>Corporations are a far worse and far less regulated threat than government, with far less checks and balances in place to protect us.
Tell that to the victims of US foreign policy. 1+ million Iraqis dead, ethnic cleansing civil war, and the unleashing of a theocratic cult recently is just the tip of the iceberg. Do I really need to add up all the dead in South America, in South East Asia, and around the world from your "mostly benign, government has problems but trends towards benefit" scenario? Maybe YOUR benefit, but you've been privileged to export misery and suffering to other people around the world.
I tell you what, go visit the war museum in Hanoi, and gaze at the deformed children who are still affected today by Agent Orange, or those still being blow up by land mines and other unexploded ordinance.
This is the sad navel gazing of the privileged and comfortable, hyperbolizing theoretical threats and getting triggered over minutiae, and hand waving away the utter misery and very real dangers that have been shown over and over this century. This is not to assert "whataboutism" and claim that privacy isn't important, it is.
But trying to argue that ad targeting is the greater threat than US (government), when our foreign policy's stacks of bodies piled miles high strikes me as naive.