>It's hilarious to me how people are worried about data Facebook has on them, or freaking out about address data being leaked in a hack. Several reasons... (1

>It's hilarious to me how people are worried about data Facebook has on them, or freaking out about address data being leaked in a hack. Several reasons... (1) Facebook/Alphabet have a lot more data. Leaking anything implies something about data security, which is scarier. (2) Scale. Direct marketers in the 80s did use most of the techniques digital markets use, definitely in the early stages. The scale is totally different though. I'm pretty sure my city (dublin) produces more "digital marketing" grads than all engineering specialities combined. (3) Power at Scale. Your address is not data, it's a datum. Your address, alongside lots of other data about your, alongside data about lots of other people... that's where data becomes powerful. Prediction, in advertising, is the demonstration. It's responsible for most of FB's revenue.