Your point definitely makes a lot of sense, but there are many of us who believe that we should be able to make our own decision to give up certain types of privacy in exchange for something of value.
Everything involves some level of risk/reward. Should I not be allowed to skydive because of the increased risk of death? Generally, I think my rights end where others’ rights begin, so I fail to see how sharing or withholding my personal information affects anyone else.
So invading someone else's privacy, without their consent, for your own monetary gain, should be your decision, because it's fairer?
I didn’t say anything about not getting consent to share personal information. I think almost everyone would agree consent is always necessary.
This is what these laws are all about.
People volunteer personal information because they believe the website will use it with their best interests in mind. There is a well-defined goal and achieving it is the only reason the website even has access to such data. For example, people give their home address to an online store so they can ship orders. Selling this data to marketers so they can spam the consumer's mailbox with advertisements is outside the scope of that goal.
Websites should collect only what's strictly necessary for them to do whatever it is that they do. They should use this data only for this purpose and ideally delete it afterwards.
However, there are two reasons why I think this is still reasonable (with 1. being more important):
1. The reality of the current situation is that invasions of privacy come bundled with other services, which you are pressured to use due to external factors. So I believe that the vast majority of cases are modelled well.
2. I see a privacy as similar to herd immunity, in that society benefits if lots of people have it, even if the individual does not profit from it directly. (In particular, it may prevent certain kinds of power from accumulating or centralising.) In these kinds of situations it can be necessary to restrict individual rights to achieve optimality.