I interpret this as an opt-in as you can just scroll past the banner and not be tracked. If the site starts tracking without clicking the consent the banner is

I interpret this as an opt-in as you can just scroll past the banner and not be tracked. If the site starts tracking without clicking the consent the banner is useless, or maybe even worse than useless, from the legal point of view. It's maddening how people just refuse to understand the GDPR. This is likely partly due to intentional misinformation campaigns from the spyware (i.e. advertisement) industry. And then the cargo cult takes care of the rest. The general gist of GDPR is that if you're not doing some shady shit that your visitors wouldn't want you to do, you don't need a consent. As you said, it has nothing to do with cookies. And yes, Google Analytics etc are shady shit that your visitors wouldn't want you to do. Also most of the nags you see all the time are illegal for any sane intepretation of the law. But the regulators just don't care to enforce the law at all. So if you want to do shady shit, just do it without adding to the insult with having to bother with your illegal nag.