| I typed a long reply, then haven't sent it for a few days ... and now this happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26367747 Basically my view is that we urgently need to focus on the real world outcomes, what GDPR actually did. Consent about any storing and processing, so consequences all the way up and down the chain. Data controller, processor(s) and sub-processor(s), and so on. The technology of data-drivenness is here to stay. Businesses will use it. Consumers will consent to almost anything for a few cents of discount. And that's the next problem. So it'd be great to simply make a few basic marketing data techniques opt-out and very much make the rest require a review/permit from some authority. ---- That said I don't have much to compare "tracking today" against or with. I don't like advertisements in any form. (Billboards, TV/radio/podcast/youtube ads, native or not. Targeted or not.) Also there are already profiles, databases, and they would be without adtech too. (Just look at China, there is no Google, but they have a surveillance state. Sure, baidu/qq/tencent/alibaba are all having their adtech, and probably the central government have access to whatever they want.) Big tech or not, there are already fewer protected classes (in labor law) than there should be. Plus if an employer wants to fire someone, they will find some bullshit reason anyway. Similarly, banks already require a lot of data, a signed paper to verify employment, past transaction history, and there's the whole positive-negative credit score. (And people gladly give consent to receive a small fractional percentage better interest.) You are likely aware that many non-protected data categories correlate very highly with the protected ones. This puts many people at a disadvantage. (Yet at the same time not everyone has the same income, so not everyone has the same ability to service a loan. Of course the problem is very deep, because we know that the huge income inequality is also very much not because some of us happens to value income a lot more than free time, while some of us value free time more than income, which would lead to a "natural income inequality distribution".) Tech (big or not) is simply manifesting deep(er) problems. Sure, this is not a reason to not regulate tech. (Quite the contrary.) But I still think keeping things in perspective is important. |