I don't understand why people hate ads so much when it makes so many products available for free. I know many would gladly pay but its not realistic to pay for every site and every service.
Think about the forums you visit once because it had an answer to a question you googled. Now imagine if that site wasn't able to make money off ads it served you. Chances are it couldn't exist.
Ad tracking is good for the community because it helps the sites we use everyday make more money. I want those sites to make money so they will continue to exist. If we use a site, the operator of the site should make money.
There must be a certain sweet spot between tracking a user's browser history and having zero targeting in advertising. A niche community or site has things simple -- they need to get direct advertising from businesses in their field. A more generic web service (like Facebook) could use only the data a user explicitly provides on their profile. A site with wide ranges of content could use contextual advertising. All of these options only use data that's already available on a company's servers, and do not require tapping into browser histories through tracking cookies. The main problem with tracking is its implicit nature -- most people don't realize just how much their browsing history reveals about them, but they do understand the information they explicitly reveal on Facebook or Twitter.
I don't buy it. You act like things didn't exist before internet advertising. Usenet and forums existed and thrived for a long time before people started trying to show ads. I couldn't care less if the whole internet ad based economy caves in on itself (not that I think it ever would--advertisers will always find a way). We'd be left with people doing stuff for the sake of doing it and that won't be a bad place. Possibly not as polished, but I'll get over that.
Think about the forums you visit once because it had an answer to a question you googled. Now imagine if that site wasn't able to make money off ads it served you. Chances are it couldn't exist.
Ad tracking is good for the community because it helps the sites we use everyday make more money. I want those sites to make money so they will continue to exist. If we use a site, the operator of the site should make money.