I was recently web searching for the EFF tool that checks how unique your fingerprint is. During that search, I stumbled upon the URL linked below. It was such a weird experience to see all the things that privacy advocates, like people in this community, complain / warn about from the other side of the aisle: How do you prevent people from exerting their right to privacy because you have dollar signs tattooed into your eyeballs. Gave me a spooky feeling I wanted to share. This relates to my previous vent about a hostile web, specifically how it gets harder and harder to use big parts of the web that used to be free and accessible if you are privacy conscious. Companies like Abstract, together with their attention merchant customers, are responsible for that. Of course their services are not perfect but it's a cat and mouse of big corpo vs small users and a handful of non-profits.
A quote from the 2023 movie "The Pope's Exorcist" comes to mind, even though it might be a little fatalistic:
"Ah, the other two percent,” Father Amorth replies solemnly. “That is something that has confounded all of science and all of medicine for a very long time. I call it…evil." (cited via).
Link to the tracking enabling company proudly advertising their services. Take a look at their services in the attached photo and despair.
If you are relatively new to this topic, it just gets worse as you dig deeper.
In 2012 or around there, it was discovered a few months before being implemented that Google intended to use the content of your gmail account to serve you "better ads".
I was appropriately outraged, but no one cared. Even when I told them that it was tantmount to someone opening your paper mail to know what flyers to send you.
No one cared. And no one continues to care.
You can tell people all you like, but most folks just. Don't. Care. That's how they get away with it.