Attack the root

Why do companies constantly try to track users? Because they make money off of it!

This is why legalizations such as the cookie banner and GDPR are to a certain extent only a distraction, while a new way of tracking the user is developed, and the lawyers come up with a new cover for "legitimate interest" of sharing all your data with 2364 of our closest partners.

In Fingerprints are the new cookies Roy argues that the companies are now just using a different method to track you, Google keeps excluding itself from limitations, Windows is a ad riddled mess, etc.

How about a legalization where:

You would have to explicitly consent to the company making money off of me in any way shape or form, other than my direct payment to them?

This would include you showing me an ad and getting paid for it. This would include you selling my data, or data about me and my activity.

This would not include anonymous data. Of course there would have to be some kind of objective measure as to what counts as anonymous data. Never said it's a simple idea.

Force the companies to share a minimum of 30-50% of the profit with no option to opt out. The only "opt-out" would be that the money is paid to a charity of the users choice, and any unclaimed funds could be distributed proportionally to charities the users already donate to. The idea is to take the power of choosing where the money goes from the company/CEO so they can't just set up a "charity" and donate to it.

Then if they break the law:

  • Any money made off of me or my data, legally belongs to me as they did not have any consent to sell my data, so it has to be paid out
  • Any 3rd party purchasing the data would have to delete the data as far as that is possible
  • Add additional charges for breaking the law in the first place

This way IMO it becomes harder to justify the "cost of doing business" if any money the company made gets removed from their coffers + an additional cost is applied so that the shady selling becomes unprofitable.

Then suddenly excessive tracking becomes unreasonable as there is no direct money to be mad on it.