That's pre-GDPR (barely), and the original idea was that users should be able to opt out of cookie tracking. But instead most web sites just added that super-annoying (particularly when it covers the whole page) pop-up giving you one option: Accept cookies or else. That was not the intention of the regulation at all. So far I've seen only a single web site that actually gave you the option to not use cookies (yes/no, not just yes).

now you should be free and bold to click the disagree / refuse / no-cookies button and get the experience you expect.

because if the tracking/ad/shit/any cookies are not fundamentally required for the page to show, then denying you the usage of the site is a violation of your privacy (because you can't give selective consent to specific data uses)

sure, a lot of sites throw up the ugly banner, but now you can click fuck cookies, because fuck cookies if you only want to read a fucking HTML page with pictures. they can still make stats about your visit and aggregate them, but tracking cookies are absurd. (they can filter out repeated visits by looking at IP addresses and browser fingerprinting and/or they can ask you nicely to help them get better stats, but now they have to unbundle that from the ad tracking purpose.)