I'm not blaming the popups. I'm lamenting the fact that every damn site opens with a pop-up now. They are the negative consequence of an otherwise well-meaning bill.
As good as GDPR was for privacy, it's equally bad for UX.
The bill is well meaning precisely because it exposes a systemic problem not just with UX but with a ton of other aspects of the web. It's a bit like having your kitchen smeared in rat shit. There is a moment of annoyance when you realize that, but it's the first step towards being able to clean it up. It's not so much negative consequences as a problem that was there to begin with whether we noticed it or not. It's subjectively negative in the moment, but to ignore it would have been far more of a problem.