I'm not asking you to only have opinions that are commonly held by everybody you know. I'm asking you whether you've talked to your family/roommates about your opinions.

If you haven't, then that means that you've ignored an opportunity to discover a different viewpoint. It means that you'd make a unilateral decision without even thinking about the other people it will affect. It means you didn't give them even an opportunity to change your mind or change their living situation beforehand. It means you're marginalizing their opinion or viewpoint and perpetuating the aloneness that people can feel despite living together.

I posed a question in a public forum of generally thoughtful people to figure out what I’m missing and why I should be worried. I am literally asking for other viewpoints because it’s clear that people disagree and I want to understand why.

I see. Then let me give you some anecdotes from myself and friends.

For me, I see that tracking me and putting me in groups gives you power over me. It means that you have the ability to try to influence me without my knowledge (let alone consent). And where there's ability there will be people who will use it. And they will use it for whatever they want. Case in point: "democracy". Until and unless someone can demonstrably prove that tracking me does not provide that ability to literally buy votes, I believe it to be completely unethical to have pervasive tracking.

Further, many business track exactly how I interact with their applications. How that tracking gets used is extremely... opaque. All of the telemetry in the world are worthless compared to simply asking why I did something. Why did I move the window? Why did I click here? Why did I choose to backspace my entire message to my friend?

But all of that telemetry needs to pay for itself. So you get data scientists unethically mining it to figure out what drives me. Often enough they either come up with an incorrect conclusion or else lump me in with outliers and stop caring about me. Or worse.

I didn't ask for free software. It's just extremely popular. Many of the software titles and services that I paid for have subsequently transitioned either to a free model (where my activity is clearly sold to the highest bidder -- or even multiple bidders) or the company is unethically double-dipping by accepting a subscription and still selling that data.

I pay for internet services. What gives companies the right to mine me and my data? I pay for products I purchase. What gives companies the right to monitor me? If you want my information, then pay me for my information. It's obviously valuable.

That's just my opinions. What about my friends?

One friend in particular has been a victim of stalking. They have ex-lovers, ex-friends, ex-family who try very hard to get this friend back into their life, to control what they do and how. There's strong and specific reasons those people were cut out from my friend's life in the first place. If I were to say "fukkit, I don't care if people track me", then I would literally place my friends in danger merely because I meet with them.

Because I meet with them, and because I am a known friend, and because tracking me therefore means tracking my friend too. Suddenly my friend can be found, again, by very nasty people who want to emotionally and physically harm.

That's just one friend's life situation. How about another?

I have another friend. We live in America where mental health is unfortunately swept under the rug and ignored. This friend does not behave well around other people. This friend is very shy and doesn't like to talk a lot or especially about emotions. But they get physically ill when they realize someone they cared about did something which could harm them. Not just harm them physically but, because they're poor, harm them financially, and that's to ignore the emotional pain that comes too.

That's just the viewpoints. That is, that's just the myself and people around me who could be affected by things that are used in tracking. Let me also illuminate some of the things that are often tracked:

My username on here is inetknght. A few searches with some engines and you will find that I'm not superbly careful about my information. You might come to the conclusion that I agree with you: that I, too, choose to offer the information being used to track me. If so, you would be wrong.

Let me point out instead that small pieces of information, when tied together, provide a very grand picture, much like a puzzle. A name here, a location there, some background information somewhere else, a few comments on public forums... eventually you've built an entire profile about me with everything about me.

Sites take advantage of the fact that it is more difficult to create endless streams of pseudonyms than it is to re-use the same one over and over. People aren't very imaginative at the best of times. Could you imagine how obtuse things would be if you had to create a new name for every site you use? Imagine if you use just ten sites. That's quite a lot of information. On the other hand, if you're like me and you use the internet a lot, then there'd be a hell of a lot more permutations to keep track of. So it becomes literally impractical, if not impossible, to prevent the puzzle from being created in a way which can be solved.

Solving the puzzle, though, is very creepy. Most online sites actively remove (kick, ban, etc) people who post such comprehensive "doxxing" information. So, clearly it's unethical at the very minimum. It may also be illegal in some jurisdictions.

Now, imagine doing that in a grand scale. Someone (something, some countries) have written software to do that. Tie everything together.

Can you imagine the power behind it?

Take off your white hat for just a moment. Put on a black hat. Start thinking about all the things you wish you could do if only the law didn't prevent you. And suddenly so much of that becomes possible.

Want to show those compromising pictures of your ex? All you need to know is their phone password, email password, or computer password. 2-factor authentication got you down? Guess what, you can spoof that if it's through SMS. Want to cause a nightmare in credit problems for someone? Easy if you realize how the USPS works. Want to cause problems for a competitor? The avenues are almost limitless when you start to consider blackmail techniques: secret affairs, target family to target your hated person, or, hell, just discover that their shipping department isn't too bright and you can spear phish them and gain access to their network and cause a ruckus.

Not that I'd advocate that. But holy shit would it be easy if you've got the mindset for it. And all you need to enable it? Data. Weaponized data.

The biggest thing that holds back criminals these days is the law and simply not understanding the tech. Unfortunately the latter part is becoming less and less a thing. Just look at rampant-and-growing phone spam^H^H^H^Hfraud. Just look at rampant-and-growing identity-theft^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hbank fraud. Look at democracies being torn asunder by malicious actors.

I do have issues with companies not paying me for my data. To take information about me and to neither compensate fair value for it nor allow me control in how it is used is an injustice. I understand that you're entitled to an opinion but I certainly hope this will help you to understand some of the reasons why people disagree with you.