People can and do pay for "free" web services like Firefox. They pay with their personal data. This is exchanged into regular currency via the advertising indus

People can and do pay for "free" web services like Firefox. They pay with their personal data. This is exchanged into regular currency via the advertising industry. Services that cannot or will not exploit this income stream will inevitably run into financial trouble. Economically, spending personal data makes sense for a lot of people. Unlike money, you generate personal data continuously and effortlessly. You can spend it multiple times, many people spend it with little obvious downside, and the process is completely frictionless. Consider the effort involved with setting up, maintaining and eventually cancelling a subscription to a money-financed service, vs. a data-financed one, which you simply start and stop using at your leisure. Some people do not like this situation. They object to the entire notion of personal data being used as a currency. They attempt to prevent it via advocacy and legislation. Advocacy does not seem to work, at least on its own. Many people, if you explain the situation to them in terms of privacy, will express a theoretical desire not to trade away their personal data. However, their behaviour is not consistent with this. Faced with a choice between using data-financed and money-financed services, the majority chooses the former. Legislation attempts to resolve this dilemma, either by outlawing the use of personal data as a currency at all, or more often by making the spending of personal data more a onerous and explicit process, in the hope that a closer equivalence in terms of convenience combined with repeated reminders of people's stated preference to maintain their privacy will alter their behaviour. Personally, I'm skeptical this type of legislation will succeed. Clicking a few checkboxes and cookie banners is still far more convenient than giving my credit card details to every single website or app I want to use. And most humans act in opposition to their stated ideals and desires in myriad ways, every single day.