Exactly. Snow Crash explores the idea of a "mind virus", which seemed a little silly when I originally read the book. But nowadays, it's clear that most ad camp

Exactly. Snow Crash explores the idea of a "mind virus", which seemed a little silly when I originally read the book. But nowadays, it's clear that most ad campaigns are exactly that: hacks of the brain. Just think about the ad strategies of, say, Coca-cola and Pepsi. They don't tell you about a new product. They don't inform you about any benefits of their product, or advantages relative to the competition. They purely exist to keep the brand names in your head, and associate the brand names with images of people having fun. And the saddest part is, it works! We desperately need regulation to prevent companies from hacking consumer's brains into zombies who grab products on the shelf based on how many times they've heard the name spewed out of their television in the last 24 hours. On the flip side, I would be happy to allow purely informative, contextual, non-tracking ads in my browser. Objective statements about new products I'm actually interested in? Sure! Privacy invading, mind manipulating mental malware? No thanks.