I've often said that I wouldn't mind corps skimming my data, IF they gave me a cut. But they don't, and that's why I'm on Lemmy, Pixelfed, support FOSS, use script blockers, and other methods to minimize my exposure to them, and yet still participate is this lovely intarweb we've created.

Wow, that's much higher than I expected honestly. Figured it was maybe half or a third of that.

That doesn’t include the income you generate for other ad tech companies, data brokers, internet service providers, dark web marketplaces...

How are my activities on the dark web valuable if I'm anonymous?

Getting people to attach a(ny) value to it is the biggest hurdle by far. I think the complacent attitude is part genuine incapacity in dealing with abstraction (what is a data profile anyway? How is knowledge of my purchase history a risk to me?) and part exceptionalism/denial. People like this tend never to think in terms of power dynamics.

Your data is valuable. And that’s exactly why you should keep it safe by using privacy-focused services.

Not by using privacy-focused services, but by not letting the data to reside on others' hard disk.