If I go play chess against a rando at a park and lose, I lost.

If I go play chess against someone who spent 150,000 human years studying how to beat me, to say 'well, it was all up to your mental strength, same as it's always been forever, and you just weren't strong enough' is BS.

In the last 40 years (which equate to 80 billion human years of output) there has been hundreds of thousands if not millions of human years of effort put into tearing down peoples' barriers, implanting ideas, etc. This isn't 1960 madmen advertising, this is something different from all of human history. Never before have hundreds of thousands to millions of human years been dedicated to manipulating humans in such a continuous, scientifically approached way and on such ever present/connected platforms with the synchronization of message/manipulation across contexts/mediums.

Edit: Changed from using 'man years' to 'human years'.

Is it though? Amazon knows my entire 22 year purchase history and could probably write down a broadly accurate history of my weight, disposable income, mental health, and how busy I was.

And yet it seems that entirely random ads would have a better chance of catching my interest than whatever super smart master mind strategy they are doing after spending thousands of years on that problem.

Amazon knows my entire purchase history too: it's nothing. In have never shopped at Amazon.

Went to an undergraduate library to surf, and low and behold: women's underwear, and I am not a cross dresser. If you do not identify yourself you get the default.

It's almost all "AI" driven. Yes the halcinating kind.

Is that limited to ads? If someone buys a car because it looks sporty and powerful which speaks to his subconscious, was he not manipulated? Was he able to give consent to trade money for that car?

I understand where you're coming from, but psychological manipulation is everywhere and committed by everyone all the time and defining its use as voiding consent seems very problematic.

Yes it is very problematic. Im more concerned about political and sociological manipulation where lies and deceit are used to convince people to support agendas which go against there own best interests.

Protecting them from that possibility infantilizes them, and what their own interests are will often not be clear to others.

It's easy to say what your best interests would be if you were in their situation, but they might assign very different values to certain outcomes.

I'm capable of understanding humanity shares best interests and using lies and deceit to manipulate is harmful to society. It sad you have chosen to believe otherwise. So no I don't agree.