It should be noted that the GDPR doesn't apply to truly anonymous data, like your hypothetical counter. The reason you get those consent dialogs is because thos

It should be noted that the GDPR doesn't apply to truly anonymous data, like your hypothetical counter. The reason you get those consent dialogs is because those trackers are doing a whole lot more than incrementing counters. In fact, is anyone incrementing counters nowadays? At all? Every solution I see involves pushing a whole crash report filled with a bunch of device info (including IDs, IP, etc) and then aggregating that into numbers. Talking about incrementing counters seems like misdirection when discussing the current state of privacy.