The Price of Free Google Report.
Proton analyzed over 54,000 demographic profiles using 2025 ad auction data to estimate what advertisers pay to reach different types of Americans. The range is much wider than you might expect.
The average American generates about $1,605 a year in advertising value. A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, MT, without children, using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches, generates an estimated $17,929.30. An 18- to 24-year-old father in Fort Smith, AR, using an Android phone and making low-value searches, generates $31.05.
That’s a 577x difference between two people using the same free service.
How is this not about data collection? Why do you think Meta is collecting data about teens mental conditions? It's definitely not the teens that are telling Meta that they are depressed themselves. No, instead Meta spends millions on researching human psychology, just so they can come up with whatever fuckep up algorithm that will enable them to gather that data.
Back in the day, when you went to a website, you would either see ads that are somewhat related to that website, or you would see ads that are completely random. Now, thanks to data collection, advertisers can exploit your personal habits or medical conditions to exploit you. Thanks to data collection, the US government can track womans period cycles to track if they are possibly pregnant, and if they might have had an abortion.
Who do you think is going to do the regulation? The money hungry corpos? Or the same US government that is currently hunting anyone who don't agree with them?
You are fundamentally wrong about data collection being a separate issue then how that data is used. One does not exist without the other.
The point I was making was that if no data was gathered then people would have to pay for internet services such as emails, search, maps etc. That is not going to happen because people don't want to put their hands in their pockets.
Why? Advertising was a thing way before digital data collection and personalized ads was a thing. Let's imagine a current world where data collection was illegal. Do you think Google would make no money in this scenario? I am pretty sure they could still sell ads even if they were doing no personalized data collection. They could sell these ads based on where those ads could be displayed. So, instead of advertisers targeting specific demographics based on their personal data, they would instead choose what kinds of websites or search results they would like to display their ads in. Problem solved, no?
It seems like you are either too young to remember this, or maybe forgotten about it because of the norm we have been living in for so long, but internet existed way before personalized data collection, screw that, way before even Google was a thing, and we were still able to use the internet. Who do you think trained all these slop genarators if not the pre-AI small hobbyist and enthusiast websites that shared their knowledge with the rest of the world, usually for free. Hell, you are literally on a decentralized network of forums, most of which has been running by people paying for the costs themselves, or with the help of donations.
I would argue, something as essential as an email address should be a government provided service, since you can't even login to your online government services, or can't even open bank accounts without one.