I think the EU is trying to regulate something can’t be regulated because incentives don’t align. Want a free internet? That means ads and tracking. Want no ads? That means you paying… and young or poor or anonymous people get excluded
The main issue really is that publishers and ad networks conflate tracking and ads. I'm pretty tired of sites popping up a message saying: "We need to talk about your ad blocker". I don't block ads, I block tracking, remove the tracking and we're good.
Context based ads works almost as well as those based on endless amounts of personal information. They are good enough, they worked well for decades. The problem is that they are a lot hard to sell/buy and modern online ad specialist aren't qualified to do it, they can only click around the Google AdWords or Facebook Ads.
The usual response I get to this position is "but I don't want to pay with money and I don't mind ads, and I really like the content, should you be making the decision for me that I can't participate in that transaction?" To which my answer is yes.
They don't. What they say is that businesses shouldn't assume that people's private data is theirs for the taking. People still have the choice to opt-in to pervasive tracking.
Basically: I think it would be fine for anyone to participate in market transactions with transparency. But I don’t think there can be transparency here, or that if we really tried then almost no one would accept the transaction anyway.
So I’m thinking a ban of the transactions is the lesser evil.
We already ban e.g sale of your own organs. I’m fine with that too. Now, am I the right person to decide whether people value their kidneys like their integrity? Yes.
And I know the change won’t happen. I’m aware of that. I’m just saying that alternatives are out there.