[AlexandrB]

Maybe, maybe not. The mental effects of products optimized for delivering advertising don't seem to be great for people or society (see: Meta's products, Twitter, TikTok).

[whimsicalism]

Cigarettes cause cancer. Some people (not me) actually get value from ads and AFAIK they don't cause cancer.

[kadoban]

No direct cancer, no, they only affect what you think, feel, say, eat, drink and do.

Edit: also who you vote for, what laws are passed, who goes to prison, who lives and who dies. But no they don't _directly_ give you cancer.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

This actually is a very valid argument. Cigarettes actually provide value to the user. Yes, there are negatives, but the user typically knows those and decides the upside is worth the risk.

Do people know the risks of being profiled by ad companies? I am not sure most people can even begin to understand the associated risk. The few attempts to show people what companies know about you were shut down pretty hard.

[matheusmoreira]

> Cigarettes cause cancer.

So did the ads that told people to smoke. They were banned precisely because they were driving behavior that causes harm.

[afavour]

Cigarettes also feel great to the people smoking them.

[themitigating]

Do you have evidence as to the negative mental effects and how bad they are?

[jeromegv]

It’s been discussed for years in dozens of articles on hacker news and everywhere. At this point the burden is on you to show us on how being plugged to social media 24-7 is not harmful.

[themitigating]

No one is using it 24/7, this is about ads not social media use, and the burden isn't on disproving it just because people have talked about it often