The people who want more privacy - including zealots - also don't want the notices, popups, options, etc. It's a mistake to think privacy zealots are requiring

The people who want more privacy - including zealots - also don't want the notices, popups, options, etc. It's a mistake to think privacy zealots are requiring all those things. They are not; they don't want them. And so they are not to blame for them. They do want to be able to find out what commitments a company is binding itself to, to be able to hold the company accountable under the law, which acts to curtail some abuses, but even that would be much preferred in the form of statutury commitments that could be assumed by default everywhere, the same way consumer protection law works. Those endless annoyances are the result of companies that are actively hostile to users who value privacy and to statutory privacy policies in general. So companies make the popups, in particular, intrusive and often difficult to reject properly. Sometimes they outright lie about the GDPR requiring some heavy duty options lists. I say companies. Usually the worst popups on a site are not from a site's own company, they are from third party surveillance-based advertising services or similar used by the company. Naturally, those third parties are the ones most actively hostile to a privacy oriented society, and on an individual level, most interested in persuading or tricking someone into accepting the tracking. With regards to CA privacy notices: Imagine how refreshing it would be if it was like consumer protection law protecting you when buying things mail order and against false advertising and faulty products. You wouldn't need to receive a privacy policy at all, because there would be a statutory privacy policy you could always assume and all companies adhered to it. Perhaps you would be able to opt out of privacy explicitly, but you always had the option to take the service without opting out of the statutory privacy policy if you wanted.