There is no point in chasing a high GDP when it results in a materially worse world. The point of a society isn't to make the numbers go up. If a monopoly is super efficient at generating some nebulous concept of value by creating and operating the world's largest surveillance system and actively using it to sell influence over people's attention and habits then the only sensible thing to do is to dismantle it.
The choices are not “Google as it currently exists” vs “a world without Google,” but rather “Google as it currently exists” and “Google as subject to stricter regulation.” There’s a fair case to be made that the world is worse than it would have been if the US had kept a tighter rein on Google.
What part of being a massive ad company whose raison d'etre is to collect as much personal information about you as possible (with limited or no consent) to enable other people to try to convince you to buy stuff even remotely a net positive for the world?
I would prefer to see ads for things that I want rather then see ads for stuff I couldn't care less about.
If I get convinced to buy useful things it's a win/win.
At a time of their choosing they can subject themselves to marketing material (yellow pages) or simple word-of-mouth amplified by the Internet. Treating "knowledge of your product/service" as a market commodity is bizarre and has overall negative effects on competition (more money buys more awareness equals more sales).
I used to buy a magazine called "Computer Shopper", which I heard about via word of mouth.
Even now I will go out of my way to watch adverts for things like films I might be interested in.
Need to be careful with word of mouth though, many adverts are spread by word of mouth, especially on the internet where people are paid to say "hey this new $product is great". Those are worse that clearly marked ads.
If ads are the only way people are able to learn about products, then there is clearly a massive failure of imagination, as well as innovation. People know what they need, and have always known. The concept of exploiting human psychology in order to sell more of a product to people who likely don't need it is a relatively recent development in human history. Plus you can just search for stuff you need in a search engine...
> People know what they need, and have always known
No we don't. I need a better mouse trap, but I already have mouse traps that work, so if you make a better one you need me to find out about it otherwise I'll just buy the same old not so good ones out of habit thinking they work as good as any other one. There are also problems that I don't even know I have. There are a lot of houses with terrible insulation that the owners really need some advertisement to get them to upgrade - it will pay off in just a few years.
These ads do not need to interrupt people's lives to make their cases. If that mouse trap is so good then people who are in the market will discover it by active searching, then spread their discovery. If the new insulation will save people money then that's newsworthy information and will be reported on in information outlets that people subscribe to. The idea that businesses paying to push awareness is the only way people might discover previously unknown products and services is absurd.
