[alkonaut]

Either a site has the opt out choice clear, marked by default (the bigger/more visible button), or it should be reported.

Obviously authorities can’t follow up on every small player here, so the key is to make an example by imposing some extremely large fines on some large companies.

Anyone who sees it should think “whatever we risk losing by losing 99% ad revenue is better than THAT”. Preferably sanctions should include personal sanctions on decisionmakers but I’m not sure if that’s possible as the regulation works now.

It needs to be made a proper criminal offense so that investigators have the tools they need. An efficient way to go about this could be to find one of the companies that supplies these dark pattern services (sells cookie gateway services), demand lists of their customers and verify that they indeed used that product - and fine all off them off the face of the internet.