Comment by dpoloncsak

So I go to Costco and buy wine, and next week I get a letter from DMV reminding me of the blood alcohol requirements, I get people visit home selling wine glasses, when I go to work someone hands me the best of wines coffee table book, and so on.

Ok but you say - It is not this overt online - well if we live digital life, lot of things are not overt, but we know we need to clean cookies, some of us create containers, some of us use TOR, so the sensibilities in digital are different than real life, and I am showing pretty much equivalent examples / metaphors if the same level of intrusiveness was there in real life.

Costco membership is more like voluntarily accepting cookies.

Even more than that, it’s purchasing a membership that requires authentication when you use the store.

(I get the idea)

Costco is much more like the Joe's Corner Market. I'm only dealing with Costco. It is a bit more invasive than Joe's Corner Market, but I'll admit that I have much more trust for Costco given their history. Like Joe, Costco isn't following me around the store, unless I explicitly ask for their help finding something. They similarly won't follow me outside unless I'm explicitly asking for something like a delivery or some other service. It is always explicit and I'm always aware that I'm being "watched".

But the key difference is that Costco isn't sharing that data with Walmart, Facebook, and others. There is some tracking and I definitely don't like that, but there's a huge difference in going to Costco.com vs Facebook.com or even Google.com. Heading to Costco.com uBlock hits me with 9 blocks. Heading to google.com I get 17 and then it is constantly rising. In the time to write these few sentences it has already hit 30. Meanwhile, costco is still at 9. I mean I'm literally on google.com sitting and staring at a search page doing nothing. There's a much more aggressive and invasive attitude here.

Mind you, nuance and intent matter very much. Without them we wouldn't be able to differentiate a partner you live with and a stalker. Similarly expectations of trust. I'm glad you're asking the question of getting the steelman and pressing, but we must make it clear that if we're going to brush away detail and be dismissive of the nuances then we are contriving an environment where we would be unable to differentiate these things. But again, the consequences of that contrived setting is that we would not be able to differentiate someone's husband/wife from a stalker. And that result is beyond laughable. So maybe the better question is to ask where these lines are drawn. I'm not sure there's an easy answer, but I'm certain it is important.

> Doesn't your (proverbial) Costco membership card track every time you enter and leave the store

No (you have to use it at the register for Costco to know you were there),

and they don't track your every movement in store either,

and they don't track your every movement outside the store either,

and there isn't a standard way to say "I don't want this" which they nonetheless choose to ignore.