Just reading the comments here, people seem to be relishing the thought of having an utterly ad-free world. As some have pointed out however, advertising can se

Just reading the comments here, people seem to be relishing the thought of having an utterly ad-free world. As some have pointed out however, advertising can serve a useful purpose (see: signalling, market-for-lemons etc.). From my perspective there are a number of issues with advertising which should be looked at - such as advertising to children, advertising of products with large negative externalities (e.g. cigarettes), and heavily targetted advertising (more because of the dystopian visions it brings, and with the potential complete erosion of privacy caused by the data-collection which it necessitates). But I believe a blanket "all adverts are bad" is probably a bit much. That said, giving users an alternative to receiving adverts seems like a great alternative to the pervasive data-capturing we have going on today.