The general public and mainstream media do not really care about big tech companies harvesting personal data and using it for marketing. Every now and then you'd see someone bringing it up in an article of Ars or Popular Science, but they never gained much traction.

The difference is now there is an example of it helping Trump. And if you can find any story that puts Trump in a bad light, it's almost guaranteed that it will hit the front page of HuffingtonPost/WashingtonPost/NYTimes/Salon/etc.