You don't have to have a cookie popup if you don't do stupid stuff. Don't use anything other than strictly necessary cookies and you are good to go.

Disclaimer: I anal and this is not legal advice.

It is up to the websites to do that, and to the users to boycott those websites showing cookie popups.

Just so long as that means killing all the tracking, not just going back to hiding it.

ahhhh, every time the same discussion

1. GDPR consent dialogs are not cookie popups, most things you see are GDPR consent dialogs

2. GDPR consent dialogs are only required if you share data, i.e. spy on the user

3. GDPR had from the get to go a bunch of exceptions, e.g. you don't need permission to store a same site cookie indicating that you opted out of tracking _iff_ you don't use it for tracking. Same for a lot of other things where the data is needed for operation as long as the data is only used with that thing and not given away. (E.g. DDOS protection, bot detection, etc.)

4. You still had to inform the user but this doesn't need any user interacting, accepting anything nor does it need to be a popup blocking the view. A small information in the corner of the screen with a link to the data policy is good enough. But only if all what you do falls under 3. or non personal information. Furthermore I think they recently have updated it to not even require that, just having a privacy policy in a well know place is good enough but I have to double check. (And to be clear this is for data you don't need permission to collect, but like any data you collect it's strictly use case bound and you still have to list how its used, how long stored etc. even if you don't need permissions). Also to be clear if you accept the base premise of GDPR it's pretty intuitive to judge if it's an exception or not.

5. in some countries, there are highly misguided "cookie popup" laws predating GDPR (they are actually about cookies, not data collection in general). This are national laws and such the EU would prefer to have removed. Work on it is in process but takes way to long. I'm also not fully sure about the sate of that. So in that context, yes they should and want to kill "cookie popups". That just doesn't mean what most people think it does (as it has nothing to do with GDPR).

Kill cookie pop up dark patterns*

Well then where would be the incentive to download apps/not clear your cookies...? :-)

Simply banning most forms of advertising would be extremely welcome and might largely solve the cookie-popup issue, too.

and then the inventor should go to prison along with the guys who design the UI of microwave ovens (joke)