This can’t be said for nudges: the entire point of an effective nudge is that you can’t be certain that you aren't acting of your own volition. That strikes me as a much worse state of affairs: not only are you controlled, but you don’t even know it!
TL;DR: two years after this entire fracas, it’s apparent that the government’s ability to force you to do anything w/r/t public health is mostly hollow. Meanwhile, the continence of our actions online seems to be increasingly shaky.
Not exactly, you can be on board or suffer whatever punitive action is designed to "incentivize" you. You can't just politely decline to comply or participate.
> not only are you controlled, but you don’t even know it
I don't think we should equate "being controlled" - which is a rather horrific thing when done directly with the threat of violence - with being nudged. When you are nudged, you are in fact acting of your own volition. If you disagree you have to define what "your own volition" means exactly. To me it means acting in the absence of a threat of violence.
> the government’s ability to force you to do anything w/r/t public health is mostly hollow
Plenty of business owners were arrested and imprisoned for refusing to comply with public health measures. Many, many more suffered the closure of their business and the loss of their livelihoods by complying.
This describes every AdTech firm to a T, except that you’ve decided to direct your ire at a public health agency instead of them. The entire point of commercial advertising is to nudge your purchasing behavior (what they’ll blithely refer to as “lifestyle”); the CDC has no such motive.