The cookie policy popups are, at best, an intentionally annoying way of complying with the GDPR or not compliant at all at worst. GDPR has the great idea that

The cookie policy popups are, at best, an intentionally annoying way of complying with the GDPR or not compliant at all at worst. GDPR has the great idea that you shouldn't be tracked unless you consent. The popups are a way of forcing consent because users just click through them. However, the default should be that you're NOT tracked and opting in should be explicit, which possibly means all those popups that begin tracking you after one click are not compliant. Then I've also seen sites where opting out is difficult - there's a hard to find link that takes you to some settings page where you need a dozen clicks to disable tracking cookies. That's definitely not GDPR-compliant. Despite the practical annoyances, I direct my frustration at the cancerous advertising industry that has turned the Web into a giant ad platform, and so the industry is very intentionally undermining GDPR protections.