The larger lesson here is this is what happens when governments try to regulate things they don't understand. Cookie popups just add friction, and it's not clear consumers see any real privacy benefit. What's even worse is people seem to not care that the policy isn't working, but they aren't telling lawmakers to fix it.
Website admins chose the path of malicious compliance.
Not necessarily. Many are told by their bosses to either put minimal effort into becoming compliant, or worse, told to use a horrid cookie notice service that creates so much user frustration that some of us abandon the site rather than deal with it.
I think with few exceptions, most web admins just want to get the cookie notice sh*t out of the way and get on with work that matters.