Comment by sandworm101

>> We'd just be freed from the increasingly sophisticated machinery designed to override our decision-making.

That isn't all advertising. That is the modern algorithm-dependent systems that curate ads for individual viewers. In the good old days of print ads, ads targeted at say the readership of a particular magazine, we did not suffer from the downward spiral. There is no reason websites cannot have static ads. Many do. The issue is not advertising per se.