"The Internet" isn't to blame. The problem is advert funded media & technology and the 'free market' of eyeballs. Competitive markets; our greatest engine of i

"The Internet" isn't to blame. The problem is advert funded media & technology and the 'free market' of eyeballs. Competitive markets; our greatest engine of innovation and creation are racing to discover our biggest weaknesses and exploit them mercilessly. This is inevitable — at its core ad-tech is a market in manipulation. There's no possible band-aid fix to square the circle: Markets innovate for their customers. Even google must constantly optimise to better manipulate the public or be beaten by those who will.* We really need to get out from under this because machine learning makes it terrifying. We already have recovering addicts targetted to re-ignite their addictions. Eventually the technology will be good enough to make addicts of us all. In my view the answer is to nationalize product discovery. Have a free to use government run product register. Let industries create open standards for product specifications and have real legal penalties for deception. Have product reviews with again real penalties for fraud. Ban all paid promotion of products. Pay anyone selling adverts today 90% of last years revenue to run socially beneficial nonsense (call your gran, eat some veggies, go for a run). Until the whole thing is wound down. * There's an interesting meta-possibility here where ad-tech platforms manipulate and bamboozle their real customers _the advertisers_. Facebook lying about video plays for example. This is probably the best outcome for society! Naturally the legal system punishes it sharply.