[imiric]

You're being very generous to adtech's role in this. Any undisclosed bias?

Adtech is very much instrumental in the race to extract as much value from attention as possible.

Adtech built a market for advertisers to target users based on interest (which may or may not be a scam[1]). Advertisers exploit this and other tools at their disposal (astroturfing, embedded marketing, etc.), but they're certainly not as vicious or out of control as what adtech can produce.

The publisher has my information if I give it to them or if they buy it somewhere. Adtech has it regardless of what I do. Why would a publisher even want a model of me when what they want is for their product to reach me on as many sites as possible, not just their own? An adtech company having as much information on everyone can serve many publishers, so it's no wonder the system is so centralized.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27531714