All the companies putting up banners today are clearly using cookies in a manner that would require a banner under EU rules. The EU knew this, and knew the effect their rules would have on the aesthetics and UX of the internet. Hence “vandalism”.
The law is just a bad idea poorly executed, like the obsession with cookies? I assume the law is for normies that don't understand that websites are using cookies to track them, but normies don't know that cookies are used to track them so informing them that the site uses cookies means nothing to them, they will agree cookies not knowing they are actually agreeing to being tracked.
From the point of view of a developer the cookie obsession also causes problems, like what if I use cookies to store the fact that people don't want to be tracked so I don't pester them with the notice? do I need a notice for that? What if I don't use cookies but an e-tag for the same purpose. If I uniquely fingerprint your browser can I then just track anyone anywhere without consent? Im not using cookies.
If the EU wanted to ban tracking users they could easily have just wrote that into law instead of this legal, technical and practical mess.
GDPR is superseded by more specific laws, of course. For example, you can use CCTVs for security, but you also have to prominently display a notice that the store uses CCTV cameras. Also, you cannot store that data indefinitely long, you can't sell it to other parties etc.
So, can websites track and log their users? Yes. Can they sell that data to a million ad agencies? No. Can they use that data to track the user to their home? No.
> The law is just a bad idea poorly executed
The law is an amazing idea. The poor execution is purely on the part of companies (and also developers like you) who have become so used to collecting all the data they can wholesale that they can't even imagine not doing it.
> like what if I use cookies to store the fact that people don't want to be tracked so I don't pester them with the notice?
So, save that cookie, there's literally nothing stopping you from doing that.
> If the EU wanted to ban tracking users they could easily have just wrote that into law
That's basically what they did: you can't collect personal user information that's not required for the functioning of your business without consent. This literally prevents tracking.
1. If you use cookies that are strictly necessary for your site to function, you don't need the banner, at all.
2. For anything else you need a banner.
So, the question is: is it EU that "vandalised the web with cookie banners" or "huge number of companies" that indiscriminately collect and sell your data?