The ad industry says that Do Not Track will
destroy the free Internet. We love the Internet and would be pretty upset if it died, so we looked deeper into this claim.
Advertisers make this argument all the time, and it goes something like
this comment from Linda Woolley, executive vice president of government affairs at the Direct Marketing Association: “If you get rid of [personal data collection], you kill the Internet. It’s just that simple.” Advertisers claim that all the content you see online can only exist because tracking-based advertising funds it.