I think the ideal solution is forcing companies to offer privacy focused ad-free options as a subscription, with a cost calculated from the average revenue per fully tracked/ad-riddled user, maybe plus some small premium.

Of course, this would likely receive a lot of blow-back in the form of "Looks like now you have to be rich to not get your life sold to third parties" and "Google used to be equal for all and now they are just going to prey on the most vulnerable in society"

The only way to win in this situation is for people to understand that things cost money. They probably cost more than you expect, and you probably will want your ads and tracking back once you see the true cost. After all, at the end of the day, the downside to these decades of tracking to most people has been "Damn, how does google know I buy Tide detergent!".

I had to add my two cents here because of my username... A problem I have is that Facebook spent a mint getting everyone on board, so a lot of folks I know use it. Myself being die-hard about not using Facebook has probably cost me a lot of network opportunities (also linked-in) people don't see me there and the hiring folks throw my resume to /dev/null The advice I receive is "give in". I pay for my email provider, but the only way into these walled gardens is be on the wrong side of the fence.

This is a false dichotomy: it's not a given that companies must make money out of personal data.

There are things which shouldn't be for sale, and I believe personal information is one of those.

Even though we don't have another universe to compare ours to, I believe companies started selling personal data not because people didn't want to pay for their services (since they do that even if you DO pay for them) but mainly because it is profitable. End of the story.

I am always surprised why people here attach so much humanity and conventional logic to huge international for-profit VC-backed companies: they will do literally anything if at the end of the day they come out in the green (aka profitable). Even illegal things, if the expected payout is lower than profits created.

I also believe that if literally killing people made some company $X and their analysts predict having to pay $Y to governments (with $Y substantially lower than $X) once in a while, someone would eventually decide to do that. And such a company wouldn't have trouble finding shareholders and employees.