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I don't disagree with you broad statement that ads are a shitty thing on the whole, but their cost should be viewed in real terms not financial terms. That is,

I don't disagree with you broad statement that ads are a shitty thing on the whole, but their cost should be viewed in real terms not financial terms. That is, the cost is the people that work on the tech, the resources spent delivering them, the attention diverted to looking at them etc etc. The ad companies are sitting on huge cash piles so clearly there's a shortfall in the value of resources that can be bought if we stopped spending on ads.

marcus_holmes 1y ago
This is the Parable of the broken window [0] in action. The piles of cash that the ad duopoly are sitting on could (and would) be spent elsewhere, and that would benefit us more (by my assertion above) It's not "look at all the money they made, this service must be valuable", it's "is the money they made the best possible use of those resources?" and my answer is "definitely not" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window