[klabb3]

In a way yes. If you compare ads to purchasing products or even subscriptions, ads translate into attention and optimizing for addictive engagement. The same as microtransactions in games.

If you instead pay money, there’s even an incentive to reduce time spent, which translates into a focus on efficiency and customer focus.

The hard part is competing with free as in beer. It would be great if users learned more about the data that’s collected on them, in order to power the ad machine. If it was more concrete, I think more people would be deterred. Especially influential people.