It's not just that; the US just doesn't believe much in regulating businesses, even if they're demonstrably harming society. They really believe "The Invisible Hand" will make everything better in the end.
> the US just doesn't believe much in regulating businesses
The US has tons of strange regulations like banning car manufacturers from selling cars themselves without a middleman or dictating what kind of showerheads are allowed to be sold.
The US is nothing if not inconsistent. The car-selling thing is due to state laws, not federal, and really the result of corruption: the dealerships are politically connected. The showerhead thing is due to environmentalism, so the US does sometimes make regulations with that impetus. There's no environmental aspect to banning targeted advertisements; it's purely social.
Look at your adblock stats. Now imagine most of these scripts probably would have loaded even more stuff if you didn't block them.
Depending on the sites I visit, I have like 30% of my web traffic removed.
AdBlock is an environmental thing!
And true, I don't wanna know how much these "real time bidding on ad space" things cost to operate, energy wise.
Yeah I don't think there is much hope there so long as corporations are donors to political campaigns (Something that still looks weird when I type it, but presumably doesn't sound strange to a US person).
Sadly, it’s not exclusive to the US. In Brussels we might jokingly dismiss the lobbyists and their think tanks, but they fund politicians just the same; but admittedly via non-profits and other more intricate schemes. I’m very proud of some EU accomplishments, but we’re mired in lobbying too.