> Well before Cambridge Analytica appeared on the scene, fears once relegated to paranoia were coming true. Consider that believing that the ads on your TV or radio were directed specifically at you would have been an unequivocal symptom of a delusional state twenty years ago. Today, the same belief about the ads on your smartphone is a recognition of fact.

I don't see what is far fetched about this claim. And I don't know about you, but being pointed out that something that was exclusively in the domain of the paranoid delusional only two decades ago is now the normalized experience for everyone without an ad-blocker does make me consider that we should pause to think more about what that situation means.

We should definitely pause ! We are steady but surely moving towards the very dystopia made up by paranoid minds ages ago. I just think the article made it sound like these fears are unfounded. It's crazy to me that it's still legal to have political advertising, heck, it's crazy to me that advertising in it's current form is legal at all.

> I just think the article made it sound like these fears are unfounded.

Huh, I admit that I ended up skimming a bit near the end but my impression of the first half of article was the opposite: that these fears weren't unfounded precisely because the current reality of advertising matches the imaginations of the paranoid.

Guess I should go back and reread the rest more carefully.

Maybe i should too !

We’ve had political advertising in this country since Thomas Paine, and much of it has been scurrilous.

I would say that this is a natural consequence of having a free press, but places with a nonfree press also have political advertising (as a propaganda organ of the state) so maybe it is just a consequence of having media available in general.

A free press doesn't necessarily mean that the press can do whatever it wants, exactly like free speech doesn’t mean that you can say whatever you want whenever you want to. I think it’s fairly easy to set up some rules about political advertisement, we already do it for other stuff like alcohol, tobacco, porn etc. I’m not implying that we should ban the media from covering politics, it’s just the blatant advertisement on social media and television.

It is unfortunate that you believe that what you describe is "free speech" and a "free press". You are in fact arguing directly against free speech, and in favor of a scheme where the government is extensively involved in regulation on the content of speech and the opportunities by which it might be expressed. It would be less misleading (to yourself as well as to others) to admit this.

More specifically, you are arguing against the speech that that the US supreme court has specifically identified as "core political speech," which has been explicitly covered by the strongest legal protections, such that any limitations must withstand the strictest legal scrutiny. You are suggesting that treating it with the lesser protections afforded to commercial speech is something good for society, that it is consistent with current legal treatment of free speech, and is consistent with the ideals of freedom. None of these are true.

(Well, not in the US, anyway. In Europe, this is actually normal and consistent with the way that speech is normally treated. But Europe doesn't actually have or want free speech, notwithstanding any protests you may hear about the topic.)

Well it is really more like a form letter really. You would still be delusionally naive if you think a form letter which occassionally makes clear mistakes like advertising feminine hygene products to a cis-male is talking to you instead of a form letter talking at what they think is you. If it says you are 101 then you know there was a data error and not that you are an amnesic immortal.

Cambridge Analytica's discourse has progressed from legitimate scandal to outright moral panic. Targetted advertising isn't good but the collective zeitgeist needs to get a sense of proportion and a grip on reality.