Cookie pops are malicious compliance to regulations that legitimately protect consumers. You’ve cherry picked one bad side effect to throw out all the ways the EU is way ahead of anyone else in protecting consumers, most of which you don’t even notice because it’s hard to notice harm that did not happen.

That's fair. I live in the EU and I love it here, and I'm glad for those protections every day. Except the damn cookie popup.

I don't agree they're malicious compliance though. I think it's just regular compliance.