We have almost all the technology. What we don't have is verifiability in most cases. i.e. the real problem is that the publisher cannot determine that the User Agent is telling the truth. Everyone has a different value on the value of their data. For instance, I find great targeted advertising to be practically like a recommendation engine. Instagram's ads are great! And few of them relate to things I've done on Instagram or Facebook. They're clearly 3rd party.
If we can find a way to ensure that the User Agent isn't lying (this may not be easy), then I could trade my data for a discount on the WSJ instead of paying full price and you could pay for the WSJ at full price and share nothing about yourself.
I think the truth is that most people will pick the discount, but that's because I would. I think that's a fair exchange and very open and clear. You can opt-in.
Once upon a time, cable didn't have ads, because theoretically it got money from cable subscribers. Then they realized they could have subscribers and ads and make even more money.
The vast majority of sites don't treat "paying subscriber" and "sell information" as an either-or. They treat paying subscribers as people they get money and more information from.
Also, there's a third option: keep improving ad-blocker-blockers, so that they don't just block ads, they also block "we see you're using an ad blocker" messages.
Almost everything is fake-able outside of Google chrome exposing an IDFA (verified against google account data that is hard to fake) I don't see something currently possible that would be as fraud proof.
My guess though is that the same people who cry foul about 3rd party tracking I'm sure would be just as mad about this + now monopoly gripes.
If we can find a way to ensure that the User Agent isn't lying (this may not be easy), then I could trade my data for a discount on the WSJ instead of paying full price and you could pay for the WSJ at full price and share nothing about yourself.
I think the truth is that most people will pick the discount, but that's because I would. I think that's a fair exchange and very open and clear. You can opt-in.