Most of the people knows nothing about all these things, until the media picks up the story. They at most believe Palantir is a Skype stone for elves and that Facebook makes money just running ads just like printed newspaper TV stations and radios run ads on very basic criteria (i.e. different ads during a soap opera than during an action movie), but they're not aware of the depth of analysis FB et al. perform.

Example from other field: aircraft passengers have breathed compressor bleed air since jet engines were introduced in the 60s, everyone in the industry knows this is how it works, and yet it wasn't until last year, when major publishers such as Fortune [1], The Guardian [2], Bloomberg [3], The Telegraph [4] etc. happened to simultaneously run this issue, that lot of the general public learned about it for the first time, most of them having assumed that cabin air was taken directly from the atmosphere.

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[1] http://fortune.com/2017/08/09/dangerous-cabin-fumes-planes/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/19/sick-crew-to...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/airline-w...

[4] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/world-health-organis...