[sirpunch]

Not sure why you're making it sound like a conspiracy theory. User behavior profiling is common strategy for all personalized IR products, including recommender systems, targeted ads, web search, e-commerce, and many more. A bunch of major tech companies rely on it. Do you think Google AdSense is also an evil empire? What about Apple and Amazon ramping up their own ads businesses? More people use YouTube than Meta products and even spend more minutes per day there. Do you also think YouTube is also equivalent to cigarettes? What about TikTok, Twitch, and other streaming platforms? Was Doordash also wrong for setting up personalized ads and recommendations?

[yedava]

User behavior profiling wouldn't be bad if and only if users owned the data and had complete control of what is done it. Currently the legal/political system isn't equipped to handle this new technological assault on digital property and it will remain that way as long as long people keep hand waving it away. Imagine the same callous attitude being applied to real estate or other physical property.