My assumption with bugs like this is that they are “geographically based edge cases” that have been poorly tested due to engineers not being in the right location to test it, but affects a large number of users without throwing a error that can be logged.

GDPR banner only to be used in EU, with conditional of only accepting non-essential cookies, and the engineer or QA is based in the U.S.

As a side note, as someone that lives in the EU my pattern of usage here is:

- choose only non-essential, but if not a presented option then

- reject all cookies, but if no reject all available then

- switch the reader mode (or hide distracting items), or if not possible then

- close tab

I’m getting much more aggressive when dealing with cookie banners dark patterns. I will not a third third party advertising cookies as much as possible and support websites that allow me an easy way to opt out of them.