The endless cookie settings that pop up for every website feel a bit like prank compliance by a surveillance internet hell-bent on not changing. It is very annoying. And as it turns out, it doesn’t even matter what you click. Because “Real-Time Bidding,” the primary tracking-based ad system, nevertheless “broadcasts internet users’ behavior and real-world locations to thousands of companies, billions of times a day.” And the main European provider of these pestering pop-ups to Google and 80% of all websites in Europe knew it and is now in trouble. 

This fake compliance also feels a little bit like revenge on regulators by ad-driven tech, giving the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a bad name and so it might seem like political bureaucrats have once again clumsily interfered with the otherwise smooth progress of innovation.

The truth is, however, that the vision of privacy put forward by the GDPR would spur a far more exciting era of innovation than current-day sleaze-tech. As it stands today, however, it simply falls short of doing so. What is needed is an infrastructural approach with the right incentives. Let me explain.

The endless cookie settings that pop up for every website feel a bit like prank compliance by a surveillance internet hell-bent on not changing. It is very annoying. And as it turns out, it doesn’t even matter what you click. Because “Real-Time Bidding,” the primary tracking-based ad system, nevertheless “broadcasts internet users’ behavior and real-world locations to thousands of companies, billions of times a day.” And the main European provider of these pestering pop-ups to Google and 80% of all websites in Europe knew it and is now in trouble. 

This fake compliance also feels a little bit like revenge on regulators by ad-driven tech, giving the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a bad name and so it might seem like political bureaucrats have once again clumsily interfered with the otherwise smooth progress of innovation.

The truth is, however, that the vision of privacy put forward by the GDPR would spur a far more exciting era of innovation than current-day sleaze-tech. As it stands today, however, it simply falls short of doing so. What is needed is an infrastructural approach with the right incentives. Let me explain.