An important distinction

[osewalrus]

I often hear that if we tamper with the ability of advertising-based websites to collect personal information, it will destroy their business model. This is hogwash. Advertising has been a multi-billion dollar business since well before we had the capacity to do targeted advertising.

It may make the sale of online advertising less profitable, but I am skeptical even of this claim. Advertisers go to FB and Google because of the Willie Sutton Rule. i.e., That's where the people are. Just as advertising on broadcast networks got more valuable with the rise of cable and the fragmentation of cable audiences (because broadcast networks, while providing a smaller audience than previously, still provided an overwhelmingly huge audience compared to any cable outlet), advertising on Google platforms (notably search and Youtube) and on Facebook will muddle along just fine based on things like key words and other content that does not require accumulating my life history.

Comments

[alexxkay]

Not to memtion that "preservation of a specific business model" is not generally held to be a public good.