> The funny thing was how people sent out those emails to their newsletter subscribers and I do wonder how decimated those lists became. People got GDPR fatigue and could not be bothered with the emails after a while. This particularly affected smaller businesses who had legitimate reasons to email customers.

We've had data protection laws for 20 years. Those companies were already breaking the law if they didn't have permission to send email, and if they had a legitimate need to send email they don't need consent under GDPR.