This might be a good time to remind folks what systemic problems are. Systemic problems are where everybody is acting in good faith, trying to do the right thi

This might be a good time to remind folks what systemic problems are. Systemic problems are where everybody is acting in good faith, trying to do the right thing, yet the system overall is in a state that's unacceptable. And the harder they work at their little piece, the worse the system gets. Governments aren't at fault. They clearly are working on enacting privacy laws. OS vendors aren't at fault. They clearly are working on making sure apps behave within some defined behaviors set by the user. Walled Gardens aren't at fault, they are working on rooting out bad actors. App makers might not be at fault. They simply might be monetizing traffic using generic services that only take what the user has already agreed to. Even the services themselves can claim to be working on solutions. After all, didn't the user approve this? And aren't the rest of the food chain approving of this kind of thing? That's the thing: certification systems, whether they mean to or not, end up being a kind of blanket approval. They passed the tests, aren't they okay? When news breaks, the public immediately wants to find a bad actor and bash them over the head, not wanting to admit or think about the fact that the entire system is at work. So controls are tightened on one bunch and the rest of them make statements (and efforts) about trying harder. At root is probably something simple like "Don't track user's locations. Ever." I don't know. But I know the desire to simplify the story can lead to a lot of heat and noise -- and not much progress. Any certification system that says that a particular piece of code passes some kind of test can be construed that it passes all kinds of other tests -- and you can never lock up code, no matter how hard you try. This faith in certification systems is misplaced and very well may be a multi-billion-dollar fool's errand.