Well of course, but my point was the data collection and tracking and all that other stuff was already happening in full volume prior to the regulation. The nagging to re-enable is a dark pattern of course, but prior to that the only recourse we had was to disable all cookies at the browser level.

To that point, as much as cookies have been associated with tracking and ads and such, they have/had a very important purpose in providing services on a website. It's how the "remember me" button works for instance, or to store your preferences without making an account, among other things.

However, because a browser can't really easily determine what a cookie is used for since it's basically just an ID and a (usually) encrypted data blob, the only guaranteed way for it to block tracking cookies is to block all cookies. The EU regulation IMO is a "good" regulation, with the inevitable malicious compliance of corporations.