> Personalized advertising should never have been allowed without a specific opt-in.
As a thought experiment, let's go back to the time when the internet existed, adds existed, but targeted adds were in their infancy. Now let's imagine they were launched as some sort of op-in Google BETA this in early 0s fashion.
Assuming, for a moment that the targeting quality was on part — would that have been a success? Ie. would the user adoption have been significantly higher Apple's Tracking Transparancy Policy? (Considering that consent was involved before distrust accumulated in the following decades as result of forcefully surveiling, fingerprinting, third-party cookiea, facebook shenanigans, appstore malware, supercookies, etc.)
Early 0s? Presumably not since at the time, doubleclick (now Google) had the same reputation Google has now. At the time, adware and spyware were malware, and there was an industry around anti-malware tools like adaware and spybot: search and destroy. Among other things, IIRC those tools would delete your doubleclick cookies. The distrust was immediate, and if anything people have given up and grown used to malware being part of the OS now.
I don't think it would have been this "successful," but remember how long ago Facebook came out. In 2004, if someone had said something on the internet could "magically" surface all the stuff you really might be interested in, just by opting in and clicking a button? And it had worked really well? I think tons of people would have opted in.
Back then, before smartphones, before carrying a device in your pocket that can track your every move, it wouldn't have seemed nearly as creepy.
It's actually kind of amusing to me that Apple is the one acting like it's protecting people's data. Without Apple's invention of the iPhone, which doesn't have to be built to collect as much data about its use as it does, there wouldn't be nearly as much data for these apps to collect!
Apple conveniently takes the public stance of user protection, but their real position is that they want to be the only ones who can collect and use their users data.
As a thought experiment, let's go back to the time when the internet existed, adds existed, but targeted adds were in their infancy. Now let's imagine they were launched as some sort of op-in Google BETA this in early 0s fashion.
Assuming, for a moment that the targeting quality was on part — would that have been a success? Ie. would the user adoption have been significantly higher Apple's Tracking Transparancy Policy? (Considering that consent was involved before distrust accumulated in the following decades as result of forcefully surveiling, fingerprinting, third-party cookiea, facebook shenanigans, appstore malware, supercookies, etc.)