I think there's two kinds of SEO spam going on. The black-hat kind is definitely made to extract money from ads. But those are easy to avoid for web veterans I

I think there's two kinds of SEO spam going on. The black-hat kind is definitely made to extract money from ads. But those are easy to avoid for web veterans IMO. And I also feel that Google is doing its part, even though it's costing them money from those sweet ads! But the white-hat kind, also known as content marketing, is made to let legit companies save money. Instead of paying for Google Advertisement, they get traffic by means of organic content. Think "Michelin Guide" or "Red Bull". Which is a jolly fine idea and responsible for a lot of good stuff, but the problem is that this has been taken to extremes, and now the web is littered with low-effort content made by freelancer writers getting peanuts. I would personally prefer if those freelancer writers were doing 10 interesting Red Bull articles per month rather than 500 rehashes of contents from other websites. But who am I to judge. In the news industry things are also very similar.