> I'm not interested in theoretical arguments contradicting easily verifiable facts that are phrased as false dilemmas.
Theoretical arguments apply to things that aren't happening. This is happening right now.
False dilemmas imply that there is a choice presented as binary which really has more than two alternatives. Since Google is being fined billions of dollars, one option is that they knew ahead of time what would cause that to happen and did it anyway, the other is that they failed to predict that their conduct would have that result. What is your proposed third alternative?
> I don't know -- Google doesn't let me access them without logging in. Nor do I care. It definitely doesn't let you turn off the data collection that Google forces you to "consent" too.
How do you know if you don't know?
Tracking preferences are state. They have to be attached to something in order to be applied to it. What do you propose they use to assign your tracking preferences to you, if not an account?
> The services currently funded with corporate propaganda are instead funded in a saner way. Ideally the public funds it, but even charging people individually makes more sense than ads.
Both of those options are already available. You could have your government fund competing services or pay for them yourself right now, or ten years ago, or at any point in the future.
> However, other goods and services become slightly cheaper because their producers and providers don't spend as much on advertising.
This is plausible, but then why all the indirection? Pass a law expressly prohibiting targeted advertising.
Note that there is a counterargument however. If advertising is less effective, companies will still pay for it but attract fewer new customers to the industry and correspondingly sustain fewer competitors and sell fewer units to amortize fixed costs over, and it becomes more difficult for new competitors to gain customers, which reduces competition and raises retail prices per unit.
It's not clear which of these is the case and it's probably a different result for different industries.
You ignore half of what I write, instead you keep asking the same questions again and again. You ask inane questions such as why I prefer not to donate to Google. I have no idea why someone arguing in good faith would act like this. You clearly don't have the slightest clue about the contents of the GDPR or European law in general. Please educate yourself. This discussion is over.
Theoretical arguments apply to things that aren't happening. This is happening right now.
False dilemmas imply that there is a choice presented as binary which really has more than two alternatives. Since Google is being fined billions of dollars, one option is that they knew ahead of time what would cause that to happen and did it anyway, the other is that they failed to predict that their conduct would have that result. What is your proposed third alternative?
> I don't know -- Google doesn't let me access them without logging in. Nor do I care. It definitely doesn't let you turn off the data collection that Google forces you to "consent" too.
How do you know if you don't know?
Tracking preferences are state. They have to be attached to something in order to be applied to it. What do you propose they use to assign your tracking preferences to you, if not an account?
> The services currently funded with corporate propaganda are instead funded in a saner way. Ideally the public funds it, but even charging people individually makes more sense than ads.
Both of those options are already available. You could have your government fund competing services or pay for them yourself right now, or ten years ago, or at any point in the future.
> However, other goods and services become slightly cheaper because their producers and providers don't spend as much on advertising.
This is plausible, but then why all the indirection? Pass a law expressly prohibiting targeted advertising.
Note that there is a counterargument however. If advertising is less effective, companies will still pay for it but attract fewer new customers to the industry and correspondingly sustain fewer competitors and sell fewer units to amortize fixed costs over, and it becomes more difficult for new competitors to gain customers, which reduces competition and raises retail prices per unit.
It's not clear which of these is the case and it's probably a different result for different industries.