Who the hell thought we’d want to get harassed on every site we visit?
The sites’ operators.
The GDPR does not mandate cookie banners. The GDPR mandates informed consent to processing of your data beyond what is technically necessary to facilitate the service. If all you’re doing is store session ids, user preferences or whatever, you need no cookie banner whatsoever.
Lemmy also uses cookies. Do you see a banner? Me neither.
Menial banners to “convince”/trick users into accepting severe privacy intrusions (cookies are the least of your concerns here) are an invention of the websites. Most of them aren’t even legal as they often do opt-out (straight up against what is written in the law) or use dark patterns to trick users into giving consent (obviously not actual consent).
It’s taking a while but the law is slowly being enforced now. Expect slightly less terrible cookie banners in the future. Whenever you do see one though, blame the site operators and law enforcement, not the GDPR.