We should ban collecting tons if info about people, for all companies, period. We won't, because banks and CC companies are very into doing that and the politicians love them, but we should.
As for the "improving service" angle, e.g. Netflix could ask if it's OK to collect history to improve/personalize recommendations.
And a lot of "improvements" and metrics do not really need detailed data collection per person anyway. Collecting anonymous data in broader groupings is often quite fine. E.g. "Strange Things is really popular our total-views counter says ergo order a new season". There is no need for Netflix to know exactly who specifically watched the show to make such a decision.
> It was fine.
To say that "it was better", because there was more competition.
That's a keen insight, that it might be a "generational thing". I remember things, in general, working better before the Shermann Antitrust Act stopped applying to technology companies.
If they ask for the data for that purpose, then they should only be allowed to use the data for that purpose.
This isn't true of Facebook. This isn't true of Apple. This isn't true of Amazon. This isn't true of Netflix. Google... likely they would be wounded, but it definitely wouldn't make them go out of businesses.
In my mind, that's perfectly reasonable - what I do within the boundaries of their business is our shared interaction and we both have the opportunity to make decisions based on those interactions. The major exception for Amazon is affiliate links, which, for the business i was in, weren't used as data sources.
Apple is not significantly different. Between Apple and me, who else knows our business and what does Apple know about me outside of my interactions with them (maybe more now with Apple Pay).
For the most part, Netflix is the same. Sure they know what I watch, but why does that matter if they're only using it to improve their own business and make programming choices?
Google and Facebook, on the other hand, blanket the internet with tracking beacons, read my email, keep shadow profiles (I don't have a facebook account, never have had one, but I'm sure they know more about me than I'd like), eavesdrop on conversations (I suppose Amazon is in that business now, too), track locations, steal contact data, trick people training their ML algos, etc. As is said, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.", FB and Google have far more than that and a single bad actor with access to that data could make life extremely difficult for just about anyone in the world.