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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

> I literally cannot imagine supporting monopolies/oligopolies over healthy competition.

Implicit in my post was that I don't want to support healthy competition in adtech, or any competition at all. I want this industry to disappear entirely. I have no tears for the small adtech businesses whose market got scooped up by Google; I only hope that by presenting a bigger target, Google's adtech activities will be easier to regulate.

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So if I open a new small business and want to advertise it on AdWords or elsewhere on the internet I have no recourse? Word of mouth is random and unreliable even if you have a good product. Advertising is a healthy and essential signalling mechanism to broadcast the availability of a new service and there is absolutely nothing morally wrong with it in its self. The non-benneficial side-effects like extensive user tracking and practices that drastically harm user experience however are bad and a seperate issue to be dealt with.

> So if I open a new small business and want to advertise it on AdWords or elsewhere on the internet I have no recourse

Ad tech was extremely profitable before personalisation and wholesale trading of private data.

> Ad tech was extremely profitable

That was the era when marketers were dumb, drank the internet look aid and were taken for a ride by the industry. That's not quite true anymore.

They will work just fine today, too

The implication wasn't clear because, frankly, it's a silly thought. This post is ripe for that "that's not how any of this works" meme.

I can understand the emotional intent, but it's important to ensure that routes we take actually get us to the outcomes we want.

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