I've lost many professional friends for speaking out about something that many are afraid to say publicly. This wasn't what I envisioned for the end of my #digitalanalytics career... Ethics, in my view, are deeply personal and should not be molded by vendor claims or some marketer's agendas. #NoConsentNoTracking doesn't mean no data should be collected at all! I do believe data can be collected in ways that don't infringe on user #privacy. Yet, just like Gollum and his "precious", marketers are so focused on hoarding data that they lost sight of its profound implications. If we ask for consent, we owe it to our users to honour their choices, rather than entangling them in legal semantics. I believe when a user says "Reject All", we shouldn't turn around and collect data anyway because we've decided it was our "legitimate interest" to do so. This is the essence of ethical responsibility. Sadly, consent popups are the worse thing since the advent of the infamous BLINK tag. They serve as mere smoke screens to satisfy legal teams rather than informing users. Veiled in jargon and often misleading, they do not offer users genuine value in exchange for their data. Worse, simple audits reveal these mechanisms are flawed and badly implemented, collecting data regardless of user choices. You can go ahead and give me examples of "yes, but..." as much as you want. What matter is what your customers will think when they find out the details about your data and #marketing practice. Not what I think. Not what you think. #digitalmarketing #dataethics