That quickly turns in to, the rich guy who will profit from the lawbreaking needs a scapegoat. Always more dignified to tell important people they're out of line by punishing their serfs, don't you know.
I don’t mean developer as in an individual contributor, I mean an implementor, often contractor, which will normally be a company too.
Right now it’s too easy to cut out a niche of selling snake oil services like “automatic cookie banners” with dark patterns and batteries included. Meanwhile companies are fooled by these companies into thinking that if they just pay the $ for their “compliance solution” they are done. Here is where I’d like to see the sellers of the snake oil take part of the responsibility and not just the buyers.
Unless, of course, they have some weasel note in the terms, which is far easier to do in the B2B space.
Are they aware that this is when they stop complying, to the point that they could just as well have ignored buying the banner service and just shoved cookies on people quietly like they did before? Perhaps. It's possble that lawsuits could work here too. I'm (like you) guessing there is some fine print saying that you absolutely cannot use the switch that makes the "reject" button disappear under the mouse and have a delay of 60 seconds. And if you do then you are responsible yourself.
