Everything would be a different paradigm than we have now. Security, auth, sharing; we can only imagine how things would shift if we turned the model we have on its head. Super cookie? ISP is a private VPN proivder now.
Cookies are a good example. That browsers give up a cookie at all—who consented to this specification? GDPR could have changed browser specs so that cookies were truly opt-in; it regulates company behavior instead, which is weak.
Fundamentally, our choices are being made for us at the protocol level, and everything we have as a result is emergent, and so people argue about regulating the emergent properties.
> Reality check: ISPs sell your information. They’re pretty much the last people you should trust.
Exactly why we should regulate IP address and protocols, so that every company that handles them is beholden to the same conditions for preserving our privacy. Instead we play whack-a-mole regulating individual company behavior, while they continue to control the protocols and addresses and everything on top of those layers.
Cookies are a good example. That browsers give up a cookie at all—who consented to this specification? GDPR could have changed browser specs so that cookies were truly opt-in; it regulates company behavior instead, which is weak.
Fundamentally, our choices are being made for us at the protocol level, and everything we have as a result is emergent, and so people argue about regulating the emergent properties.