I agree it’s hard to tell. Looking at archive.org most pages don’t show cookie banners even for recent things. I did find that the “I don’t care about cookies” Firefox extension goes back to at least 2014 [1] and says “EU regulations require that any website using cookies must ask the user’s permission before installing them. These warnings appear on most high traffic websites until the visitor agrees with the website’s terms and conditions. Imagine how irritating that becomes when you surf anonymously or if you delete cookies automatically when closing your browser.”
I agree it’s hard to tell. Looking at archive.org most pages don’t show cookie banners even for recent things. I did find that the “I don’t care about cookies” Firefox extension goes back to at least 2014 [1] and says “EU regulations require that any website using cookies must ask the user’s permission before installing them. These warnings appear on most high traffic websites until the visitor agrees with the website’s terms and conditions. Imagine how irritating that becomes when you surf anonymously or if you delete cookies automatically when closing your browser.”
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140326174218/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-about-cookies/