Web Analytics and privacy seem to be the buzzword theme for people to blog about. I get it, there is lots of interest in this area since some companies have been clearly taking the mick on this front. However, it seems to me, lots of people are just going on their high horse for nothing. This blog post has a postscript about paying users for the info, on this subject someone tried to sue Google for using captcha for machine learning training. The judge said it was ridicous idea to expect to get paid for 2 seconds worth of work and we wouldn't expect it in person.
At this point in the internet, with the amount of public scandals about data and data collection there has to be some level of awareness of what happens when you go onto a website. The whole informed consent is craziness which we wouldn't apply to any other industry. We don't have informed consent for tracking that happens by supermarkets. We don't have informed consent for the public CCTV systems. Why? Because the reality is, no one cares expect those few that inform themselves.
This informed consent nonsense created the cookie banner hassle, seriously I hate that law as a user but not as the person implementing. Implementing it is super easy and done once. As a user, I need to click yes on so many sites it's unreal. And the cookie banner law is basically unenforcable. So people like this author are literally just making the internet worse and not better.
Informed consent is the talk of someone who wants to sound right but not make a difference. The real difference is in the processing of data and that is where GDPR really comes into play, it makes dealing with data something you're now careful about. GDPR as a consumer I love it (except the extra banners), as someone who has to implement it, I hate it. And that is how a data law should be. Easy for the consumer hard for the companies.