The computing part of this sounds fairly straightforward to me; if the psychological things described in the article are real, then no doubt you would be able to measure and exploit them in the ways described. But the psychology strikes me as black magic. Is anyone qualified to comment on how plausible it is?

If you feel like the article is too long, you can watch this 11 minutes presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc. It summarizes their methodology.

I took the presentation link from the article.

This seems suspect. This article seems to poke some holes: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-08/no-big-da...

So this is very intriguing.

The whole time while I'm reading this, and it's a good piece, I can't help but think if I'm reading some fake news?

Is this for real? I for one hate this whole I'll give you all my private info for a chance to use your free services and tools. I don't know how others feel.

After reading, I think it's obvious that the author has seriously overestimated the impact of the technology. It could have had as great an effect as the author's tone implies but I'm not sure the evidence is available.