> They do if they want to deliver ads that are relevant. Advertisers can still attach ads to relevant content without knowing anything specific about the perso

> They do if they want to deliver ads that are relevant. Advertisers can still attach ads to relevant content without knowing anything specific about the person who might see it. Consider an advert for a car attached to an motoring article. > substantiates why advertising is inherently bad I'll try tackling this. Advertising is inherently bad; it's the source of a great many of our problems. It's inherently manipulative. It tries to persuade, coerce or deceive us into buying things we wouldn't otherwise. This is a huge driver of obesity and ill-health (pushing UPFs, alcohol, tobacco etc.) and climate change (generally increasing consumption). By definition, it absorbs our time and attention. It interferes with our enjoyment of sports, written articles, and wastes our time sitting through video and audio adverts. It corrupts services. It provides an incentive for companies to maximise advertising revenue instead of the best experience - take Google or Amazon, who design search to push ads rather than what users ask for. Or social networks, who use algorithms to maximise engagement instead of positive interactions. Or news orgs, which publish clickbait fury-inducing articles for the ad impressions. It sucks a lot of our brightest workforce into useless work designing ads and ways to push them. It absorbs a lot of economic activity into zero-sum competition between rivals running to stay still.