And yet I see every single supermarket offer their own membership card "to get discounts" and everybody is happy with it. The only purpose of that card is precisely to track your purchases.
It seems to me that some people in society decided that websites aren't allowed to sell ads based on what you view, but all the other tracking in our society is just a-okay. I've not seen a single campaign or push against predatory membership cards or credit card info being sold.
Depends if you're in the EU but I guess you could've lobbied against the GDPR when it was being drafted. You could also lobby against restaurant food safety regulations, or discrimination laws. The reason these laws are there and stick around is because a majority decided that these behaviors were noxious and should be outlawed and the current majority appears to be happy enough with the current situation to not demand laws to be changed.
> every single supermarket offer their own membership card "to get discounts" and everybody is happy with it
It is opt-in (you can decide to not swipe it when buying the aforementioned fungus cream if you don't want it associated with you), the data collection is relatively common knowledge and is disclosed when you sign up for the card (and if it isn't then that's a breach of the GDPR and should be rectified).
In comparison, online data collection is at best opt-out and at worst mandatory and often invisible (and even if you could see what data is collected from your browser, you have no visibility on what further processing is done on it or to whom it gets transferred or sold).
> but all the other tracking in our society is just a-okay
Source?
> I've not seen a single campaign or push against predatory membership cards
Those are opt-in.
> or credit card info being sold.
Every time the selling of credit card info comes up on HN people speak out against it just like they do against ad tracking, and the only reason nobody else talks about it is because they most likely don't know (would a reasonable person expect their bank to be sharing their purchase info with third-parties?).
Both of these issues are addressed by the GDPR by the way; it covers much more than just ad tracking on the web.
But GDPR bars websites from doing what the stores are doing. The website can't refuse to serve you the website if you don't agree to the tracking, but membership cards work exactly like that. You only get the membership discount if you agree to the tracking. Websites aren't allowed to do that.
The store doesn't bar you from entering & shopping without a membership card. If they did, it could very well be that the GDPR would equally apply and forbid them from mandatory data collection as a prerequisite for shopping there.
The opt-in of adtech is visiting the website and the reward is the content on the website. You're the one that starts the chain of events in both cases.
>The opt-in of adtech is visiting the website and the reward is the content on the website.
No, quite clearly I've opted-in to the site's content. No body has ever knowingly navigated to a website to enjoy its advertising and tracking. (except for maybe 3-5 individuals)
>You're the one that starts the chain of events in both cases.
This is victim blaming. I started the chain of events leading to the rendering of the website content, not the ads or tracking behavior to which I would otherwise be oblivious. This is akin to saying I asked for a computer virus by purchasing this computer.
Because that society has decided that it wants no creepy restaurants at all. Same with unclean ones, discriminatory ones, etc.