I think this is quite tricky to pin down. For example, consider an e-commerce site like Amazon. They know your purchase history, reviews you've given or liked, and products you've viewed or put in your shopping cart but not purchased. Which information about your history would they be allowed to use to show you products you might be interested in buying?
They also have lots of information about users in aggregate ("people who bought this also bought x") which they got by collecting data about their users. Can they use this?
Personally, I'm not bothered by Amazon doing this on their site when I'm there, and I even disable my adblocker on Amazon but limited to Amazon because I'm there to buy a product or service. Advertising at me if it doesn't get in the way of that quest is appropriate there.
Covering my entire webpage I'm trying to research something else at with a full-page Amazon ad for a product I already bought just because I expressed interest in that product by buying it is not okay. Thus, I block all ads elsewhere to avoid that sorta thing.
Works pretty well for me, but it's sad I should have to jump through as many hoops as I have to to avoid such crapware being forced upon me. Ads I'm not wanting literally steal a portion of my allotted bandwidth and give me less than zero value in return. Perhaps advertisers should start paying us for our valuable time, attention, and bandwidth?
> Personally, I'm not bothered by Amazon doing this on their site when I'm there
You may not be, but this is within what they cover in the report Vivaldi is recommending: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/202... (it's a good read, and there are a lot of things they object to even with only first-party tracking)
> Perhaps advertisers should start paying us for our valuable time, attention, and bandwidth?
They don't pay you directly, but they pay the site you're visiting, and in most cases that's why the site is able to afford to create the content you're reading and show it to you for free.
> …"<link to pdf report> (it's a good read, and there are a lot of things they object to even with only first-party tracking)"
Edit: It is a sorta good read… Just be nice if these sorta situations could more easily find some kinda valid balance instead of always escalating outta control to both extremes until laws have to get made… Lawmakers are rarely to be trusted to get these sorts of situations right anymore…
I've been using the Internet and networks long enough to understand how this stuff works. There's a certain degree of tracking that is literally unavoidable (without semi-extreme measures like TOR for one example at least) simply by the nature of how networks work. I know that by using any service online at all, I'm necessarily parting with some data about myself. Any data that's collected in that transactional networking sense I'm kinda largely okay with because it's just part of how things work by their very nature.
The stuff that bothers me is the excess of spyware, hundreds of kilobytes of tracking scripts, invisible pixels, browser fingerprinting, and other shady junk that's been bolted on by advertisers with no concern whatsoever for any harm it may bring to the network, the consumers, or often even themselves, as long as they make enough to cover the costs and make a profit. I understand the logic of it, but I don't necessarily agree with it in many cases. For me it's really all about how respectfully the entire situation is handled. Advertise at me in respectful ways, you probably don't get blocked (at least by me). Abuse me in any way, and I tend to get uppity with my adblocker and start thinkin' hard if I even need your site or service at all.
> "They don't pay you directly, but they pay the site you're visiting, and in most cases that's why the site is able to afford to create the content you're reading and show it to you for free."
See, the sites that aren't abusive with their advertising though actually find their way out of my adblocker for that exact reason. Because I'm fine with them making money ethically. Sites/services that implement abusive advertising practices not only get the ads blocked, but often get themselves blocked out of my "sites of interest". ;)
Maybe not by default, but if they asked the users and explained what is this used for, it is likely users would say yes to the use case you described as it objectively improves their user experience when using Amazon (granted, ads/recommendations would need to be meaningful and designed in a way to actually improve the experience of the average user with a way to completely turn them off for a user who doesn't want it).
Problem is when a company use data that the user did not explicitly opt-into sharing with them, to then diminish their user experience of consuming the web by for example stuffing tons of targeted ads on every major site on the web, leading to barely usable sites and intelligence insulting outcomes.
They also have lots of information about users in aggregate ("people who bought this also bought x") which they got by collecting data about their users. Can they use this?