Nowadays you have to lie about a lot of things if you want to use the internet efficiently (or sometimes at all).

So you mean a government regulation by politicians made the internet worse? You don’t say…

See also, the millions of cookie banners that infest every web page because of the EU.

You know damn well the cookie banners are only required for websites that are tracking users.

It's not about using cookies

No, the banner disclosures are only required because a bunch of technologically inept politicians required it.

Have they made browsing the internet better? Have they decreased tracking?

No, because they are not being enforced strongly enough.

So either way whether it’s because of incompetence or neglect, a law passed made the internet browsing experience worse.

No, a workaround to said law made the experience worse.

Ads and spam is what's ruining everyone's experience. If we would pay for services rendered then there is no need for tracking. If we could effectively prosecute and/or block spammers then there would be no need for anti-spam algorithms (from email to services like twitter and discord, iirc yesterday there was a thread about automatic bans based on secret algos with no recourse).

Government regulation is an attempt to make people aware this tracking exists: every time you see a wall, that means the site requires a level of tracking for which there exists no legal basis other than consent, thus it has to ask you if you're okay with that (like any ethical site should do anyhow).

Automated decision making is also part of GDPR but unfortunately is very very weakly implemented. Basically, companies just have to tell you it exists (if and only if it has a significant impact on your life), and then your only recourse is to request a human in the loop, and they will just press the same button as the AI did and you have no idea if they even looked at your case because the decision making doesn't have to be transparent. And that's only for important life things, none of this even applies to being banned from google account unless you sue them and get the judge to agree this has a major impact on your life.

I do. I pay for a both a phone (Apple) and Office Suite (Microsoft) that’s not created by an adTech company.

How is any of the GDPR actually working out? Has it made a difference? Has it made the web better or worse?

As far as depending on Google - don’t?

Which law requires Google to revoke access to children on a whim?