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So just in case people occasionally vote for shortsighted policies, we should preventatively remove their democratic autonomy altogether, replacing them with corporate puppets just to be safe? The enlightened shills will lead civilization to a new golden age of personal prosperity and financial prudence.

I currently pay for:

- Apple devices because while they are getting bad with advertising, they aren’t as bad as Google

- Hulu, Netflix, Disney, Max, Paramount+ and AppleTV as part of the bundle - ad free

- Slate podcasts, Stratechery, and Downstream

- I refuse to use any app/game that doesn’t have an option to turn off ads.

- I use an Adblocker for the rest

- I don’t use YouTube, I pay for training content when I need it.

It’s not that I’m militantly opposed to advertising morally, it ruins the enjoyment of media.

The targeted ad industry grew during the time where data privacy was not being actively discussed in the mainstream, it grew to be a massive cash cow for some of the largest tech corporations to ever exist. After this period we have found the issues with the lack of control on data privacy, we now know much better the side-effects of that, and people want it to be controlled.

Your argument is that because the industry is massive it now shouldn't be controlled even though it can be harmful because it might increase costs, or it might create annoyances.

Try to apply the same argument to other industries which are regulated due to their potential harm to see how flimsy this argument is. Food could be much cheaper if there were few regulations on quality control, cars could be much cheaper if safety devices weren't required.

> Are you ok with a recession in Ad-based ecosystem (merchants, ad brokers, stock market depression, fewer IPOs) that may result due to this?

Totally ok, it will free up brilliant minds working on this to figure out new, and potentially better ways that fit into a more privacy-focused regulatory framework.

> Edit : Expected nothing better than downvotes from massively brainwashed HNers with ZERO independent thinking. The irony isn't lost that they are the 84% ers

Refrain from this bullshit here.

Lobbyists are there to maximize the profits of whoever hires them, not to care about general population. Nobody will care about general population except for themselves.

> Lobbyists are there to remind you of the costs and prevent from populism destroying civilizations

What? We have different views on lobbyism. I think it should be forbidden for companies to lobby

You are always welcome to go stay in a country where there are no lobbyists

We are also welcome to advocate for banning lobbying in the country we're in, because it has clearly-demonstrated detrimental effects on our daily lives and our democracy.

Funny how that works.

> Are you ok being more annoyed with popups asking your permissions every time?

No, I’m really not. The EU regulation that caused every site to have a stupid cookie pop-up/banner has made the Web a significantly poorer experience.

I would like to remind people that the main European Union site ( https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en ) has a cookie popup as well as the site for European Commission for Data Protection https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection_e...

If this is the way that the flagship sites for the EU are going to do it and show how to be in compliance with the law, any other approach is too risky to implement.

Disagree, every time I use a EU proxy, I feel like a first-class citizen who has a privilege to opt-out. For comparison, other citizens only have the "agree" button.

I don’t like pop-ups, regardless of the sort. There should be browser support for global opt-out or opt-in.

The cookies popup at least made aware to a lot of people that over 800 companies want to access your data if you visit a site.