Your money or your cookies!
The dilemma has never been clearer: from the moment Google decided to eliminate third party cookies that allowed our data, habits and interests to be marketed immediately to thousands of companies, just about every website demands that we allow cookies; otherwise, pay up.
What are they trying to tell us? Facebook users should know that there are more than 48,000 companies telling Meta about everything you do: what you read, your interests, where you go, what time leave home and return home, your political views, what products or services you are interested in, your health, your social class, your religion, your sexual or political preferences … everything you can, or can’t imagine. Everything. Tens of thousands of nasty companies constantly spying on you and trafficking your data.
What’s more, this mess is down to our own stupidity: something so obviously a gross violation of our privacy that it defies understanding as to why it isn’t illegal. In the meantime, a growing number of websites are now cashing in: either you agree to be a part of this sinister system, or we’ll charge you. Your money or your cookies.
Let’s look a little closer at that blackmail: what we’re really being told is that either we surrender our privacy, or we will have to pay. Does that make sense, considering that our privacy should, in any civilized country, be protected by law simply because it is a fundamental right? Shouldn’t it be forbidden to demand that someone give up a fundamental right and threaten them with payment if they don’t?
To which some might answer: but how are websites supposed to make money otherwise? Don’t be taken in by that kind of warped reasoning. Websites can make money with advertising in the same way media traditionally have: by accepting that whoever visits them has a certain profile that will attract certain products and services. Generic ads, like those on the radio, television or in the press, which don’t involve spying on their users. But of course, greed leads some content providers to want more, and to demand that we reveal at all costs who the hell we are, so they can store all that information linked to our profile. Why? To make money.
To which some might counter, well they should pay more… BUT IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL, because I am being forced to give up my fundamental right to privacy. And by doing what they are doing, these websites are collaborating with a disgusting, indecent activity that generates an industry that should never have come into being in the first place. But they don’t care: all they want is to keep their business model above all else, even if in reality their behavior only contributes to enriching those companies.
Just because technology makes something possible doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea, and the proof is here. We’ve turned the web into a market where our privacy is traded. If a site asks you to accept cookies or pay, DON’T PAY. Leave the page: you will find other more decent sites that will provide you with what you’re looking for without trying to force you to give up a fundamental right. Or subscribe if you want, which is a valid business model; but then, force them to assure you and prove that they are not going to sell your data to anyone. They can’t have the penny and the bun.
As consumers, we have to show websites that there are other ways to advertise and make money without having to give up our privacy. We cannot accept thousands of companies making money from an obscene business just because some pages have gotten used to this model. Break with this perverse system and tell them to stick their cookies where the sun doesn’t shine.
(En español, aquí)