Executive Summary: 

Your lack of privacy

 gives persuaders unseen leverage... 

to destroy your personhood.

Your Tesla has more than ten cameras. One reads your facial expressions. 4,000 Gigabytes of facial expressions... up to the cloud. All day long. Who exactly owns that data is the subject of disagreement...  but its certainly not you. The responsibilities and opportunities of holding it are also not clear. Our post private times look interesting through the lens of self-determination. The Issues are in plain sight but most people prefer to overlook them. The Teslas are fun, maybe examining the cameras in a sociological, political, and economic context... ruins the ride. 

PRIVACY 

A western scene: a rocky overlook, a sleepless scout with a spy glass watches comings and goings. You can't do anything about him. Down in the saloon, a magic show, complete with a fortune telling psychic.  As they wait in line for tickets, the entertainer's disguised accomplice is near the entrance taking names on a petition... some appealing church or charity - names given to the well paid town gossip and that dirt goes right to the ear of the psychic. He rewards us with astonishment. So who is the psychic today? What is the act? Who gets paid?

Today, we buy our tickets online... With credit cards and phone numbers. These numbers allow the big Artificial gossip (who's been collecting dirt since you were born) to mold your voodoo Mini-Me in the sky. This pile of information about you - more about you than you know about you - is sold to the highest bidder. ANY highest bidder. The following pages attempt to detail where the Mini-You data comes from and where it goes, but the simple fact is... even the programmers, captains of industry, social psychologists, economists, and mathematicians who create browsers and AIs, don't know exactly where all the data comes from or how it will be used.

PERSUASION

There important relationships between privacy, persuasion, and personhood (self-determination). Those relationships are hammered out in the forge of answering the "how do we get the most dollars out of  pockets with as little expense as possible" problem. Simple. But the dynamics of the information economy (you trade all your secrets for "free" internet) have side effects we, as a society, may not have thought out so well. Each step; the collection, the processing, and the use of this data is important to issues larger than the economy. If you time how long my mouse hovers over blondes on my favorite website and suddenly all the ads I see have blond models, that's only creepy.  But analyze my social postings and tweak my newsfeed so I am CONVINCED to vote for your employer in an election? More than creepy. I am no longer a person, and you should be in jail for murder.

Actually, the art of "convincing" has a long history and many words describe it's methods; "educate, argue, influence, persuade, manipulate, and coerce."  We will look at these words. With no words, people are isolated. Isolated people are easier to manipulate. Ask any cult leader or narcissist. 

Our heartstrings - the threads woven of our very personalities now run to interesting places, to be held and tugged by people or machines we'll never meet. Oh... But they've met us! And we are at a very unfair disadvantage. Our buttons will be pressed - we WILL be persuaded.

PERSONHOOD  

Stuff on the internet... it's free! No, it's not. That assumption is a profitable illusion. When we are given something - we become indebted to the giver. We owe them and pay for the free lunch with our unconscious allegiance along with our shoe size. Neither psychic salesmen nor senators are interested in having profitable illusions exposed. They help people be distracted so tricks will be overlooked. And friendships sawn in half. 

When people make up their own minds, they come to their own conclusions. They are free to act on their own conclusions and retain personhood. When people do not make up their own minds, they do not come to their own conclusions. They are not free to act on their own conclusions. They have given up personhood. Everyone wants a free mind. Preferably attached to a free body. 

Read on if this is of interest to you.
Or not. Up to you. If you want.
Your choice.
I don't care.
Either way