It's weird. Everybody finds ads obnoxious (at least some of the time), yet it's allowed and not only that, it's proliferated in recent years. You'd think something universally disliked would be legislated away.
I wish more people would realize the root cause of all this spying is advertising. Simply banning advertising would get rid of all this shit more effectively and with less overreach and compliance headaches than the GDPR.
Things which most of everybody agrees hurt society, but bump up the GDP tend to be tolerated to an extreme degree. The focus on datums, instead of why we even wanted those values to go up (or down) in the first place, is one of the major failings of modern governance.
>Everybody finds ads obnoxious (at least some of the time)
In my experience most people actually don't, and any anti-advertising strategy has to come to grips with this fact. For example I really can't stand radio ads so when I'm in the car with somebody and the radio starts playing ads I will ask if they can turn it off. Usually they will be pretty surprised, ask "why" etc. I think many people are genuinely able to "tune it out" and not be annoyed by ads.
There's at least one group who doesn't find the ads annoying, and that's whoever is purchasing the ad space. That could be a business, a nonprofit, some government agency or even a charity. Advertising is a vital part of the sales funnel for them, and it is what allows them to feed their children and pay the mortgage.
Maybe something like this: When the one displaying the picture (or whatever), the one providing the picture, and the one viewing the picture are three different parties, and money flows from the person providing the picture to the one showing it.
It's not perfect but I think this definition would include e.g. billboards, newspaper ads and most internet ads, while excluding non-advertising integrations of third-party data (e.g. when a navigation company buys maps from a mapping company to show to their client, it does not fall under this definition because money flows the other way).
> You'd think something universally disliked would be legislated away.
Advertising is a core activity of capitalism, which our western governments protect and further at all costs. Until we leave capitalism as a system behind, advertising will keep growing.
I wish more people would realize the root cause of all this spying is advertising. Simply banning advertising would get rid of all this shit more effectively and with less overreach and compliance headaches than the GDPR.