I’ve only ever seen defense of advertising by the people working in the advertisement industry or those exploiting ads, as seen by the comments here. Every ot

I’ve only ever seen defense of advertising by the people working in the advertisement industry or those exploiting ads, as seen by the comments here. Every other human on this planet is fucking annoyed by ads, or has evolved a blind spot for them and ignores them. When was the last time anyone in your social circle said, “I saw an ad for it, let’s buy that!”? The ads racket employs some of the worst of societal ills: Manipulation, deception, greed, vandalism of public spaces, wasting people’s time without their consent, all to advocate a cycle of endless consumption… not to mention how some ads systems are just a front for spying. If an individual displayed these behaviors, he or she would be considered extremely creepy and disgustingly clingy (SIT HERE and PAY ATTENTION to me for 30 seconds!) but the ads industry literally selects for and rewards these traits on a massive scale. Please, stop this guessing game of violating people’s privacy trying to figure out what they want to see and when it should be forced upon them, and just develop better search/filter/discovery/consensual recommendation systems: Let us TELL YOU what we want, dammit. But of course that would only benefit the product creators and service providers and consumers, not the ads people whose livelihood depends on flattering the naked emperor for his non-existent clothes, so here we must suffer.