[adamsvystun]

I would personally not agree to tracking, but who should be and shouldn't be in business based on tracking is not for you (or me, or anyone) to decide. If there are people who are fine with tracking in exchange for services, then they should be able to make that exchange.

[2pEXgD0fZ5cF]

> but who should be and shouldn't be in business based on tracking is not for you (or me, or anyone) to decide

I generally agree with the poster. A majority of "modern" companies that pop up have one of two strategies nowadays:

1. No sustainable business model, nothing to sell to users. Grow as fast as possible, get bought by one of the established megacorps.

2. The product is kind of there, but it is only an excuse to grab as much data as possible. Again nothing to sell to actual users.

The ad business has kind of become a market that trades among themselves, they don't sell anything but the promise for others to sell more, except now companies that mainly sell ads also buy advertisements for their business.

It's become a huge house of cards and you really have to wonder what the reason for their existence is.

Thinking purely as a customer the fact that I have just no way to just give a company my money and in turn they'll just leave me alone with all of their useless and hostile bull** is hugely frustrating and I think they deserve to go out of business if they truly have no other way to keep the shop running.

No, I do not want this single strawberry for free just for you to break into my house and photocopy as many documents as you can (and leak them to the public a few months later because you don't care a single bit about keeping your data secure)...

[baq]

i agree, nicely put. just a small addendum to your two points: having very little product for users to sell only works if the product is free-as-in-beer for them - and the way to get there is to sell data about users to paying customers. these are fundamentals of engagement economy: get users kind of addicted to something which has barely any value and they wouldn't pay for it if they had to and sell everything they tell about themselves in the process of using it to people willing to buy the data. due to network effects user data value grows super-linearly, so you can perceive your own data as 'worthless', but it becomes worth much more once you get data about others.

[danbruc]

In principle I agree. On the other hand, are people agreeing to be tracked really aware of what they agree to and what the value of the resulting information is? Would they still agree if they knew? And this of course also requires that my choice is actually honored and I currently have very little trust in this respect, after all we already had Do Not Track and nobody cared.

[salawat]

This is the kind of false choice that simply can't be allowed; similar to selling oneself into slavery or selling one's organs are not considered valid transactions. If it is allowed, the market will converge on it. Without a price and disincentive to implementing pervasive surveillance, it will be guaranteed to happen.

[harry8]

> If there are people who are fine with tracking in exchange for services, then they should be able to make that exchange.

Informed consent is almost always lacking. 99.999% of people party to it do not understand this bargain. Do you fully understand it or just "in principle" - which is fine until the rubber hits the road.

"All you have to agree to is being warm, sensitive and caring to our clients." Fine. Prostitution should be legal and absolutely nobody should be subject to it on that basis of understanding what they're signing up for.

Properly informed consent is always crucial to this argument that people are fine with it. The dishonesty, bait and switch, ongoing secretiveness of it should not be necessary and would not happen if it were informed consent. But that consumer fraud being perpretrated 100% built google and facebook. There is not now nor has there ever been consent. Morever when consent is completely withdrawn - you delete your account - they keep a shadow account. To HELL with them and those who pretend all this is honest and above board because it just isn't.

[bilekas]

This is fine, and I know some people who are aware and are happy with the ads they recieve.

I do personaly have a problem with not being given the choice, also it should be an opt-in option. Privacy shouldn't be compromised and then restored after the data is already gone.

[deagle50]

Ok, how do you suggest we achieve this? It's been over two decades now and the US govt hasn't done much.