> "we'd all be better off if people weren't allowed to effectively pay for things with their attention." Recently I got an advert like "unsold camper vans bein

> "we'd all be better off if people weren't allowed to effectively pay for things with their attention." Recently I got an advert like "unsold camper vans being sold off cheap in UK". It's the kind of Taboola/Outbrain title that I didn't believe was true but I was watching some camping content[1] and I clicked the ad. Who knows, maybe it would be interesting to see how much they were discounted and maybe it would support the site I was on. It took me to a page of 'best searches' which had nothing to do with camper vans or any specific sale. The searches were things like 'biggest car dealership uk'. I clicked one, it took me to a Yahoo! search for that generic and unrelated search term. I have no idea what created any 'value' anywhere in that. Who paid someone to make a website with generic searches to Yahoo!? Who paid someone to run a lying advert pointing to an unrelated link to a Yahoo! search? Who thinks that "my attention effectively paid for something" in that couple of minutes is real and not laughable delusion? [1] I have no intention of buying a camper van, so even if the ad was honest and accurate it wouldn't have added any value to anything. Point is, it wasn't, and most ads like that aren't.