"Somehow 20 years ago businesses managed to judge how effective their communications/ads were without tracking; let them go back to that. reply" I definitewly

"Somehow 20 years ago businesses managed to judge how effective their communications/ads were without tracking; let them go back to that. reply" I definitewly agree that the fix to a lot of the tracking/privacy issue are on the client end. But, the value on the other end is not the same regardless of tracking. 20 years ago (even 10-15) online ad markets were tiny, even relative to the number of users. It just wasn't possible to translate users into dollars in the way it is today. It's not a 20% difference, it's a large multiple. The Google & FB machines are powered by highly trackable advertising. FB ads were worthless before they made a big jump in trackability a few years ago. The "feedback loop" is the difference. 20 years ago, advertising was powering mostly entertainment, some news and such. Today, it's also powering driverless car research, OSs, VR... Indirectly, a lot of the startup boom is funded by trackable ads. Trackable ads translate "really popular, lots of DAUs" into "potential unicorn" on the backs of many envelopes which later get filled with cash. Feedback loops make this possible. I'm not argueing against privacy. I actually agree with you. Clients (email clients, browsers..) should enforce privacy, serving users not advertisiers. I'm just being realistic about the scale of the issue. Online, advertising is tracking. Advertising-tracking is at the heart of consumer technology's income & investment stream. If tracking goes away tomorrow,it takes a bunch of stuff with it.