[0] still bad though and they should stop.
They know you rang a phone sex line at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. But they don't know what you talked about.
They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret.
They know you got an email from an HIV testing service, then called your doctor, then visited an HIV support group website in the same hour. But they don't know what was in the email or what you talked about on the phone.
They know you received an email from a digital rights activist group with the subject line “Let’s Tell Congress: Stop SESTA/FOSTA” and then called your elected representative immediately after. But the content of those communications remains safe from government intrusion.
They know you called a gynecologist, spoke for a half hour, and then called the local abortion clinic’s number later that day."They know you got a push from McDonalds at 11am"
"They know you got a Slack message at 2pm"
All metadata is not created equal.
You're using the internet afterall which isn't your network- it's someone else's! When you send a packet there is a header w/ information required for routing. Some call this the "outside of the envelope" if using the mail analogy. We can pass the buck by using a VPN but this also adds a VPN org that we need to trust. On the other hand, it's not your network! Why do you think you have a right to absolute secrecy and anonymity on someone else's network?
What's funded by tracking as much as possible is the current perverse part of internet, it definitely wasn't always like that and doesn't need to be.
I hope that that perspective comes from someone that hasn't lived anything before Facebook.
Being aware of the tracking and risks means people can make efforts to reduce the tracking, but it's almost becoming impossible to use the internet if you don't AGREE to the tracking in many cases, such as websites that won't risk GDPR violations and chooses to deny access to people blocking cookies entirely.
People who remember the old internet want it back, people who grew up with social media don't know what they're missing, and there's not much we can do to convince people to care about changing the DNA of the internet so that it's no longer perversely gobbling up all data.
In the US, the courts just decided there's no right to privacy (despite what the 4th amendment says) as part of rolling back Roe v. Wade.
So, the path forward is to vote in legislators that respect basic human rights, followed by court packing (or just impeaching the judges that have been publicly accepting bribes and failing to recuse themselves on cases where they have a clear conflict of interest).
Since the above is supported by way more than 50% of the US population, the main obstacles are gerrymandering and ending the currently common practice of appointing blatently corrupt judges to state supreme courts (and also restoring recently stripped powers to state governors, since they're elected via simple majority).
People are generally keeping themselves monitored as they use the internet. It's a panopticon with more steps. So it's no surprise governments are using the plaintext of anything they can find to track people.
And if people don't care about that because they are more focused on their pet political issue, it will never change, and silently get worse.