Tech companies made it "inconvenient" by making worthless data worth something. The only reliable way to get companies to stop stealing this data is to put a price on it. Data Trusts & Fines are a poor and arbitrary way of accomplishing what should be a market function and criminal punishment for theft.

Every request has an associated cost, this will lead to a race to the top for valuable users. While good websites will push requests costs into the negatives. It will happen sooner than you think, user data will creep towards tens of thousands per person. A situation where yearly data is worth more than their yearly take home is unsustainable. That's the Data Dividend. Bringing it back to the article, very few sane people are going to forgo tens of thousands of dollars for their search history, you are going to have to choose what's more valuable to you for each line item.