[smikhanov]

To be honest, in the pre-internet era, paid paper copy of FT had ads too. The delivery mechanisms for ads in the internet era are trillion times nastier and more annoying, of course. By the standards of today’s web, the print ad for Cartier on the second page of paper FT looks almost classy, interesting to read.

[malfist]

But there's a big difference. The paper copy didn't harvest data from you, didn't infect you, didn't spy on you or steal resources from your computer or internet bandwidth.

All the advertiser knew about you was you were a subscriber to FT, and maybe what the _average_ demographic of an FT subscriber was. Nothing about you personally.

[parineum]

The paper copy did do that, just not as individualized. People would choose which publications to put their ads in based on data collected about their subscribers.

The job of ad men has always been just as much about were to put the ad as much as what the ad was.

[Dylan16807]

"just not as individualized" is an enormous "just". Each ad is based on the total audience for a single publication. No fine-grained filtering, no personal dossiers.

And none of the rest of that list of bad things happens.