> Whenever you buy a product from a company that advertises on facebook, google, whatever, you are effectively paying for it. In my opinion, it's a bit more nu

> Whenever you buy a product from a company that advertises on facebook, google, whatever, you are effectively paying for it. In my opinion, it's a bit more nuanced than that. When you purchase a product with cash, no personal data is exchanged. The transaction is final and complete. When you 'pay' for services by exchanging personal data and metadata about yourself, that transaction is persistent and the vendor continues collecting payment indefinitely. With store loyalty cards and even in-store Wi-Fi tracking and other tactics, even cash payments can be viewed as less anonymous, because the vendors prefer to continue to reap the rewards of profiling and tracking customers. My point is that this isn't a black and white issue, but there are some important distinctions to make about payments in cash and payments in data, or a mixture of both.