I've also seen a lot of other sneaky bypassing of the law.
For example the news site nu.nl now requires having a free account to read many specific articles. This is a smart move on their part because logging in requires maintaining a higher amount of user information across visits and thus it brings a lot of tracking into the "technically necessary" realm so they don't have to ask permission.
GDPR isn't a cookie law.
What we see now is big companies response: they try to pretend like it is, and try to blame it on lawmakers.
But, as fines like this show: they are getting caught and punished for it.
Because the law didn't say that companies had to force users to accept cookies.
It said something along the lines of: collecting data is only allowed with users active, informed consent.