To be honest, the Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google of this world aren't the one that have been leaking the most personal data. It's the smaller companies and startups that have been leaking personal data at an alarming rate. What we are beginning to see now is the regulatory backlash. Regulations are inconvenient, expensive, create barriers to entry (ask bankers!). But the current pace of gathering then leaking of personal information is just unacceptable and unsustainable. Between the two evils, I am not sure I prefer the current statu quo.
Really? I find this fascinating, because people who have had PII leaked have been doxxed, physically threatened, had money stolen, their identity cloned. Lots of real world harm.
Leaked info to governments, especially in places in the world where it can mean imprisonment or death is a real issue.
Processing of PII may gave people the willies, but being annoyed by targeted ads seems like #firstworldproblems compared to people who've experienced real attacks via PII leaks.
It also creates opportunity costs for improving human society. How many human diseases could be cured if "processed" PII health data, anonymized statistics or case studies, were used by researchers freely? How much additional burden does it incur if each time this data is transferred to a sub-processor everyone must re-opt-in again?
Would a world of perfect privacy be a utopia, or a nightmare?
Yeah but they have the resources to deal with these regulations. The parent comment complains about smaller companies having to deal with these regulations.
I completely agree. This is only hurting companies which business is to track their users. Which is why I personally have very little sympathy for people complaining that we're moving their cheese.
