I work in the field of stochastic control, trying to build tools that answer the question of “how do you best react when random events dominate?” My $0.02, but I think the math has some answers, or at least a decent tool set to apply.
The cost of our daily randomness is just noise for wealthy individuals, but more deadly if your wealth is low. When you “vote with your wallet” you try to control for some future outcome, but if your wallet isn’t big enough to survive losing a big bet, then you are constrained to go with a certain outcome. That can be an outcome that is certainly worse for you. The rational, measurable cost of the randomness can be so high that taking a loss makes sense.
You might fill your gas tank now, at a price you think is a little too high, knowing that the local station can change its prices several times a day. The cost of driving to the station and the risk of a higher price is something you might think “isn’t worth it”. You’re probably right, we humans actually do this computation intuitively, and fairly well in a lot of cases. The gas station wins in the end, because you pay more to control your gas costs in the face of the noisy price.
When companies say they can control our decision making process, yes, I agree that it’s nonsense. They are trying to control a person who, in turn, is trying to control their own outcomes in the face of a foggy future. Too many steps removed.
However, take the rational, computable response to uncertainty and add an amplification of the perceived risk. This is where 
, 
, 
and to a lesser extent 
get the big wins. I’d include the anti-democratic forces in the 
and 
in this. They are trying to make the world seem more dangerous than it is: the neighbour more likely to be a nutball, the foreigner seem like a resource thief. In the face of that uncertainty, even reasonable people will select an outcome which is a net loss, but which has a lower cost than the randomness they face or, in this case, think they face.
AI powered fake accounts are an enormous threat in this game. The noise blocks out the ability to find sensible, net win solutions to our problems, and generates fear that the world is worse than it is. Our global, autocratic adversaries, seeking to ensure their domination in the face of the really big geo-political risks, try cripple our collective decision making. They are probably poorer for it, but believe they don’t face outcomes that involve personal losses they can’t endure. Ironically, some of those outcomes induce climate-related losses, which they won’t survive.
I’ve never had the patience to dig through classical, neo-liberal economic math to make a firm statement on this, but the math of risk and stochastic control is new enough that I’m pretty sure the neo-liberal schools don’t price it properly.
Edit: 
… need