In standard / common usage, selling and marketing an umbrella to someone is not "manipulation". Your definition of "manipulate" is not what most people mean in

In standard / common usage, selling and marketing an umbrella to someone is not "manipulation". Your definition of "manipulate" is not what most people mean in these contexts. Your use of "manipulate" in such a way muddies the waters and distracts from the core issue. Putting word choice aside, the core issue here is _not_ about people's preferences (e.g. many people don't like to get rained on). Rather, the core issue is about unknown and unwelcome influences, particularly influences that operate on parts of our minds that are hard to combat due to human nature. Facebook's manipulation of our attention is conceptually related to how casinos trick people into staying longer than they would otherwise.