EDIT: I didn't realize the anger this would bring out of people. It was supposed to be a funny meme based on recent real-life situations I've encountered, not an attack on the EU.
I appreciate the effort of the EU cookie laws. The practice of them just doesn't live up to the theory of the law. Shady companies are always going to find a way to be shady.
By accepting everything, you are also sending most of the time extra data to third parties. What you are doing is ill-advised if you care about privacy.
Not really. If you're using an adblocker, it's the best option. It's the path of least resistance, and tracking is blocked regardless if it's tracked it not. No server will see if you pressed accept or decline. That's why this addon exists.
How does that work though? The cookies are presumably based on things like your IP and browser metrics, which a site gets from your browser. If your browser throws away the cookies then on your next visit you aren't volunteering that you've been there before. But the site can still likely figure it out, but without the cookies it isn't as certain. With well-constructed cookies they can be almost 100% sure you're the same visitor.
Cookie consent is actually supposed to be about all data tracking.
There are quite a few analytics that do fingerprinting "because it's not a cookie, it's not covered by Cookie Consent". But it is still covered.
Some of them respect the fact that declining cookies is about declining tracking.
So, if you consent to all cookies, you are also consenting to any fingerprinting that doesn't rely on cookies. So deleting cookies wouldn't remove that fingerprinting data.
However, since many webpages have illegally made it so refusing consent is more difficult than giving 'consent', that extension is significantly more complex and in my experience doesn't work as reliably, unfortunately.
Yeah, sometimes websites have so many hidden checkboxes, that consent-o-matic has a rough time going through all of them. Takes like 10-20 seconds to disable them all at computerized speed.
I Still don't care about cookies? From its description:
In most cases, the add-on just blocks or hides cookie related pop-ups. When it's needed for the website to work properly, it will automatically accept the cookie policy for you (sometimes it will accept all and sometimes only necessary cookie categories, depending on what's easier to do).
So, yeah, doesn't accept everything, but might accept some.