Yeah, a lot of people in tech have gotten fixated on privacy as the problem with advertisement. You get companies like Mozilla that have come to the conclusion

Yeah, a lot of people in tech have gotten fixated on privacy as the problem with advertisement. You get companies like Mozilla that have come to the conclusion that we need ads but we also need privacy, so maybe we need privacy-preserving ads! For me, privacy isn't even half the problem with ads. Billboards along highways are dangerous. Ads represent a ridiculous percentage of the paper sent via snail mail today, most of which gets immediately thrown away (or best case, recycled). Ads on web pages prevent me from actually reading the content on the page, and incentivize an insane writing style that I frankly don't want to read even with an ad blocker. Ads are bad, in and of themselves. Avoiding tracking doesn't solve their fundamental issue. As G.K. Chesterton put it in 1920 [0]: > Advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, "Give me money." Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. "Budge's Boots are the Best" simply means "Give me money"; "Use Seraphic Soap" simply means "Give me money." It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13468/13468-h/13468-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13468/13468-h/13468-h.htm