Comment by asimpletune

Better would be to make targeted advertising unprofitable. This could be done by requiring data retention to be accounted for as a liability on the balance sheet.

E.g. If a business want to run an ad in the newspaper, go for it. But if they want to follow me around on the internet and collect information on everything that I do, then they should be required to record what they collect. Congress could then vote to make laws introducing taxes on that quantity.

Once this stuff is measured then appropriate counter measures could be taken to discourage socially damaging enterprises.