How did they create the database? We know that Cambridge Analytica stole/acquired Facebook user data. Remember that CA claimed to have thousands of data points for most citizens of the US. There's still the mystery of the Trump server talking to Alpha Bank and Spectrum Health (and only them.) Health records contain lots of info that is supposed to be private. Where does all the info hacked from companies (Target, Wells-Fargo, South Carolina Department of Revenue...) end up? Those are crimes.

I understand your point that advertising has always been targeted, but this is a new evolution. It is targeted to individuals based on their profile, not just putting beer commercials on sporting events or medicine ads on re-runs of Matlock. This message is for you, personally. It is a natural evolution of the art and science of advertising; and, it is creepy as hell. Data is the ammunition of information warfare.

It's what I have been saying about pseudoscience. If the "Marketer" knows you are into Homeopathy, they know they can lead you to something else, to widen the cracks, feed you other ideas, slowly getting you to believe in Democrats eating babies. They provoke a dopamine rush of rage and the smugness of fake esoteric knowledge.

It this case it is also propaganda, which is even creepier. How will this play out in the near future of expanding authoritarianism?

I don't think it will stop. It will grow even more insidious. Awareness helps. Yet, as you know, we Americans are a really aware society. ~sarcasm~

I'm halfway through the first episode of this PBS series:

https://www.pbs.org/show/hacking-your-mind/