The worst argument I hear all the time, is that ads help pay for the content you consume. That's not true. The money still comes from you. It's just charged e

The worst argument I hear all the time, is that ads help pay for the content you consume. That's not true. The money still comes from you. It's just charged extra the next time you buy a product, given to a marketing team, who give it to Google, who then give it to your content creator. And you better believe, that every party takes a sizeable cut. [1] And for what? What's the value added by advertisements that couldn't also come from independent reviewers, journalists or comparison sites? It's obfuscation. Make a product appear more popular than it is, close out the competition, stay in peoples minds, _lie without repercussion_ [2]. The author argues that ads are low-friction. It may seem that way when all the infrastructure is already set up: The automatic auctions, the marketing teams scripting, drawing and filming the ads, the confused and annoyed consumers, the additional bandwidth... But surely, we can come up with less frictional system, right? - [1]: The only way that's not true, is if adversing is a bubble. There are some arguments that it is: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-work-part-2-digital-ep-441/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-w... [2]: BP carbon footprint