After showing ID, did the rental place record it, the video you rented, when you rented it and for how long, then store that information in a database shared with other outlets of the giant multinational conglomerate which it belongs to, sell it to advertisers and corporate security, and make it available on request to governments of the world?

And was this process duplicated for every other piece of media you consumed, to create a full profile of your interests?

A large change in quantity changes quality as well.

This is a mistake we make over and over and over.

It practically seems like a type of cognitive bias based around technology.

We use some similar technology from the past to model the implications of the new technology and then willfully ignore the fundamental change brought about by digitization and network connectivity. The strangest thing is everyone understands how powerful network connectivity and digitization are in the abstract but when it comes to the concrete we brush it off like it is not.

This is just like renting The Terminator from the video store in 1989. What could possibly go wrong?

When you shown ID to the local video store, no record is made. And the video stores usually were not connected to a global interconnected graph of customers data.

Worst case scenario, you had a paper card somewhere in a drawer with your name on it.