Not sure what lead certain sites to take that path, but the real issue IMHO wasn't really a legal one but rather that the site owner was indeed a teapot.

I'm not sure if these decisions are purely based on legal (and financial) reasons. After all, there are now countless examples of how be compliant.

The only group of websites that I have encountered blocking me are small-town newspapers in the US, mostly the south.

Compliance is almost trivial for a newspaper website that does not ask for any data.

My suspicion, especially considering the regional distribution of these blocks, is that some of these decisions may be driven by politics more than anything. Plus, of course, the possibility that a low-quality rural newspaper can count their European visitors on one hand.