My gripe with the author is this: if you’re going to argue about the cost of big data but ignore the elephant in the room, then you’re not making an honest argument. There’s no way this guy doesn’t know about Cambridge Analytica or Zuckerberg’s appearance before Congress etc etc. These are some of the key events which has everyone thinking that maybe the real cost of this data in the grand scheme is actually a lot. The direct cost to you may not be felt, but it may damn well shape the world. The author just grazes by this by saying since people didn’t think this way five years ago, it must not matter? This is basically the whole context for the issue and the author is hand-waving it away so he can frame it as naively as he could 5 years back.