I saw the picture and I clicked from Marianne's post with the prompt. I like your take - and yes it's heavy and sad, but that's the reality I guess and that I like that you honestly wrote about what first came to mind.
As a reader there was a point in this article where I stopped and it was: "We follow brands, people, products, religiously." - and immediatly thought, well I don't... And later you changed the pronoun to "you pay any attention to marketing and psychology you probably", and one after that it was about "People, the way they think", and "the people who use this data aren't exactly" and a bit later "our world turns on, ignoring".
So it was a journey. I'm not saying it's wrong this way and I can perfectly understand your points. I'm just here to maybe have a thought, what if these pronouns were different? Would it change the meaning of the text? I'm not even sure how I would write it or anything and probably I'm being super-specific here, but just wanted to let you know that as a text I stopped there are it was a bit difficult for me to step into different positions as a reader while reading the text.
But again, it's a tiny technical thing, I can totally see through it :)
And I'm glad that you put this out there, it is thought provoking and can make one step back and look at the world a bit differently. Thank you!
Also: did you write the first part, the freewrite in 5 minutes? It is super-tight and amazing, it's like poetry. And I love the use of bold and italic, it visually makes it more interesting as well!