Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Whenever you tag a friend in a photo you to help teach our computers to recognize what your friends face looks like" That's a good simple explanation IMO. If it sounds scary, maybe it is.
It's scary to some people but not others, so is the purpose of GDPR to spur a discussion on the scope of technology and privacy tradeoffs or to actively slow the pace of personal data collection? I think there has been a lack of reasonable and measured discussion about this issue, it's very polarized as with most things.
This doesn't mean, of course, that more regulations can fix things, but I think the world is changing, possibly for the worse, while some people say we should remain calm and do nothing, because nothing unusual is happening.
Edit: I am not suggesting people are becoming less ethical than in the past "just because" - I'm suggesting information technology is letting smart people increasingly subvert norms about transparency, because once you can quantify the effect of your customers' cognitive biases, competition makes it imperative to exploit them. Even if you don't realize what you're doing, you do enough A/B testing and it's automatic, I should think.