To be honest, personally I’d argue for a stronger stance: the right to not be solicited. I think all advertising is poisonous and insidious and leads to the things you describe, not just targeted behavioral profiling. So I’d say the missing right that we need to codify lies somewhere in that realm.
Still I think we’re a little stuck on the consent bit. If 98% of society consents to be solicited, all the problems of scale come back. So we need a framework to declare that the power granted to solicitation networks, if centralized, is too great and either reserve it for the gov’t or ideally outlaw it.
It’s illegal, in many places, to sell your vote. Extending that example to a general principle — if you have any decision making power/responsibility over others, then allowing it to be subverted (for pecuniary or other benefit) is a dereliction of fiduciary responsibility.
If you are only selling consequences on yourself (we can debate the legality of that, and protections necessary against exploitation) that’s a different scale of potential harm compared to selling away the power concomitant with your duties.
By that logic, it might be possible (if the potency of behavioral advertising can be established) to forbid people from holding decision making responsibilities (including voting) if they wish to sell away their decision making power for benefits.
At the extreme, imagine board members or government heads deciding a question of enormous importance, and their decision making getting hacked by personal behavioral targeting. If that sounds too fantastical, imagine a popular streaming service promoting an emotionally charged war drama (for Washington DC subscribers) when Congress is in session discussing geopolitics questions. Or more precise targeting analogues — aiming at key decision makers, or their friends/family. I doubt shareholders / stakeholders would be okay with that.
I actually really like this construction/framing. I’ve been wondering for awhile how we claw out of this state where voting is a right not a privilege. You can’t discriminate on anything close to a protected class for obvious reasons, which roundabout includes education. But discriminating on whether you allow yourself to be solicited or not seems kinda brilliant. I don’t want peers who sell their souls to the sexiest corporation casting votes that have been tainted by corporate marketing dollars. I don’t want politicians in office who are exposed to that either. Amd of course I would love to flip a switch and have it be illegal to solicit me and never see another internet ad or receive another flyer or fake important envelope in the mail. Seems like it could be fruitful to draw a hard line between being open to being influenced by advertising and having any sort of political power.
Still I think we’re a little stuck on the consent bit. If 98% of society consents to be solicited, all the problems of scale come back. So we need a framework to declare that the power granted to solicitation networks, if centralized, is too great and either reserve it for the gov’t or ideally outlaw it.