People are going to unpleasantly surprised by the way the internet changes after tracking for personalized advertising stops working. Already, I see tons of com

People are going to unpleasantly surprised by the way the internet changes after tracking for personalized advertising stops working. Already, I see tons of complains about paywalled news sites, micropayments everywhere, and the death of the "old internet". Just imagine how much worse it'll be when only two or three giant social media companies can make money with advertising (since they can rely on first-party data) and everyone else is relegated to a high-friction ghetto. If you're sad about the death of the "old internet", look out, because you haven't seen anything yet. As for tracking: the current "privacy" push looks like a moral panic to me. I've yet to see any actual personal harm come to anyone as a result of cookie-based tracking. I have, on the other hand, seen billions of people benefit from the monetarily-free services that personalized ads enable. Whipping up an anti-cookie hysteria is making the internet worse for everyone but the big established giant companies.