It was bad legislation because it didn't achieve anything except make visiting websites more annoying.

I don't care what the politicians intended. The outcome is no improvement in privacy but more annoying banners.

The cookie banners typically have an opt out. How is that not a privacy improvement?

The same way that the legislation that abolished slavery was bad because it didn’t account for the prison systems leasing out unpaid workers leading to even worse conditions for black folk in the US?

People talk as if the EU should have done nothing, or that the rule should be repealed, the GDPR forced people to have a functioning deny all.

The real lesson here is that people would rather annoy their users for money than create good products. Its a case for regulation.