Something the article doesn't mention is that your data is not only used to target you with ads. It's also used to target you with propaganda or any political or social agenda a person, organization or state is willing to pay for. Adtech is the perfect weapon of information warfare, and it's been successfuly used to influence public opinion, and corrupt democratic processes (e.g. Cambridge Analytica).<p>Both ads and propaganda have the same objective, psychological manipulation, and the difference is that one wants to manipulate you into buying a product, and the other wants to manipulate you into buying into an idea. These are insidious objectives on both a personal, and societal level.<p>One more thing: once adtech has your personal data, it is sold in perpetuity on shady data broker markets, and any company with access to it can exploit it and get rich from it. As with anything on the internet, once it's out there, it exists forever, except you'll have no control over who it's sold to, under what terms, and, of course, you'll never see a cent of profit.<p>All adtech companies should be paying users to use their services. "Free" is not only not free, but it's extremely profitable for the company you give your data to.<p>The fact that most people either don't understand any of this, or don't care, is deeply troubling for the future of our civilization.