Aren't they being forced to? If you restrict access to valuable personal data of your users for targeted ads, you reduce how much each customer is worth. At a certain point the unit economics don't make sense. So what else can they do? Just shut down the service?

Yes, if you can’t make your business model work while following the law, you should shut down.

Or you change your business model. FB is doing just that.

Is it really that big of a revenue difference per-user only serving non-targeted ads?

Put it another way. If at any given time you could be interested about 1 thing out of 100, if you are shown random ads, the value difference is 100x compared to if you were able to accurately identify the 1 out of 100.

So then consider that when you go to other websites, with FB code embedded within them, some of them e-commerce sites, they will be able to retarget those ads, which you already showed at least slight interest in. This is likely a huge difference.

You already showed interest in that gaming mouse, but for whatever reason you decided you would buy it later or not now, maybe forgetting all about it eventually, but then you see that ad to remind you. That's a huge difference.

Definitely yes. Non targeted ads tanks click through rates which directly reduces price per ad impression. Not surprised if this is a xx% hit.

According to some articles I found from Google, already retargeted ads (someone went to an ecommerce shop, showed interested in a product, but didn't buy it, gets shown this product on another website), already has 10x difference in CTR compared to normal display ads which I think also take into consideration your likely demographic and interests. So even larger difference between completely random ads.

Then there are weird freaks like me who, either through natural response[0] or habituation, buy approximately nothing unless it's necessary and therefore bring in zero money to anyone who paid to put an advert in front of my eyeballs…

[0] Amusic individuals have diminished or absent emotional responses to music, and describe music as "unpleasant" or as "annoying, noise".

This is how I regard adverts.

Normal ads are perfectly fine to show, so it's only the privacy violation that's in question.

I genuinely don't think you should have even the ability to give up your privacy, for the same reason we don't allow people to sell themselves into slavery, or give up the right to a fair trial, or give up your freedom of speech, even if it's clearly written out in a ToS that you are giving up those things.

I think there should be a bunch of fundamental rights that all humans have, and there should not be the possibility of selling or give those rights up.

Can you be more specific about what you mean?

Can Facebook know that for instance I am a man, or I live in the US, or that I speak English? What is the line?

Ive never seen a practical model for what "privacy" means in this regard. Of course targeted ads are not new, as advertisments you see in Vogue is different than those in Men's Fitness and different that those in Jet.

So happy to consider the idea that privacy is something that can't be sold no matter the price as long as you have a coherent model of what privacy is

The challenge that they’re up against is, nobody wants to pay for “normal” non-targeted ads. The death of normal ads was called the “adpocalypse” and it took down some pretty major web properties who didn’t adapt. Dr Dobbs Journal was one of them.

What is a normal non targeted ad?

If a feminine hygiene company has to show non targeted ads to 50% men, who benefits? They have to advertise more than twice as much, Facebook can't charge as much, and I get weird irrelevant ads that make my experience worse.

You very much have the ability to and are encouraged by the government to give up your right to a fair trial. It’s called a plea bargain and over 90% of cases never go to trial in the US.

You are also allowed to give up your freedom of speech - it’s called a non disclosure agreement.

And from my reading of it, the GDPR agrees and the whole "Data or money" thing is actually not "freely given consent" and thus void. But sadly, the data protection officers are really dragging their feet here and don't bring this to the courts. Might be because the big European publishing houses seem to all have adopted this strategy and they have a powerfull lobby. And just as facebook, most of them set ridiculous prices because they just want you to say yes to all data harvesting instead.

Well, it's still as free as it used to be since the subscription model is opt-in