Totally agree. The current ad model feels extractive on all sides. Context-based targeting feels like a more honest middle ground that doesn’t require spying on users.
The "problem" is that oh so many sites have no context. They exist solely to host ads, the content on their pages provide no actual value and is rehashed press-release, direct copies of reporting from Reuters, 10 ten lists written by interns or AI junk.
If this works it will be good for everyone, the many issue with today's internet is the perverse incentives to get views or "engagement" so you can sell ad space. The ads are the goal, not the message.
I’m sure some grifters won’t get their second Mercedes, but sites with no context and just ads disappearing would be a wonderful, almost dream-like outcome for the internet. It might even solve the dead internet problem to a degree.
There’s no way the advertising industry giants will let it happen. But the thought alone clearly illustrates the damaging effects of advertising.
See also the decline of media where they learned very early on that rage generates by far the most clicks and hollowed out their entire fucking industry to sell more ads.
Honestly a number of really really significant societal problems have their roots in surveillance capitalism
The decline of media is also based on the fact that advertisers no longer had to pay the big trustworthy publishers and could instead supposedly target those same users elsewhere.
