This is unsustainable. It requires constant vigilance and turns the privacy matter into a cat and mouse game where we are constantly one step behind the worst actors. These systems exist everywhere in the world and they’re fundamentally inefficient. E.g. recycling, or “please bring your own plastic bag”, which relies on goodwill.
Compare to a system where you fix the incentives to automatically align everyone’s interests: e.g. bottle deposits, or a small fee for plastic bags. Now people will want to do the right thing, because it is aligned with their own interests.
The same holds here: fix this one instance with enough outrage, there will be a thousand more. Instead, let’s fix the misaligned incentives between app builders and users, so their invasion of my privacy costs them as much as it does me (e.g. GDPR).
This is how you make efficient markets: align incentives. Fixing everything on a case by case basis only provides temporary relief.
[edit: note that OP never said "don't do it", they just said "it's missing the point". which I think is a fair call. this one fix is good, but it's unsustainable.]
I guess your point is that fixing this one transgression is the equivalent of one store implementing that rule, and if we fix more of them eventually it’s a law, making it but the first step on the journey to sustainable privacy?
It isn’t. This is recycling one bottle. It doesn’t have any sustainable long lasting effect.
To stretch the metaphor, the equivalent of one store asking for deposits would be e.g. Apple requiring full disclosure of all such tracking SDKs on the App Store page, as suggested by someone else in this thread. That’s sustainable, scalable, and that’s what might eventually even lead to legislation, as you pointed out.
Compare to a system where you fix the incentives to automatically align everyone’s interests: e.g. bottle deposits, or a small fee for plastic bags. Now people will want to do the right thing, because it is aligned with their own interests.
The same holds here: fix this one instance with enough outrage, there will be a thousand more. Instead, let’s fix the misaligned incentives between app builders and users, so their invasion of my privacy costs them as much as it does me (e.g. GDPR).
This is how you make efficient markets: align incentives. Fixing everything on a case by case basis only provides temporary relief.
[edit: note that OP never said "don't do it", they just said "it's missing the point". which I think is a fair call. this one fix is good, but it's unsustainable.]