[peterwoerner]

Very few people articulate the upside of the data sharing well. And that is the internet allows people to connect with the long tail customers. All of a sudden I can make friends with other worm farmers in the world. Not only that, but using this data I can effectively find other people who would probably be interested in worm farming and tell them about it. And grow the community of worm farmers. Not only that but individuals can now build niche businesses based around worm farming because they can find their potential customers. You can replace worm farming with every esoteric interest.

On one hand the internet and the big data platforms of Amazon, facebook etc. have allowed this economy and communities based on esoteric interests, but on the other hand they are able to manipulate us else like nobodies business and greed ensures that if it isn't being used adversarially now it will certainly be in the future.