[DanBC]

When cookies were first introduced a number of sensible people had reasonable concerns about privacy.

I'm not sure how we got from there to here - a sub-optimal law and not-great research (81 sites?) all while companies aggressively collect and mine data.

[JustSomeNobody]

Laziness and greed. But really, it's mostly laziness. If you tell someone cookies are 100% bad because they kill kittens, people won't use them unless they want to kill kittens. If you nebulously say that they might potentially be used to kill kittens at some point in the future, nobody cares.