What these kinds of articles (that basically just say how much of our data is being collected, and assert that it's bad) miss is the whole "attention economy" side of the equation, which I believe is more detrimental.

Data is concretely used to maximize engagement, outrage, polarization, etc. in order to get more attention, which is at a root of a lot of the public discourse challenges we have these days. It would be much more benign if tracking was really just about trying to see what I am most likely to buy and target that to me.