[michaelmrose]

You seem to have complected extensive indiscriminate data collection with simple advertising and the more fundamental point of connecting and serving people.

You can use a combination of advertising and payment to fund services that connect people and facilitate commerce without extensive privacy destroying data collection. This model worked fine previously and it will work fine in the future. If anything hardware and tools are damn near amazing compared to the bygone past.

I struggle to think of any service in the world that is impossible or even challenging to replace. If anyone decides to take their ball and go home they will be replaced by a competitor who will use that extra revenue to improve their positions in other market to the original fools detriment.

There is in fact no reason to believe other markets including the US wont ultimately discover the merits of protecting their citizens privacy considering that in the US perhaps 171k work in the advertising industry out of 300 millions.

How the 0.02% can do an effective job without trampling the rights of the 99.98% is an exercise I leave to them and if they can't figure it out, then I hope the food stamp program still exists so they wont have to stand outside 7-11 with placards reading "will lie for food".