> Website operators have a right to study how people use their website just the same as a brick-and-mortar operator has the right to study how customers navigate their store isles.
I think reasonable people can disagree about this, and if enough reasonable people think that a web site operator should not have that "right" then they should be able to pass legislation to curtail it.
As a user, I say I should have the right to control what data is collected by what company, and what they should be allowed to do with it. I should be empowered to decide what kind of data is "essential" for a company to collect about me, not the company. Reasonable people could disagree with me, too. These are not laws of physics.
Why is this different than a brick-and-mortar to you? Do people feel they are "private" when shopping in a retail store with AI cameras tracking patterns and behavior, names and purchases collected at checkout, loyalty "discount" cards to get even more data, etc? Even without your name, they can identify you by recognition alone, aka. an anonymized cookie used to track a specific user's behavior.
Somehow people think visiting someone else's private website grants them privileges to be entirely anonymous - it does not anymore so than shopping in a physical retail store.
If we keep going down this path, websites will require a full ToS/EULA just to access the site...
For the record, I don't think brick and mortar stores should have an automatic right to surveil and study the personal information of in-person customers without their consent but I agree that ship has largely sailed.
Yes, and I'm glad I can at least now tell such sites from others. Not allowing such malicious compliance would be better, but this is still an improvement over websites stealing data with no way of telling it happens
I think reasonable people can disagree about this, and if enough reasonable people think that a web site operator should not have that "right" then they should be able to pass legislation to curtail it.
As a user, I say I should have the right to control what data is collected by what company, and what they should be allowed to do with it. I should be empowered to decide what kind of data is "essential" for a company to collect about me, not the company. Reasonable people could disagree with me, too. These are not laws of physics.