I take an even more cynical view: their intent is far from passive.

They want the end user to be irritated in the extreme. When users complain they'll say “we have to do this, the law says so, look, everyone else is doing the same thing” in the hope that people will support later action to have the privacy protections wound back.

Oh, it's definitely malicious compliance. I have no doubt.

A clear example of passive-aggressive protest was from Google, the removal of links to Google maps from the search results. Instead of providing a choice of multiple map providers, they just completely removed the links. To clarify: I'm in Europe (France).