Cookie consent popovers were the deliberate decisions of company to create the worst possible compliance. A much simpler one could have been to stop tracking users especially when it is not their primary business.
Newer regulations also mandate that "reject all cookies" should be a one click action but surprisingly compliance is low. Once again, the enemy of the customer here is the company, not the eu regulation.
I don’t believe that every website has colluded to give themselves a horrible user experience in some kind of mass protest against the GDPR. My guess is that companies are acting in their interests, which is exactly what I expect them to do and if the EU is not capable of figuring out what that will look like then it is a valid criticism of their ability to make regulations
What makes you think the regulators didn't predict the outcome?
Of course the business which depend on harvesting data will do anything they can to continue harvesting data. The regulation just makes that require consent. This is good.
If businesses are intent to keep on harvesting data by using dark patterns to obtain "consent", these businesses should either die or change. This is good.
Websites use ready-to be used cookie banners provider by their advertisers. Who have all the incentive to make the process as painful as possible unless you click "accept", and essentially followed the model that Facebook pioneered.
And since most people click on accept, websites don't really care either.
Newer regulations also mandate that "reject all cookies" should be a one click action but surprisingly compliance is low. Once again, the enemy of the customer here is the company, not the eu regulation.