In this case, the 'dystopian' situation is not bad, if you consider tracking a bad (lets say 'evil' for exagerated effect) thing. It means that companies that

In this case, the 'dystopian' situation is not bad, if you consider tracking a bad (lets say 'evil' for exagerated effect) thing. It means that companies that want to do 'evil' are forced to ask their customers. For now most customers find the question annoying, and some go for the easy option of 'fine do some evil to me' out of convenience. But in the meantime, people are slowly building an awareness of this evil happening to them. For now the evil is profitable enough with the few people that click agree to evil out of convenience. But people are now being faced with these decisions and will slowly turn against this evil. As this awareness builds, people will start disliking the companies. And as the law gets enforced better, people will find it easier to say 'no' to evil. At some point, this will make the extra friction of cookie acceptance screens no longer worth it, and we will be in a better place. (Droping the 'evil' shtick here) All the law says is 'if you want to do this generally bad thing, you gotta ask people and you can't trick or coerce them'. This is slowly going to stop the generally bad thing from happening. The alternative "don't do this bad thing" would have a less annoying transition. But that would have been an over-reaching law that doesn't leave space for the few times where the thing is actually not bad. A more interesting question is 'without surveillance supported adds, how will the internet actually work'. Especially given that the EU laws are aimed at effectively killing the surveillance supported add industry. This is not something the EU laws have an answer to. I find this the most worrying question, though I see little room for a new way to finance the internet that is worse then surveillance supported adds.