When companies like Facebook, Google and other successful tech companies first start they’re worried about building a company based around their original idea and begin to worry about monetization later. Things like building a better search engine or creating a social network sound like good ideas. However as these companies turn towards ways to monetize the original good idea it seems inevitable that most turn to advertising.

A dominant driver behind many of the privacy-destroying activities on the web (tracking etc.) seems to be the need to monetize web services and websites, primarily through targeted advertising. If advertising hadn’t become the primary way that websites generate income do you think that the level of tracking that has become the norm would have become as extensive? Google and Facebook may be amongst the worst offenders when it comes to tracking but there doesn’t seem to be anything inherently nefarious behind their founding ideas.

While the government’s motivation to track citizens is a very thing from a company’s desire to make money the outcome is the same with respect to tracking. Apart from an outright ban on companies or the government engaging in tracking activities do you think if there were a way for companies to evolve their business models, through more reliance on subscription-based users etc., away from the reliance on advertising – thus the need to track users – that tracking of users by companies would begin to abate?

-- JohnStewart - 05 Dec 2012