"You're the product" doesn't really give the vibe I want it to. It sounds like someone is making money off of you, which is true, but it doesn't convey the "at your own expense" part. Even by simple things as better targeting, but eventually as main goals or side-effects of better ML/AI, you're manipulated to spend more, to feel worse about yourself so you spend more and so on. There was recently another article about "insight porn". If someone wants your attention and time, that's another way to take it. The better you know someone, the better you can convince them to give you money and time. So whether you're the product or not, you're paying for it.
Not only that, but this stuff doesn't need to be 100% effective for it to have massive consequences. If amazon can use data about people to swing 5% of votes, the vast majority of politicians would give them pretty much anything in their power.
I think using arguments like "Amazon swinging votes" is bad, since it's easily countered with "Amazon is not interested in political elections". Amazon doing whatever they can to take more and more money from you, way beyond your means? Americans (figuratively, some) are already up to their eyeballs in debt. Amazon being able to make it much worse is already a huge drain on society. "A boring dystopia".
It would be a massive oversight to claim "Amazon is not interested in political elections". Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for a reason. Influencing politics is part of the way they take your money. Manufactured consent, political suppression, corporate lobbying, these are all things that every single Fortune 100 company is engaging in heavily at this point.
