Down with tracking!

John Gruber, “Online Privacy Should Be Modeled on Real-World Privacy”:

Just because there is now a multi-billion-dollar industry based on the abject betrayal of our #privacy doesn’t mean the sociopaths who built it have any right whatsoever to continue getting away with it. They talk in circles but their argument boils down to entitlement: they think our privacy is theirs for the taking because they’ve been getting away with taking it without our knowledge, and it is valuable.

I have always considered myself a moderate on privacy issues, about half way between the cute naiveté of “couldn’t care less” and the exhausting hypervigilance of “couldn’t care more.” But I completely agree with this, and I think booting these tracking technologies off my iPhone would be the first really meaningful upgrade to iOS in years. And it actually seems to be coming — later than I would like, but very much better late than never.