Instead of more palatable user tracking, how about we tell advertisers and internet companies: fuck off, we don't want any tracking? How about we hunt down and eliminate all features that allow cross-site information sharing? How about we treat attacks on user privacy as security problems of the web standards, à la Tor, and build technology that aggressively hides any user signature in any layer, from rotating IP and MAC addresses to user agents, referers and canvas leaks?
But wait you say, how would the very useful internet ecosystem survive without advertising revenue? Well, there is nothing wrong with advertising per se, it's a natural part of a free market economy. It's ok to target ads to the user's search terms or social feed. The problem is that, in the pursuit of advertising revenue, a cutthroat economic competition pushed advertisers to mine more and more personal data simply to stay competitive. It's a low sum game: it doesn't bring much more money in advertising or make the internet significantly more useful, but it destroys the privacy of everyone. A spectacular market failure ripe for correction.
But wait you say, how would the very useful internet ecosystem survive without advertising revenue? Well, there is nothing wrong with advertising per se, it's a natural part of a free market economy. It's ok to target ads to the user's search terms or social feed. The problem is that, in the pursuit of advertising revenue, a cutthroat economic competition pushed advertisers to mine more and more personal data simply to stay competitive. It's a low sum game: it doesn't bring much more money in advertising or make the internet significantly more useful, but it destroys the privacy of everyone. A spectacular market failure ripe for correction.