Oh they understand consent. They also want to make people accidentally give consent or to mislead them into consent. Their entire business model relies on exploitation of people - and consent is merely a roadblock in exploitation efforts.
Which is a logical impossibility. You can't be tricked or accidentally give consent. Consent is an informed, intentional decision. Anything else doesn't count.
But I do agree: the tech industry understands consent just fine, it's just fundamentally opposed to the idea.
From a legal perspective, consent is merely a database entry with t on it for that user_id.
There is a big difference between English language consent and tech company manufactured consent.
If you were starting a business and nobody requires you to do a specific action, what’s your incentive to do it? Especially when customers will come your way either way.