It’s time to ban data pimping and targeted advertising

An interesting lengthy article in Wired, “Why don’t we just ban targeted advertising?”, proposes a radical solution, but one that makes sense by attacking the problem from the bottom up: the ban wouldn’t restrict social networks’ business model — which would continue to sell access to their traffic for unsegmented advertising — or the ability of companies like Netflix or Amazon to recommend their products based on our previous purchases, but it would stop the sale of our data to third parties to follow us with their advertising.

Ending the sale of personal data could solve in one fell swoop many of the more harmful aspects of the Internet today: being swamped with ads for hotels in Rome after a search for places to stay in the Italian capital, the paranoia of those who believe that their devices are listening in to their phone calls because ads for dog food suddenly appear after a conversation talking about their mutt, the possibility of electoral or other types of manipulation, or the madness of downloading more bits in cookies designed to spy on us than those in the content itself.

Is it right that information about my interests, the news I read, the things I say I like or the contents of what I write are automatically collected by an army of mercenaries that will use them to improve the probability of me clicking on an…