I also notice German sites constantly nag you, Dutch seems to be a little less obnoxious. What's also interesting is that Germany, sticklers if I've ever seen any, is full of nonconsentual walls where you "of your free will with no negative consequences to deny" have to click "consent" or become a paid subscriber. If the data protection authority or the law is to be believed, that's not freely given consent

Quite hilarious are the sites that outright block European IP addresses, as if that way they don't have to bother with the basic human right to privacy (article 8 ECHR). More sites should do this if they have no wish to play by these morals instead of having (legal or illegal) walls!

By my understanding of words, even the best 10% of cookie popups are mostly not really "freely given consent".

But I know I'm not a lawyer, and my lack of understanding of the technical jargon in law is likely to be similar to the lack of understanding of technical web jargon in the old screenshot of someone looking at the JS console by accident and thinking it was a secret police thingie: https://images.app.goo.gl/4SPUwbQ1uY2r5oHcA

>If the data protection authority or the law is to be believed, that's not freely given consent

It's not. You can report this to an appropriate civil authority and in theory it'll be resolved (possibly with a fine). In practice the authorities are still so overwhelmed by GDPR that they will only look at the most severe high profile cases. Fingers crossed one day it'll improve...