Ban personalized and cohort-based advertisements

Modern advertisement landscape very much lives through the tracking and hoarding and storing of private data such as browsing history, app activity, and other behavioral data.

This data is so valuable to advertisers and ad networks, they will do almost anything to squeeze the last drop of data from people visiting websites and applications, in order to have the "best knowledge" on how to display the most "relevant" advert to the user in various places.

What this creates in an unhealthy ecosystem where users are abused and where all their movements are tracked very precisely, only to make selling advertisements easier.

My idea would be to outright ban adverts that are based on personal data (e.g. browsing history, previous purchases, etc.) or cohort data (users such as myself and similar to me who visit similar websites, etc.).

This ban would largely dissolve the perverse tracking and data hoarding ecosystem created by the modern advertisement industry, and would help everyone move towards healthier alternatives when it comes to advertising.

More work needs to be done to define what defines an advertisement, in order to spot holes that advertisers might come up with, for instance saying that an element on a web page is merely an announcement, not an advertisement. Similarly personalized direct marketing should be reviewed in terms of being opt-in, and not being subscribed by default.

Current situation where users are incentivized to take the easiest route to skip with advertiser preferences as the default enabled option is not good enough. Users are still being tricked to offering their personal data to advertisers due to dark patterns and confusing language.

A ban on the output of the data being collected with questionable means and goals would be an effective measure to make a clear statement that we care about our citizens and their privacy and safety.