What is this new online push against anonymity?

[Chip]

What's the deal? It's just simple greed. The most valuable resource on the planet right now is information - advertisers will gladly pay approximately all the money to get their hands on personal info, so any company that can accumulate said info stands to make a fortune. Hence Google, Facebook, and other Internet powerhouses making such a strong push to get you to register anything and everything with them. It is quite literally a gold rush for your life details.

Who's behind the push? The advertisers. Again: they are the ones paying insane amounts of money for personal data. The reason they want it is because the more "targeted" and custom-tailored they can make their ads, the higher your probability of buying from them (or so they think). But in order to make their ads more targeted they have to know their audience. Since none of us are willing to sit down and be personally interrogated by an ad agency every day, the next best thing is to buy up all of our personal info from the aforementioned Big Data companies like Google and Facebook.

Do you care...? Yes, I care a lot. I make a very deliberate push to keep my personal info safe. As to whether or not the general population cares I don't really know.... but I doubt it. These companies were able to get this big and invasive because their methods work: on the whole people don't care about giving away every shred of privacy as long as they get free stuff in return.