> … "get to the actual point, and target mass surveillance and collection of huge troves of personal data no matter the purpose."

This! Exactly this!

> The advertising is a symptom, it's not the disease.

Advertising also stimulates mass overconsumption.

If we want to save the planet, advertising is among the top things we should ban right away.

Right, but the alternative in question is banning surveillance-based advertising. I'd prefer to curb surveillance itself, having the side-effect of eliminating surveillance-based advertising.

Separately, yes, I'd like to see practically all public advertising banned (billboards are blight), and while I'd have to think on it some more before supporting a blanket ban on all advertising (I'm not sure it's workable, for one thing) I'd also not be sad if I woke up one morning and learned that such a law had been passed.

From my perspective, both advertising and surveillance are bad, and both should be banned.

Yeah, I don't think our opinions diverge too much on that. My ideal world wouldn't feature much of either of them—I think well-marked, in some standard and easy-to-spot way, ads in publications aren't so terrible, for instance, provided it's made clear up-front, say with some kind of cigarette-box style notice or warning, that there are ads in it. Though, again, if paid advertising just went away, in all forms, entirely, tomorrow I wouldn't be sad about it. But, as far as online ads go, it's the surveillance part that bothers me more than there being any ads at all, and that worries me way beyond its use in advertising.

I know we're comparing relative evils here, but that's interesting. I think my main concerns with surveillance are the chilling effects it has on those who would break the law for ethical reasons. But ultimately I think the tangible negative effects that surveillance has on most people are indirect. That's not to say they aren't important. But as important as advertising?

Advertising causes a great deal of surveillance, but it causes a lot of other issues, many of which affect almost everyone, very directly, and in some tangible ways. At a basic level, we're being lied to constantly in ways that hurt our self esteem, break our concentration, introduce us to new fears and angers: the exact intention of which is to create problems for us so that it can persuade us that giving them money will solve our problems. Advertising tells us our partners aren't hot enough, we aren't cool enough, our houses aren't big enough, our cars aren't fast enough, that we aren't doing enough for X cause. It tells us that our financial future is insecure, that we're missing out, that we're at risk for disease, floods, and car accidents. If a parent or partner told us these things, we'd call it emotional abuse, but from advertisers it's both accepted and commonplace. And it affects us deeply: we're overmedicated, overfed, overworked, and over-indebted.

And that's just the direct effects. When you consider the kinds of content that advertising funds, it's almost universally harmful. News that prioritizes clicks over information by inciting anger and fear. Informational resources that avoid speaking truth to power because power advertises. Social media that courts flame wars, conspiracy theories, and echo chambers because they all provoke engagement. Everything advertising funds is fast, shallow and emotional, because slow, deep and rational doesn't promote clicks.

Why even look for a compromise here? Easy to spot ads aren't better: they're still people shoving a lie in our face. There's nothing of value here. Ads are a tumor: even if we can find some part of it that's benign, there's no part that shouldn't be excised.

On top of that, ads stimulate overconsumption.

Also, they distort the free market (not the best product wins, but the one with the biggest advertising budget)

And they often target young children.

The only reason ads exist is because countries measure the success of their economies by how much is consumed.

I'm curious how you would see "ban monetizing data" play out in the case of an e-commerce company. Can they still run A/B tests? Show you products that they think you will want to buy based on your purchase history?

> Can they still run A/B tests?

If I were writing the rules, I'd exclude anything that looks routing-like. "IP address A sees version 1, IP address B sees version 2, with some amount of ephemeral data involved to support pinning" is fine. Basic hit-counter type stats are fine. (though I think A/B tests are abusive crap and would love to see them go away, on a personal level, I don't think they necessarily qualify as spying, though the way they're practiced right now probably does tend collect & retain enough information that they absolutely are, but might not with some modification)

> Show you products that they think you will want to buy based on your purchase history?

No. Maybe with some kind of opt-in or otherwise making that something the user has to intentionally ask for. But if you're not using others' purchasing data to decide what those might be (and that would definitely be off-limits) then that's not very different from just having categories your users can browse.

What about, on a page about x, showing "users who bought x often bought y" ads?

It'd obviously be a tough rule to craft. In some hypothetical world where I'm the Tzar of writing and enforcing this, I'd tend to allow leeway for companies using data that could be essentially a totally-anonymous incrementing counter (as in this case) to choose how to present their site, based on what's currently being looked at or requested but not on the browsing or purchase history of a particular user. It's using a person's own activity to target, manipulate, or "monetize" them that I find especially objectionable—and the data that's hoarded in the name of those abilities, simply dangerous in ways that the hoarding companies aren't made to account for (a huge negative externality, basically). In general I think if companies want market research they should pay for market research, not just run a dragnet spying operation against their customers. If they want something other than market research out of those data, then they probably ought to just be shut down (or, at least, that part of their business should be)

[EDIT] FWIW I don't think these kinds of rules should only apply to tech companies. Physical stores ("loyalty" cards, tracking shoppers' cell phones, that stuff) and banks and similar also shouldn't be able to spy on people, nor to sell or otherwise use data collected as a necessary part of their business against people. A store may reasonably have surveillance cameras, but ought not be able to sell the footage to another company to train & test its gait-recognition software, nor use facial recognition to track how often I visit the store or what I look at. That kind of thing.

Taking cost vs. benefit into account, I would default to "no". This one in particular seems like a "neat little feature", but "neat" does not cut it if it threatens to make legislation against surveillance-based advertising less effective.

I'm not sure many customers will miss it, if they really notice. Yes it can be a bit helpful, but many other things in the world would be "a bit helpful" and yet are nowhere near justifying their cost and effect (e.g. we stopped using radioactive chemicals in substantial amounts for everyday products very, very quickly).

I've gotten useful leads on products to research maybe buying from those type of ads before, but I only ever see them on sites I've whitelisted in my adblocker specifically because they're sites I buy things from (and a rare few sites I trust to be respectful about advertising placement). They're useful when they're done right tho.

I'm confused by your ad blocker comment, because most listings like this won't be recognized as ads. They look like product suggestions, and they are entirely first party.

(On the other hand, I think the law as you're proposing it would cover them)

A/B testing can be done without collecting any personal data.