Every time I read these stores on HN, I can't help but point out this: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-data-to-rally-voters/

Every time I read these stores on HN, I can't help but point out this: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-data-to-rally-voters/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-us... Obama was lauded for using "Big Data" and "Data Science" to rally voters. It's not hard to guess where his team got the data from. Now the same thing worked against, for better or worse, people are going out of the way to chastise social media. Where was this concern when the same companies try and collect as much information as they can - user preferences, tastes, political bends - all in the name of "enhancing" experience. There were tons of articles written on praising the same companies on how clever they actually were. Lastly, it is funny that economist etc are acting holier than thou when they themselves would be collecting some form of data from their readers to enhance ad revenues etc. IMHO, its not social media rather letting the collection of personal information get out of hand which is at fault.