That US news sites find their EU visitors of such low value that they'd rather block them than spend to be compliant (& thus still get some aggregate or opt-in

That US news sites find their EU visitors of such low value that they'd rather block them than spend to be compliant (& thus still get some aggregate or opt-in data) is a pretty strong refutation of the idea they're "addicted to all this data". What's the tangible harm of this supposed "indiscriminate tracking" - especially as compared to other burgeoning EU initiatives like demanding law-enforcement backdoors into e2e chat sessions? The consent-dialog-blindness is created by the regulatory demands for their constant re-display, for negligible benefit. If not even asking for cookies was 'viable', major sites – who have far better understanding of the relative tradeoffs than the regulators – would've gone that way. Can you name any that chose that 'viable' path? Are they winning their categories with that 'viability'? You know what else is 'viable'? User self help. Clearing/disabling cookies. Running a privacy-protecting browser, like say Brave. The EU could've protected a lot more privacy, without wasting the world's time & burning-out people's attention, if it had coached people into self-protection, rather than threatening businesses worldwide with fines. But hey, haughty mega-super-state's gotta do mega-super-stating.