I traced who profits every time you tap 'I agree' - the answer is a class system hiding in plain sight - Silicon Canals

"When you tap "I agree" on a typical European or American news site, a real-time bidding auction begins. Your device sends a bid request containing what the industry calls "signals": your approximate location, device type, browsing history (if third-party cookies are still active), and increasingly, probabilistic identity graphs that link your behavior across apps and websites even without cookies."

"What I found wasn't a conspiracy. It was something more durable than that: a class system, encoded in infrastructure, operating at a speed and scale that makes it functionally invisible to the people who feed it."

When users click "I agree" on cookie consent banners, a complex chain of value extraction begins within milliseconds. A bid request containing user signals—location, device type, browsing history, and identity graphs—is sent to ad exchanges and broadcast to hundreds of demand-side platforms in under 100 milliseconds. The winning bidder displays an ad while the publisher receives only a fraction of the advertiser's original payment. Between 30 and 70 percent of advertising spend is absorbed by intermediaries operating invisibly throughout this infrastructure. This system functions as an encoded class structure operating at speeds and scales that make it functionally invisible to users who unknowingly participate in it through routine consent clicks.

Read at Silicon Canals