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The mafia was also famous for its community outreach and charity, that didn't make it a net positive.

• Sebb767 5y ago
  Yes, but the key difference is that the mafia is, by definition, a criminal organization and the upside is not linked in any way with being a mafia. Ads, on the other hand, do inherently have the positive quality of showing you products and could exist without their current downsides.
  • beervirus 5y ago
    Regardless of their current downsides (which are indeed considerable!), ads by definition are there to make me want to buy things I wouldn’t otherwise want to buy. That’s not exactly noble, even if we pretend that they’re just showing me stuff I wasn’t aware of.
    • Sebb767 5y ago
      > That’s not exactly noble That's where we disagree. Imagine you always cooked your noodles in a pan. This is clearly a suboptimal situation. Then you see an ad for a pot, you go buy it and it turns out that making noodles (and other dishes) could be so much easier! Sure, you would not have bought a pot otherwise, but this ad would have been a net positive for you and the ad company, no downsides. Or maybe you see an ad for a Chinese restaurant, so you try it and it turns out you really like them. There's nothing inherently wrong with their food just because you got to know it via an ad. As stated above, the current system is stupid. But it's not all bad.