> You're equivocating a sample of a person's internet behavior with an actual person.
Either way, it's tracking what someone's doing. That the visibility isn't absolute in either case—though, thanks to phones and connected surveillance cameras and such, the line between "internet behavior" and "all behavior" is getting really blurry, no?—doesn't change that.
There is a lot more to this than "which links I clicked on the Google Search results", right? Where was I last Saturday, when did I arrive and leave, who was at that party with me, what was playing on the TV in the background, where'd I move my mouse while visiting that web page, what porn do I watch down to when exactly I stopped that video, what did I buy at the corner store last week, which vacation destinations have I been looking at, am I having an affair, is my spouse having an affair, how many kids do I have and where do they go to school, and far, far more than that. Is the creepy stalker somehow less creepy if they fail to capture as much information as they'd like? I do not see the equivocation you wrote of, in this case, at all, because I don't see the qualitative difference in the activities that you seem to. Both observe activity, much of which is commonly regarded as or expected to be private. Neither captures the "actual person", as you write, in any sense. It's the same sort of thing, yes? How is it not? How is one thing merely "behavior" and the other is the "actual person"? Both are about behavior.
If anything the Web giants see more, and more intimate, information than all but the most successful stalker or window-peeper, and also do it to far more people, and also store it forever, and also use that information to manipulate you (they don't even hide this part! It's explicitly their whole thing!).
If I were trying to unfairly or deceptively stretch definitions, as you accuse me, I'd be pushing for a lot more than equating the two. The web giants are much worse. My initial comparison is pretty mundane and probably more fair than is deserved, and I hope people would take the next step of considering how much they're repulsed by creepy stalking when an individual does it and realizing that the web giants are doing, just... so much of that. So very much. So how ought they feel about that? Like those whole companies the main business of which is being huge fucking creeps, protected only because... shit, I dunno. I guess it's not stalking if you do it impersonally and for pay? I have a hard time grasping what I suppose you're taking as the "accepted" or (surely, as you're fighting even gentle attempts to re-frame?) "correct" POV on this. It's like glimpsing bizarro-world, where all the colors are reversed and up is down and cats and dogs live in harmony.
> I'll again note that I haven't seen convincing evidence of the demonstrable, widespread, or significant harms resulting from tracking/retargeting. Instead your argument seems to rely almost entirely on a fundamentally flawed analogy.
A database of who was with whom, where, all their preferences for a variety of things, what they've bought since the tracking started (years ago), et c., is per se harmful. I'm not going to wait for someone to fall in the huge pit in the sidewalk before claiming having a giant pit in the sidewalk is dangerous. Obviously, it's dangerous. If someone proposes wrapping playground equipment in barbed wire, I'm not going to wait for someone to get hurt before saying "that's a really stupid, dangerous idea". Besides, identity theft (bank fraud, if you prefer) is a real consequence of all of our data being in so many places now, and automated, targeted recommendations, ads, promoted content, et c., have well-covered effects, which I would absolutely consider harmful—perhaps you do not, but there's been enough coverage of this for years that you can understand why someone might, at least.
> > > redefining terms and norms.
> > AKA rhetoric and persuasive language.
> I think you've just engaged in it. While norms and language are a little mushy, they're not meaningless.
Hardly. Shifting people's perspective—redefining terms and norms, and convincing people that yours make more sense than the ones they had before—is core to persuasive communication, among other forms of communication. You might as well have written "you're trying to convince people of things, and to communicate your point of view". Well... yes.
Besides, I covered the "meaningless" angle in my post. It's not that they're meaningless, it's that one must question definitions and norms to spot when one is being fooled, or has been misled. Say, "tracking what users do on their own computer isn't grossly unethical, it's 'telemetry'", or "sending your real name to a stranger on the Internet isn't batshit crazy, it's ordinary, provided that stranger owns a .com", or "sure, personalized ads are creepy [luckily, that sentiment hasn't been stamped out yet, and remains nigh-universal], but they're also normal and part of a legitimate business model", or "companies that deliberately promote some content over other content aren't in any way responsible for that content or liable for harm it may cause, in any legal sense, provided they take it down if a lawyer asks very nicely" or "it's not dangerously irresponsible social science, it's A/B testing on our social 'algorithm'". It's not a matter of meaninglessness, it's that a given set of definitions and norms is not necessarily the most correct, or most useful for a given purpose or context.
These things are shifting all the time, and some of those shifts are deliberately created by people who are trying to pull a fast one. If we have to accept their terms and norms, well, what, we just throw up our hands and declare ourselves prisoners to their language? I don't see what alternative you're proposing to using language as I've done, which, again, isn't deceptive or unusual. If the tamest and most transparent sort of analogy and comparison were off limits, then... what do we use instead? Those are central to how we communicate.