> it's also very possible that the business models are actually unpopular and people are upset after learning about them.
I am 100% convinced - from people around me - that those who use FB and IG don't give a damn about privacy and would rather it be free of charge. This is clearly a small group of "elite people in the know" (which in this case I consider myself and yourself a part of) deciding this.
“Do you want us to use [extensive list of all of the kinds of information we have meticulously gathered about you] to show you more relevant ads? Yes/no”
I have a personal belief on what most people will answer to that question. You may disagree. But it doesn’t really matter - the key is that people will be given the chance to make an informed decision.
I do pay for Youtube premium, because without that, the amount of ads really annoys me. I usually buy ad-free versions of freemium Android apps. There must be some value to pay for; making the free version annoying subtracts enough value that paying for the uncrippled version becomes a reasonable choice. (I usually buy paid versions of open-source apps to keep them open-source; that's also a value.)
Also, a lot of people are very much not well off. They often don't have that extra $5; I remember being in that state myself as a student. So they will put up with free shit, even if it has a noticeable shit component :(
Ads shown in Gmail are not based on the contents of the emails, rather on other characteristics inferred from the associated Google account [0]. It's a bit of a "splitting hairs" thing, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison in this case.
I'm not familiar with Hulu.
> How many people are flocking to use a paid privacy focused search engine like Neeva? Hell even DDG hasn’t taken over and it’s free!
Those search engines are not as good as Google. All things being equal, I posit that people would prefer products that respect their privacy.
> You don’t have to guess.
Again, that's beside the point. The point is that people should be given the opportunity to make an informed choice about whether a company is allowed to process their personal data for the purpose of showing "more relevant" advertisements, and that is a Good Thing.
When Apple forced apps to implement App Tracking Transparency which asks a neutral, OS-provided question to the user, only 4% opted in.
Furthermore, people generally don't care about privacy because they don't understand the ramifications of that decision (which is exactly why the GDPR was enacted instead of letting consumers and "the market" decide), but they do freak out when the tracking ends up backfiring on them.
Every single time I point that out, I get told to show proof of such "ramifications". They just don't think they'll be impacted by this tracking, which is ridiculous. Even more strange is the position of "I have nothing to hide." - privacy != secrecy.
I think you're giving "the media" too much credit here, it's also very possible that the business models are actually unpopular and people are upset after learning about them. I think in general that's the basis for all the laws we have - a bunch of people thought there should be a law against something and made it.
The only alternative to this is someone doing top-down laws based on what they personally think is right or wrong, and I'd argue that's much more what was happening in Christian-ruled Europe. The church was making laws - they weren't coming from a democratic government.