How ISPs can sell your Web history–and how to stop them

My religious view on this is that detailed consumer behavioral data leads to hyperoptimization by marketers.

It's bad for individuals because more of our time is taken up by various flavors of cocaine (e.g. netflix, other products that lead to bingeing), and it's bad for society in general because we end up stuck at local maxima, can't pursue really cool goals like space travel or curing cancer.

My pragmatic view is that if consumers cared about privacy (from their credit card, from their utilities, from voter registration) we'd have it -- it's relatively cheap for vendors to provide. Until people care, we won't have privacy.