The egregious wastefulness of USPS junk mail is annoying and obvious, but at least it is visible to the average consumer. The wastefulness of online advertising

The egregious wastefulness of USPS junk mail is annoying and obvious, but at least it is visible to the average consumer. The wastefulness of online advertising is more insidious, because the average consumer does not see that their router is dutifully transmitting megabytes of tracking code, to be interpreted by their computer, to be filtered by ad block or (obnoxiously) shown to them. Just browsing your local newspaper site is similar in terms of wastefulness to recieving a handful of junk mailers.