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Comment by Dirak | Hacker News Reader

Ads are not at all horrible. Ads help connect products with the niche markets of people that could benefit from them. Many cool products are too niche and would not be able to exist without targeted advertising. Yes, when done distastefully, ads can be quite horrible (ie ads for gambling and other vices), but when done well, both the user and advertiser benefit. This has to be true, otherwise, if users never found ads useful they would never click on them, and then advertisers would’ve never pay for advertisements since they wouldn’t benefit them.

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I appreciate your perspective on the potential benefits of ads. However, I’m emphasizing a much deeper, existential concern here. Our lifes, essentially, are the sum of what we pay attention to. In this context, advertising doesn’t just sell products; it habitually redirects our attention, shaping our experiences and, consequently, our lifes in profound ways.

The pervasive nature of advertising can subtly dictate the rhythm of our lives, often reducing moments of potential introspection, creativity, or connection with others into opportunities for commercial engagement. It’s a constant auction of our attention at the cost of personal enrichment and depth of experience.

It alters our relationship with ourselves and with the world, as our attention is steadily guided away from personal priorities and towards commercial ones. This is a critical and largely unexamined impact of advertising. We are, effectively, paying the ultimate price, which is life itself. No amount of "taste" in individual ads can compensate for this.

Not to mention the way it shapes culture, inculcating children with the materialist creed of insatiable consumers before they even know what advertising is.

> Many cool products are too niche and would not be able to exist without targeted advertising.

This is not true. This is the excuse used to justify the spying.

Contextual ads work perfectly well for providing information about new or niche products. It the other, much creepier, use case for ads that want the detailed information to target tailored ads at individual users.

you're subscribing to the absolutely horrible notion that if someone is making money, its by definition a net good for society.

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