It always impresses me how its actually easy not to need these banners yet everyone will consistently participate in the civil disobedience of annoying their users. No doubt in the hope of making people mad at the EU.

To the point that people are worried when cookie banners are not required now. I have had a few worried conversations on why our site doesn’t have a cookie banner.

The answer is simple, we don’t track our users, and login is explicit consent and functionality which doesn’t require a prompt under GDPR.

If it's that easy to not need the banners, I'd expect EU websites themselves to lead the "no cookies needed" movement.

Yet https://european-union.europa.eu displays a cookie banner for tracking on what is essentially a static informational site. If the EU itself feels tracking is valuable enough to warrant the banner on their own pages, it's hard to fault businesses (whose survival actually depends on understanding their audience) for making the same choice.

At least they're compliant with their own regulation, I suppose.

It's really enraging. Even EU's official sites use the banners, and probably for sites where they wouldn't (or at least shouldn't) even be needed.

It seems that very few, even lawyers, really understand when explicit consent is not needed, and instead we get cargo culting of pointless consent banners everywhere.

The situation has become such that "consents" aren't really meaningful at all, as people just want to get rid of the banner, and it becomes US style contract theatre.

You need a "no cookies here" banner.

Same with https actually. I still reach some home made website or paper published in this or that legit small university or department without a certificate. Most browser send messages like this is a life threatening move.