Many of us have this perception that things on the internet should be free.
When you think about it, Google Search (or other good search engines), maps, images, email, wikipedia, youtube, cricinfo etc are amazing and brilliant services that should really be charging people money.
These ads are the price we pay, and I find it hard to complain if they take a bit of my data to show me a targeted ad. I mean they were going to show me an ad regardless, so why not something relevant?
While I don't disagree with your sentiment, the problem is the pervasiveness of these big sites. Particularly FB and big brother (google).
When I go down to the pub and order a beer, the waitress does not ask me to sign a form and take note of which beer I ordered. There is things I do everyday some of which would not bother me if people knew about, other things which I consider personal/private and should only be known by a few people.
Looking at the internet, we have gone onto these platforms quite innocently and started socializing and using forums and media to interact, in an almost very similar manner to what we do in everyday life. We use it for information, studies etc. But we have probably been a bit more relaxed because we are sitting in our home, which in our minds implicitly means what we do is private, or so subconsciously we may think. Now, without much knowledge of how much information we give away everyday, we have companies literally taking note of everything. I`m not saying that they will use this information nefariously but they have the information, and we have no control over it, it exists, by the time we ever find out how it is being used it is too late.
So what happens if your boss, future employee, police, media, ex-girlfriend/wife decides that by buying/obtaining this information they can extort, embarrass just make somebodies elses life ****... where if you controlled this information, or FB/google had to ask permission in a more robust manner (not the silly terms and conditions that nobody reads!) to sell, provide etc then I would feel more comfortable. Ultimately it is purely about lack of knowledge on how much info they have, who has access to it and what rights does everybody have to control it? If all they are using it for is to target the 'Thor' trailer at me rather than the latest teen romance, no probs. Start targeting local psychologists because I am having issues with depression and used an online support group, not gonna like that.
Some interesting stuff:
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about-facebooks-manipulative-experiment/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/29/londoners-wi-fi-security-herod-clause
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...rwegians-tried-it-out/?utm_term=.84d49ab379c8