On my Android phone I've been using Duck Duck Go's browser for a while. By default it visits sites "incognito" and aggressively purges cookies.
Of course this results in sites not remembering your (GDPR) privacy preferences which would in turn result in those pesky pop ups every time you visit a site. To mitigate this, DDG offers a feature to automatically handle the popups:
When DDG detects cookie pop-ups on sites you visit it can automatically set your cookie preferences to minimize cookies and maximize privacy, then close the pop-ups.
Technically, it's far from the simplicity of something like DNT header, but it works reasonably well on a (small) majority of websites. I think this is because those websites use a standardized dialog, the remaining sites still require manual interaction with the pop-up.
What I've noticed recently in my own behaviour is that I tend to dismiss or ignore search results that DDG's pop up feature doesn't recognize. I.e.: I have a bias toward preferring sites that either don't have cookies, don't have cookie pop-ups or have cookie pop-ups that immediately disappear automagically.
So my question is: what if these kinds of tools gain wider adoption? Would that cause traffic to significantly decrease for sites with non-standard pop ups? And could that ultimately incentivize websites to tailor pop-ups to not annoy users? Any are downsides?
Regardless of the systems to try and make the modern web less annoying, if a website annoys me too much, I leave. I can notice it on my face. I will go to a site, and may have a slight smile as I start to look it over. Then a modal window pops up asking for my email... the slight smile disappears and turns to a look of annoyance. Then I move my mouse toward the top of the page and it pops up another modal to ask me not to leave. Then as I'm reading new ads load in and shift the content, so I lose my place. Then so many ads load that the site crashes and reloads, and the dance starts again.
I'm done with it. At step 2, if I don't desperately need to see what's on the page, I'm closing the tab. These sites seem so desperate to milk every penny out of each impression that they become unbearable to use. I have to question if they would do better with less, because they would (at least in theory) get more repeat traffic. But I guess it doesn't matter these days, as few people go directly to sites and are instead driven to various sites by various social platforms.