EU-based governments are at least honest about their intent of spying on their citizens, where the collection & processing of said data is at least subject to due process and can potentially be challenged in court.

The US would rather outsource it to the private sector so while the end-result is the same (the government can buy the data off the open market or request it via an NSL) they don't even have to pay for building/maintaining the surveillance systems as the adtech/analytics/marketing industry is happy to do it for them for free.

So yeah, EU's government spying efforts are a major problem but let's not pretend the US is any better in that regard.

> this ruling doesn't even ban targeted advertising, it just requires another popup that most of users will say yes to.

90% of the cookie popups you see out there are in breach of the regulation and only remain because enforcement has been severely lacking. A properly implemented popup, how Apple has done with their App Tracking Transparency (like the one that the GDPR would force Facebook to implement) has an acceptance rate of just 4%.