And sites are still more than happy to show those in the popup, just to muddy the waters and make it more complicated than it needs to be.

As far as I see it, displaying information regarding strictly necessary cookies that do not require consent is good practice.

The website linked above states that “While it is not required to obtain consent for these cookies, what they do and why they are necessary should be explained to the user.”

I think the complicated part is mostly the deliberately bad UI that is often used for cookie banners. They purposefully use a bad layout and color scheme in an attempt to push the user to just click “Accept all”. As far as I understand if a websites only had strictly necessary cookies then I think they wouldn’t even need a cookie popup in the first place though and could simply list this information on a separate “Privacy Policy” page or such.

Probably worth noting: Only things like non essential third party cookies need consent. Essential cookies for things like the users active session that are not shared don’t need a cookie banner.

Source: gdpr.eu/cookies