The most natural implementation of the EU directive would be to have a place in User Settings where users can go and enable targeted advertising if they want it.
And why would we assume that these companies would follow the "most natural implementation"?
The very predictable response of the industry to the EU directive was to make the cookie banners as annoying as invasive as possible, such that users would consent to tracking out of apathy. No, it's not what the EU intended to happen, but it was a consequence. Which brings me back to my original point: often times idealic and well-intentioned measure have negative consequences.
In hindsight, perhaps the EU should've legislated that the UX for the tracking content cannot be unreasonably annoying. I don't know how I'd go about codifying that into law though.
Simply make the DNT-Header a legally binding thing. If the user sends it, it means that only technically necessary cookies can be used.
This would require no UX from the side of the website, thus defeating all dark patterns at once
I wish the EU had gone with this solution rather than the current regulations. However I can’t help but feel that the “loopholes” in the current regulations were intentional. Politicians have a history of rolling out regulations that have giant loopholes for their corporate friends to exploit.
They at least give you some measure of control, or legal standing, or at least visibility into how bad the web actually is.
It's the EU's cookie banners. Despite the EU's best intentions, the end result is worse. It was a naive move and we're all suffering for it. One of the biggest pieces of evidence that you can't just naively mandate something without also thinking through edge cases and "malicious compliance."