Tech products starts this way but eventually they need to make profit and then ads take over the product. The only way this works is for paid products.
I order a pizza, I have no choice but to provide details since they need them for delivery. Guess what happens next? Yeah, e-mail and SMS spam.
I pay hundreds of bucks for a complete Tado system (thermostat, radiator valves, etc). Guess what I get? E-mail spam about discounts for their "new" app which actually has less features than the current one.
I buy a PS4 and try to set it up. Even for a few hundred bucks for a new console, there is still bullshit telemetry and other crap I need to opt-out of, not to mention some half-assed attempt at a social network where I have to spend 15 minutes setting everything to "No one can see this" so I can regain some privacy because I have no desire to use the social features.
Heck, even some US government agencies (DMV I think) sell your data to scum and you can't even opt out.
I can go on and on. We need some actual ethics, and regulation as a fail-safe for cases where the former doesn't work.
Or become an EU resident and use their brilliant data-handling privacy laws
Can you imagine doing all these things every time your privacy is violated (every non-compliant cookie banner, tracker, newsletter, etc)? That would be a full-time job. It's almost like "justice" in the US, in theory you can win, in practice you have no chance unless you have billions to pay lawyers to fight decade-long legal battles on your behalf.
Well, then move to another EU country :D I've had ours issue a couple of fines based on complaints I filed, even pre-GDPR.
True, I don't file for every non-compliant cookie banner or tracker, but if they start spamming me despite not having authorized that use of the data, I do. But it's been quite rare in the past couple of years.
I literally do these things everytime my privacy, just like I'd do with any other right, is violated. And no it's not a full-time job, that's precisely why I delegate.
Not using real data, unless the interactions are legally binding, helps a lot. Give it a spin maybe?
> that's precisely why I delegate.
You mean you pay someone else to deal with the bullshit? It's a good strategy and I've considered it but it shouldn't be up to us to pay (with time and/or money) to investigate these issues, especially considering the regulation doesn't give you any way to recover those expenses even if the offender is indeed in breach of those regulations. There's also the problem of the people who would be the most affected by the privacy breaches are the ones that are less likely to have the disposable income necessary to pay someone else to deal with this on their behalf.
> Not using real data
Two problems with this:
1) It's hard to defend against data being collected in the background, and privacy plugins can be a double-edged sword by making you stand out more (the lack of data is data by itself). IP tracking is very hard to defend unless you have access to a huge pool of IPs and configure your computer to pick random ones for each host it's connecting to.
2) In some cases it's impossible - ordering goods, food or transport online. Some require identifiers like phone numbers you can't easily get in volume.
But GDPR is just the 2nd step. The 3rd is the e-privacy regulation that is coming, hopefully in this mandate.
As a corollary, I would add that there is an inequality problem here: those with means will more easily be able to afford "calm technology" that isn't ad supported. Those without will have to suffer through the ads. I don't have the answer to this problem -- just noting that we cannot seriously endorse the idea of calm tech unless it is ubiquitously calm, and that requires a different business model.
You're right that it would require a new business model, but I don't think there's a business model that allows "Free" and "Paid" users in a way that doesn't inevitably create an equality problem. If Free is just as good as Paid, no one would pay. If people wouldn't pay and it needs to be free, you'll need to monetize it and that's likely advertising.
Open source, community driven apps might be a good solution. But open source tends to be driven by tech people solving a tech need. Just having open code also doesn't solve a lot of issues, like an open source video platform still needs to pay for the data.
I want products and services that i can ignore - product owners should track their success by how infrequently i interact with their product, not how frequently i interact with it. And even on a monthly payment basis, if i don't interact with a product for a whole month then maybe they start worrying that i'm going to stop paying them.