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Your personal data is of no value (unless you are of high-profile 0.01% of people).

However, the data of your city, state, country, gender, race is very valuable because then, for example, companies/government/foreign actors can know exactly what is this town, state, country, gender, race is thinking about any given topic. This is enormous value and this is why companies like Cambridge Analytica are so profitable.

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I agree, but how is this different from polls, fidelity programs at department stores, statistics on various topics, etc - all of which have existed for decades?

It's different because department store fidelity programs weren't generating terabytes of raw data per day, feeding it into ML systems, correlating output against millions of other data points available for purchase, and then using the resulting insights to manipulate political affairs on a large scale.

I still see no problem with it. They're getting value, I'm getting value.

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