Probably because they were fielding complaints from their readers.

I took down a fully static public web page that had basically no traffic and no cookies. It literally just said that a domain that I had was not associated with a popular brand name that was on a different TLD so don’t email me about it.

I got as many emails complaining there was no cookie banner as I had previously gotten about the brand. There is some brand of privacy crank out there that likes to harass people about those banners (and similar gdpr regs).

You don't understand. Creating as much friction as possible and hiding the actual content is web design best practice.

If you just show the actual content in a readable format that uses the screenspace people will get scared and think of your site as unprofessional. People are so used to these popups, modals and annoyances that interrupt, take away screen space from and cover the content that they expect them.