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> How is "you are the product" incorrect?

I think the point is not that this statement is incorrect, but rather that it doesn’t accurately convey the severity of the situation. More accurate would be: “manipulation of their audience is their product”.

[082349872349872]

One of the nice touches in "Gravy Planet" (1952) are the throwaway sentences that show, via revealed preferences, how the ad-exec protagonist is also a product of the system he helped create.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24576623

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Manipulation of the audience in pre-TV days, ca. fourth century BC:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:19...

> "The emotions are all those affections which cause men to change their opinion in regard to their judgements"

Remember the Maine!