>"Is online ad spending a net negative for all of society, or a net positive?" I don't have a precise answer for that question. I would love to read a good ana

>"Is online ad spending a net negative for all of society, or a net positive?" I don't have a precise answer for that question. I would love to read a good analysis. >It allowed millions of web sites to fund themselves Not sure about that number. > which enabled millions of other people, many of whom don't have a lot of money to pay for content, to access it. Many of those people would never respond to the ads, so in effect, they were subsidized by those who would respond to the ads. Yes, and it also allowed centralized ad agencies (google, fb, twitter...) to gather and mine their data, to behave irresponsibly and give us the Age of Anger fueled by social and video sites extracting value from human interaction while disregarding the huge social costs of all this.