I think the key problem with the tracking is awareness and understanding. Yes, for us in the tech industry this all is logical and we can generally tell if a service will track you or not. For people outside the industry it isn't. Next to that, I think tracking is a really hard concept to grasp for a lot of people.
People see google, see gmail, see Facebook, everybody uses and it all seems free. There are some ads when Googling but that is it. Do you think most people actually spend time thinking about how they make their money? I don't think so. Until everything gets in the news, people are being told that their data is being stored, leaked, tracked and everything. That's when people start complaining.
What could we have done about this? Beats me. If services like Google added a message asking 'We need you data to make a living, can we track you?', would they still have been this big? Probably not. If Facebook asked you to agree to 'We will store and sell the information that you give is', would Facebook be this big? Probably not. Would the user be complaining about tracking? No, but probably about something else like the number of ads, the price of subscriptions or the lack of free services.
I actually haven't spent much time thinking about the subject from those people's points of view, perhaps because my parents (who definitely aren't tech savvy) just say "I don't care if they track me, I'm using their stuff for free".
I'm also not sure about what could be done to avoid the confusion people have, I understand that they're making it as hard as possible to disable all the tracking because they want to make money, but it definitely causes some issues with users.
I think currently nobody knows what can be done to avoid the confusion, without dropping to much functionality or losing a lot of income. Although I expect there will be a shift in this area in the coming months / years. I expect companies to become more transparent about this and users given more choices as how to use the services. But only time will tell if I'm right on that one.
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I think the key problem with the tracking is awareness and understanding. Yes, for us in the tech industry this all is logical and we can generally tell if a service will track you or not. For people outside the industry it isn't. Next to that, I think tracking is a really hard concept to grasp for a lot of people.
People see google, see gmail, see Facebook, everybody uses and it all seems free. There are some ads when Googling but that is it. Do you think most people actually spend time thinking about how they make their money? I don't think so. Until everything gets in the news, people are being told that their data is being stored, leaked, tracked and everything. That's when people start complaining.
What could we have done about this? Beats me. If services like Google added a message asking 'We need you data to make a living, can we track you?', would they still have been this big? Probably not. If Facebook asked you to agree to 'We will store and sell the information that you give is', would Facebook be this big? Probably not. Would the user be complaining about tracking? No, but probably about something else like the number of ads, the price of subscriptions or the lack of free services.
I actually haven't spent much time thinking about the subject from those people's points of view, perhaps because my parents (who definitely aren't tech savvy) just say "I don't care if they track me, I'm using their stuff for free".
I'm also not sure about what could be done to avoid the confusion people have, I understand that they're making it as hard as possible to disable all the tracking because they want to make money, but it definitely causes some issues with users.
I think currently nobody knows what can be done to avoid the confusion, without dropping to much functionality or losing a lot of income. Although I expect there will be a shift in this area in the coming months / years. I expect companies to become more transparent about this and users given more choices as how to use the services. But only time will tell if I'm right on that one.