EU ruling: tracking-based advertising [...] across Europe has no legal basis

Critique of personalized tracking ads

• Many see “personalized” ads as benefitting only ad networks: users lose privacy and attention, advertisers lose money in opaque auctions.
• Common complaint: retargeting keeps pushing products already bought (cars, fridges), indicating crude signals and poor algorithms.
• Some argue the real purpose is demographic and class segmentation (e.g. cheap vs luxury gyms), not user benefit.
• Others describe the whole ecosystem as “surveillance capitalism” that worsens products (tracking in OSes, TVs, appliances).

Contextual advertising as an alternative

• Several comments argue context-based ads (e.g. car ads on car pages) worked well for decades and respect privacy.
• Google’s early success with search ads is cited as context/intent-based done right—though some dislike that these ads masquerade as “solutions”.
• A worry: many modern sites have little real content/context and exist just to host ads; killing tracking could kill these sites, which many view as a net positive.

Effectiveness and economic debate

• One side cites huge “economic activity” figures from ad platforms as proof personalization works.
• Others counter that:
  • Industry self-studies aren’t credible.
  • Much spend is an arms race that mainly enriches platforms (broken-window analogy).
  • Targeted ads often underperform no-targeting; contextual could capture most value without tracking.
• Advertisers are seen as locked-in: big platforms steadily remove manual controls and push auto-optimized, black-box campaigns with dubious ROI.

Details and impact of the EU ruling

• The case targets the consent framework behind cookie popups and RTB, not ads per se.
• Court found that identifiers (TC strings) combined with IP etc. constitute personal data and that past data collection via this system lacked valid consent, so data should be deleted.
• The main fine (~250k€ for ~600 companies) is viewed as tiny “cost of doing business”, but the legal precedent is seen as important and fines are expected to escalate for repeat offences.
• Some describe EU enforcement culture as: clarify law, give warnings, then hit hard; others say in practice it’s slow, easy to stall, and small actors can be hurt more than giants.

Cookie banners, “legitimate interest”, and dark patterns

• Many blame industry groups for weaponizing GDPR via manipulative consent popups and broad “legitimate interest” claims (hundreds of vendors toggled by default).
• Hope: this ruling will undermine those popups and the idea that you can “cookie-banner your way” into mass tracking.
• Concern: sites increasingly force a choice between paying money or paying with data, which some say conflicts with GDPR’s ban on making personal data a condition of access.

Privacy philosophy, data as liability, and regulation

• Strong current: data should be “radioactive” — collected minimally, treated as a liability, and deleted ASAP.
• Others argue fully treating data this way is unrealistic and could disadvantage jurisdictions that restrict data while others don’t, especially for AI/LLMs.
• GDPR is seen by some as well-designed (privacy-by-default, proportional fines, cooperative regulators); others highlight loopholes (state exemptions, slow cases, “legitimate interest” abuse).

Consequences for users, businesses, and EU tech

• Some fear this means “ad-supported tech can’t grow in Europe”; many rebut that:
  • Ad-supported models are still legal; what’s banned is tracking without proper consent.
  • Contextual ads and non-ad business models remain viable.
• Skepticism is high that major platforms will voluntarily delete historic data; expectation is more legal battles, slow incremental pressure, and possibly even more explicit but still manipulative consent flows.
• Broad sentiment in the thread favors stricter limits on tracking, even if it kills some current business models; if a company “needs” pervasive tracking to exist, many argue it shouldn’t.