Honest question: where should these very smart people work then in your opinion? Nearly all suitable-looking, "smarter" ideas that come to my mind will bring less revenue/profit in expectation than, for example, letting them maximize ad impressions.
I of course wish we lived in a "more intelligent" world where this is not the case. :-(
Call me crazy, but the smartest people I know have rejected maximizing their employer's revenue and profit as their goal. Or even their own company if they go that route. Find a niche, work it, enjoy it, and enjoy the rest of your life, too.
People have very different, often contradictory opinions what the "common good" is.
I would even claim that this question is a special case of the millennia-old philosophical problem of defining what "good" actually means (i.e. defining ethics), which has resulted in myriads of different opinions:
For example, Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize for her work illuminating design principles illustrated by long enduring common pool resource institutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#%22Design_princi...
Anywhere else. Ads are a net negative to society and provide no value. ANY activity outside of pushing ads is a better contribution to society as a whole.
Ad business, and business in general, doesn't. It only brings out the worst.
I can see it from here: out of tens of thousands of people, one man takes a stand to save a handful of children from all the pillage, rape and murder.
In an alternate world, this man might have (gasp) tried to run a business instead. Sure, the children and city would still be alive instead of burning to ashes, but who cares?
Look, there's not much positive to say for the ad-driven Internet, but to consider "pixels on screens that you disagree with" to be worse than actual mass killing is maybe a tad hyperbolic here.
And who considers this?
I never wrote that world with war but without business would be overall better than world without war but with people profiting from ad business. I merely pointed out that war can bring out the best from people - mercy, valor, honor, sacrifice, selflessness. Business cannot, as it is about commodification and profit.