Your perspective in this discussion is invaluable. Most of us never buy targeted Facebook ads. Do you think that when you paid Facebook to identify users within ten miles, by sex, age, and education, that gave Facebook incentive to collect personal data on their users? You've worked in a few sectors. Do you think it would be smart business for Facebook to collect as much data about their users as possible, so they can offer you the widest possible menu of targeting choices when you want to advertise your next venture? Do you think that when you pay an annual fee to Amazon for the privilege of being a Prime Customer, you directly support and promote the business practices you complain about?
So your argument, then, is corporations are allowed to do whatever nefarious shit they feel like because it is the duty of every consumer to have perfect 100% clarity into the morality of their purchases? That the calculus of the transaction lies on the virtue of the consumer, not the provider? You're arguing that if the world didn't want the Amazon to burn they shouldn't have allowed Bolsonaro to win. As for Facebook, targeting by sex, age, education and distance is absolute fucking child's play. That level of granularity was available in the junk-mail era. Facebook's innovation was to allow you to target 16-year-old girls on their period who listen to Taylor Swift. Or 55-year-old white men with an interest in Ruby Ridge, Dale Earnhardt and Vince Foster. Facebook didn't start with the basic offering and work their way finer and finer - they hit the ground running with microtargeting. They had the data, they didn't do the due diligence, they monetized COINTELPRO. Our prior use of Facebook (we discontinued our Facebook advertising long before Zuckerberg testified to Congress, if I recall correctly) was an extremely blunt use of a surgically precise tool so no, I would say we were doing the exact opposite of incentivizing them in their methods. But then, we're some shitty brick'n'mortar establishment in the hinterlands of Seattle, not Cambridge Analytica so really, what was your economic argument again? As to Amazon, no aspect of my Prime membership contained any votes for Prime Marketplace or Prime Video or Prime Pantry. By your argument, if I wanted local bike parts I should opt out of Amazon Prime and be incapable of purchasing anything within two weeks. This is like your "if you don't like cars you can always ride a horse to work" argument which is Ben-Shapiro-grade speciousness.