It's curious that neither the OP nor the comments address the incentives funding via advertising creates. While I strongly agree about issues surrounding the d

It's curious that neither the OP nor the comments address the incentives funding via advertising creates. While I strongly agree about issues surrounding the data collection and tracking systems used to target ads, I'm thinking about the publisher's side. For a subscription service (paywalled), users are making an up-front decision to pay for the content an outlet publishes because they believe in some sense that the writing is worth it. This is a pretty intellectual thing to do, since you have to actually enter payment details and select a plan. It's fundamentally a premeditated act. The advertising-based model is closer to the lizard-brain, I think. To a first approximation, it seems that ad-based funding created the whole world of "click bait": low quality articles with catchy headlines designed to increase ad views by tapping into peoples' curiosity. This model is the opposite of premeditated: it's almost subconscious and driven by moment-to-moment impulse. And I think web-based advertising incentivizes this greatly, to the point that the low-quality content designed to be engaged with impulsively is driving who gets elected. I don't have high conviction that my thinking here is correct, but the dots do seem to connect, and I don't see it discussed much. I raise it here because while I abhor the data gathering associated with ad targeting, if I'm honest with myself, I think the harm coming from click-bait content online is more tangible today than the harm from the data collection.