Advertising models didn't drive belief in Pizzagate, Qanon, adrenochrome, Covid-is-fake or Dominion-ate-my-ballot. They just didn't. That was a bunch of peopl

Advertising models didn't drive belief in Pizzagate, Qanon, adrenochrome, Covid-is-fake or Dominion-ate-my-ballot. They just didn't. That was a bunch of people voluntarily sharing a bunch of content created by people who never monetized it in any way. It's true that it was done on a bunch of ad-supported platforms with elaborate "engagement" metrics who want to keep eyeballs. So I guess in a sideways sense you can argue that "advertising" created viral content. But then "advertising" created the good content too. It's just specious. No, there's something about the way that completely unmoderated discourse on the internet has evolved that is new and dangerous in ways that we hadn't expected. You aren't going to fix this by forcing people off the ads.