Comment by strogonoff

> Advertising is just attempted demand generation for otherwise weak product offerings

Just like money is just a vehicle for abuse and fraud.

Advertising is disseminating information about a product. The rest is you describing how advertising is abused, which I already addressed in my first comment. Yes, it is also used for malicious and abusive purposes, just like everything else is also used for malicious and abusive purposes.

If we talk about things that can be used for bad stuff, how about we start with E2EE comms and cash. The amount of evil, abuse, violence that they directly enable simply drowns out any potential downside of ads.

I guess either you want to ban it all, in which case there is no more argument to be had, or you can acknowledge that the world is not black and white and something that can be used for evil can also be a crucial part of an ecosystem.