>Is it really true that collecting only anonymous, stateless data has the same value as stateful, identifiable data?
Value to whom?
>What kind of insights do we lose? Is it simply just advertisers who lose, or will we also lose other things?
Who is "we"? Who gets to collect that data, control access to it, etc? How do they get it? Who would lose other things in the absence of that data collection?
>For example, if I can track your path around a city, wouldn’t I be able to make better predictions about traffic then if I could only track the aggregated count of locations that had been visited over the course of a time period?
Maybe, but that doesn't mean I want you tracking me.
Value to whom?
>What kind of insights do we lose? Is it simply just advertisers who lose, or will we also lose other things?
Who is "we"? Who gets to collect that data, control access to it, etc? How do they get it? Who would lose other things in the absence of that data collection?
>For example, if I can track your path around a city, wouldn’t I be able to make better predictions about traffic then if I could only track the aggregated count of locations that had been visited over the course of a time period?
Maybe, but that doesn't mean I want you tracking me.