[wpietri]

Totally. Advertising is fundamentally about distracting someone so you can put money in your pocket without regard to the impact on that someone.

I have a lot of complaints about, say, McDonald's, but they make their money through giving people something of value to them. Advertising legitimizes the making of money in a way unrelated to value delivery. (The same is true about a lot of finance.)

When you combine that with up-and-to-the-right numerical goals and standard executive incentives, over time you pretty much guarantee what Doctorow calls "enshittification". Delivering value becomes at best a side effect of the system.

[AlecSchueler]

Aren't McDonald's one of the biggest advertisers in the world? They sell poor quality food on the basis of brand recognition.

[praptak]

That's unrelated to the point GP is making. The point is that they are not incentivized to put poison into burgers to get money from the poison industry.

[courseofaction]

Well put. Ads are the poison of information.