So, as long as companies feel they can do anything they feel like with the data your only option is to completely opt out. Which means companies have no reason not to release your data as everyone assumes they will anyway.
In clinical research it's considered unethical to take uninformed consent and a great deal of effort goes into educating participants on the risks and benefits of their contribution.
Such stuff is fantasy for modern EULAs though, which makes it sketchy when these entities do (public) research.
Why should privacy advocates 'make reasonable concessions'? What are they holding us back from? What concessions is the other side making? Who exactly is on each of these sides anyway? Your comment isn't particularly clear on these points nor on why the opposite view is any better (other than we get nice graphs occasionally). There are cogent arguments to be made on either side here but you've made none.
> "I'd hate to lose this data just because a minority think its a threat to their civil rights."
Minorities matter and it's ironic that you bring up civil rights. There are plenty of example from history so please do look them up.
[1] I'm not saying it's possible for the graphs in the article, but if one had access to the (anonymised) data that produced them, it may be possible to combine with other data and ultimately identify individual users.
I really think the privacy advocates are holding us back at this point. They refuse to make reasonable concessions and while they think they're fighting the good fight, they've just marginalized themselves to the point where only a tiny extremist minority is engaged because moderate voices are shouted down as "selling out to the man" or the NSA or whoever the villain of the day is.
Its also sad to see a arguably progressive community like HN fall for this stuff. Not only are we doing this stuff all the time, the current fad of health devices, smart watches, etc are going to make this a lot more common. We're like cavemen throwing spears at an enemy with machine guns. Its a fight we've long lost. I think its better for us to focus on privacy issues that are legitimately victimizing instead of railing against anything and everything that kinda sorta rubs us the wrong way.
If anything, the cult of privacy is hurting us because its created a "boy who cried wolf" situation which is now a political liability. How am I supposed to tell Joe Midwest Voter that X is harmful when he keeps hearing about how tracking cookies or Tivo stats or iPhone policies are harmful and didn't give two shits about those either.