[otabdeveloper4]

The internet is today's TV. Did you complain so much about TV ads back in the day too?

(Surveillance is a different thing, and no, advertising isn't the main driver for surveillance. State actors are, and ad tech is just piggybacking on what state actors want to do anyways.)

[6510]

An American visiting the Netherlands in the 80's was watching TV and asked if we purchased the (American) movie because of a lack of advertisements. When he learned it was just TV he was furious. It had never occurred to him that it wasn't necessary to constantly interrupt movies.

[xandrius]

To be fair when that was the case (before the Internet with ads) many people were not older than 18yo, so of course they wouldn't be complaining about stuff like that.

But yes, I hated adverts with passion as a child too. I didn't complain about the industry as a whole, I just hated their existence.

[speeder]

TVs all used to have an "adblocker" in the form of people just switching away from the channel for whatever time ads last on that channel.

This means that ad companies also had to be wildly creative to make people WANT to watch them.

[pjmlp]

On my TVs that kind of adblock still works perfectly fine.