> You could have said the same thing about gay marriage or marijuana legalization in 2001 I take your point, but I don't think it's the same thing. There was n

> You could have said the same thing about gay marriage or marijuana legalization in 2001 I take your point, but I don't think it's the same thing. There was no vested commercial interest in maintaining the gay marriage ban and even then marriage equality was fiercely opposed and narrowly achieved and would be impossible to achieve today and into the foreseeable political future. It was also a no-brainer issue for Democrats that earned them a lot of support and did not conflict with Democratic donor interests. Marijuana is more complicated, especially if we are mindful of the fact that it is still a Schedule I drug (while e.g. cocaine, fentanyl and meth are Schedule II), but there was at least the gigantic bales of cash to create a clear incentive to drive legalization forward despite the fact that marijuana businesses are still being hamstrung by the banks and are under explicit threat by the attorney general. Still, marijuana is a very old issue with a clear binary choice that most of the citizenry is educated about... Now, compare all that with a ratcheting up of privacy restrictions wherein the only possible outcome is the loss of billions of dollars in monetizable customer data and personal information, not to mention all the usual suspects that continuously endeavor to magnify the scope and breadth of the surveillance state for their own ends. Additionally, there is no clear binary choice like with marijuana and gay marriage; any viable solution will require an imperfect, nuanced, and somewhat technical approach to being solved and this type of solution is the hardest thing to do in our politics right now. There is no incentive for any faction to tamp down on data collection and the populace has given the signal that it doesn't really care about these issues (e.g. the equifax breach had no legal and minimal financial consequences for the company, and people have already forgotten). Additionally, there is also a sizable libertarian population among the technically literate that will oppose any kind of serious restrictions on data-collection because they are ideologically opposed to regulations. Imagine the furor on this forum if a presidential candidate seriously suggested something within the ballpark of EU style privacy laws - the entire front page would be flagged out of existence. Maybe I am pessimistic, but I just can't see a viable route to privacy restrictions. edit: I just want to add: I'm not saying "no progress is possible forever, give up". I'm responding to the cavalier tone of your suggestion that "we can just make them stop". It's certainly possible, it's just very unlikely within the foreseeable future.