@Kneeblock First off, thanks for taking the time to give some input and your thoughts. I see that we mostly agree actually and in my night shift posting, I've obviously failed to be clear with my intent. There is not some of the implication intended that you are reading in my posts.
This is a good point and starts to answer lines in the sand. But for the sake of argument, while that is probably illegal, or should be, I think it's short sighted to focus on that as a defining factor. I believe that we are very close to meeting the same data points through legal, passively agreed, measures. CA claims a multitude of datapoints (4-5000) to generate a profile, etc. I don't doubt that users opting in, fine print, etc. could generate the needed data for the same profiling. So getting the data this time worked via a third party unethically (illegally?) scraping facebook content. But a 2020 facebook ad network might very well be so sophisticated as to allow the same messaging to the same people that CA was able to do. And that would be a "feature" of a great "highly targeted" ad network. This is where I see a continuum in both the tech, but also potentially the legality/culture accepting this type of messaging. I'm a bit uncomfortable with that, even though I believe that's a direction we could easily go.
I think I was not clear there.
"Something already going on" was in reference to using MI6 and other spy apparatus for campaign dirt. It was also meant to be in reference to the tech continuum I see above where ads become targeted, become micro targeted, become scary in their micro-targeting...and then to ask, what differentiates this continuum we seem to be on legally from the current illegal(?)/unethical moves of CA.
A large part of Wylie's complaint (the guy who programmed/ "hacked" for CA) against CA is that the microtargeting was done without the viewers awareness of the degree of customized targeting. They had a "lack of agency" as per him. I'm not sure that current legally perfected microtargeting will give users that agency. And whether the data came from scraping their facebook or from the fine print on their gmail and walgreen's rewards card, the end result seems to be that microtargeting is coming in a exponentially accelerated way using data that's out there in a manner many (me!) are questioning.
"the genie is out of the the bottle" was not meant as a giving up and acceptance that CA and others like them should be allowed or accepted to operate by scraping data. Rather, the tools are now out. What they did can be duplicated. The barrier to entry to that is not some DARPA level investment. It's low entry for many and with that, its going to keep happening. That's not a surrender, as much as I meant it to be a statement of a 'call to arms' of realization. This is getting easier and only going to get easier. My questions are partly rhetorical in response to that, but mostly meant to be a truly, "This is coming. More is coming. People are going to go into this arena off our current tech. I see a spectrum of legally allowed moves that mirror CA messaging that we should be questioning...is it okay? And what do we do about the bad actors?"
Again, I was apparently not being clear. I definitely didn't mean to imply 'meh' by pointing out my views of continuation.