There's a reason why it's important to defend against the mass harvesting and selling of personal information by companies, and I recently learned of a really good example why.
Have you ever heard of Cambridge Analytica?
It was a company that used data from a survey to psychologically profile over 80 million Facebook users, determined their political beliefs, and (in the case of the brexit referendum ) used the data they'd collected to directly target individual people who were unsure of their stance on it with propaganda to leave the EU.
They also used this data to assist the presidency campaign of Donald Trump.
All without the people who took the survey ever knowing that their data could wind up in the hands of Donald Trumps presidential campaign. All without the consent of the Facebook friends of people who took the survey, who didn't even consent to having their data used in the survey.
So yeah, data privacy matters, because your personal data could literally be used to feed you propaganda. Because it could be used by corporates to influence general political opinions, vote results, et cetera.
And let's be honest, do you really want your data in the hands of big companies where it can be potentially leaked?
