The concept of manipulating or steering people based on data has been around for centuries.  Ancient Rome had a long-standing practice of smear campaigns to impugn competing politicians' reputations to advance their cause.  There's also a long-standing track record of organizations, private or public using any and all info available for their own purposes, to include public opinion.  McCarthyism, the political or religious purges in Korea, China, Russia and the middle east in the 1900's all showed that large organizations and governments are very inclined to use any (public or private) data they've collected to advance their causes, including using public data about you against you.  

The main new item I think however is the level of data available and the strong-arming that has happened from various tech giants, essentially trying to strip everyone of any privacy.  Google and Facebook, to name two, basically have a contract of adhesion: either submit to giving up all expectations that you data won't be gathered and collated, or stay off of our system entirely.  Thanks to those tactics, pretty much everyone else hopped on board.  I know the genie is already out of the bottle, but we really need to figure out how to put the limits back in to a rational level.