking "Decline" or something, most often I decide to not use that website after all. I do not feel I am missing anything and I see a lot less crap during my internet searches.