You run a free website that survives based on advertising. This is essential for the website to continue to be viable. Are cookies essential then?
You run a shopping cart. As part of your fraud detection you put a fraud cookie beacon on every page. Is the fraud beacon essential?
As part of your product development / ab testing etc you track users on your website. Is this essential?
For affiliate link fraud control third parties want to have a cookie on your site that leads through to their clickthrough link. Essential?
Reality - you need to stick up a cookie banner to operate a website or get into long complicated legal arguments and face big liability. And that's what folks do, including practically every government agency.
You run a shopping cart. As part of your fraud detection you put a fraud cookie beacon on every page. Is the fraud beacon essential?
As part of your product development / ab testing etc you track users on your website. Is this essential?
For affiliate link fraud control third parties want to have a cookie on your site that leads through to their clickthrough link. Essential?
Reality - you need to stick up a cookie banner to operate a website or get into long complicated legal arguments and face big liability. And that's what folks do, including practically every government agency.