I watched this 2020 Sundance documentary/drama, The Social Dilemma, on Netflix. It is a series of interviews of people who worked at social media companies telling their stories of how they are ruining society and actors showing their addictions to the system. They tell about monetizing surveillance, data mining, its effects on mental health, teen suicides and conspiracy theory misinformation especially for Gen Z. They bring up a lot of good points telling why you see ads related to things that you like to do or buy.
They point out the obvious that they must monetize through advertisers, since they let you use their programs for free. The better the mining data about you the more advertisers will pay to be seen on their media. It is directed by Jeff Orlowski and written by Orlowski, Davis Coombe, and Vickie Curtis. The Interviewees include Tristan Harris (Google Inbox. American ethicist), Aza Raskin (Firefox,son of Jef Raskin – human-interface expert and initiator of the Macintosh project at Apple),