Cookie Banners Are Consent Theater, Not Consent

Cookie banners are the rare interface that insults you and calls it law. The whole apparatus assumes a person can give 'freely given, specific, informed' consent [S1642] while a website A/B tests button colors and labels like 'Continue to Site' to maximize acceptance [S1641]. The more revealing number is not acceptance rates; it's that only 3.82% of sites correctly enforced the choice afterward [S1641]. So the banner is often theater: a consent ritual that doesn't bind the tracker. Bielova et al. found prior banners shape later refusal even when the next banner is neutral [S1640] — consent is not a stable preference but a mood, a fatigue, a habituation. Regulators keep arguing about reject-button placement [S1642], but the honest conclusion is that consent at population scale is a fiction. Auto-reject extensions aren't a hack; they're the only sane user interface. Make rejection the default, then audit enforcement.