IMHO, and I do tend to be cynical, they benefit from corporate tax dollars, economic growth, good numbers from Wall Street and the ability to precisely and efficiently target their prospects for fund raising, getting people to vote, and advocacy.
It does create opportunities for individuals and government to interact. Geotargeting is especially excellent for localized crisis communications. We get weather and missing children and other very targeted alerts regularly from our local governments.
I’ll bet geotargeting is a critical element in the Apple/Google COVID 19 tracing app. And it could be possible when COVID 19 vaccines are released that age and other demographic groups can be geotargeted with info about where they can get shots, as well as how to set up appointments.
My thinking is that there are enormous opportunities for geotargeting to be used for the public good if governments decide to create them.