Because it's a 3rd party, it cannot be non-compliant?
Seems like it's 1 extra click to disallow compared to allow, so yeah, non-compliant. Should be exactly as easy to say yes as saying no. In this case it's not.
It's not overblown criticism. They advertise their product as GDPR-compliant, and yet their website uses dark patterns to trick people into allowing tracking, and is not GDPR-compliant.
Do I trust them to be as diligent in their product?
And yeah, what gives GDPR bad rep is exactly these kinds of dark patterns and other forms of malicious compliance by non-caring companies.