> your interests, preferences, and proclivities are being used to make others richer.
Your logic here villainizes a behavior simply because it benefits someone else.
Let's say that every day you stop at Starbucks and order a cappuccino. The people who work at there recognize that you always show up at 8:10am and order the same thing so they begin to make sure it is ready for you every day so you don't have to wait. Did you give them explicit permission to notice your habits? No. Does their behavior benefit them? Yes, they keep you satisfied and paying obscene amounts of money for coffee on a daily basis. It's mutually beneficial. Now an employee of Starbucks could potentially give information about your daily routine to someone else who was looking for you (say to the police for whatever reason) but you don't hear anyone lamenting the presence of eyeballs in the heads of baristas as massive privacy invasions.
I believe what you are really getting at is that these companies like Google and others can - and have at times - abuse the information they have available. This is exactly my point: what's needed is greater accountability.
It sounds like people are cross-discussing what they're really trying to get at the heart of,
Tracking is a tool.
It can be used for good and for bad. It has been used for good or bad. A healthy debate about the pros and cons and discussing choices one has with their tools/tech is vital to this.
Tracking is an aspect of privacy, but it is not the entirety of it.
It would be great if that was the discussion, but it seems like many people consider tracking to be an absolute bad. Thus, any service improvement that might come of it is tainted by its association with tracking.
Your logic here villainizes a behavior simply because it benefits someone else.
Let's say that every day you stop at Starbucks and order a cappuccino. The people who work at there recognize that you always show up at 8:10am and order the same thing so they begin to make sure it is ready for you every day so you don't have to wait. Did you give them explicit permission to notice your habits? No. Does their behavior benefit them? Yes, they keep you satisfied and paying obscene amounts of money for coffee on a daily basis. It's mutually beneficial. Now an employee of Starbucks could potentially give information about your daily routine to someone else who was looking for you (say to the police for whatever reason) but you don't hear anyone lamenting the presence of eyeballs in the heads of baristas as massive privacy invasions.
I believe what you are really getting at is that these companies like Google and others can - and have at times - abuse the information they have available. This is exactly my point: what's needed is greater accountability.