[Aurornis]

I'm baffled that so many people think advertising is a recent invention.

Do you genuinely believe there were economies anything like the modern luxuries we enjoy that also didn't have advertising? That advertising was an add-on that appeared at a later date?

We have plenty of archaeological evidence of advertising in ancient civilizations.

Advertising isn't new.

[johnnienaked]

I didn't mean to imply it was a recent invention. However, the almost total centralization of advertising in a few companies on the internet IS new. Their parasitism and malevolent monopolistic omnipotence is pretty obvious to anyone who runs any kind of business with an internet presence. This severely inflates advertising costs and transfers profit that should be going to businesses who actually add value to companies that simply exploit their control of the platforms. Competition being introduced into this space, which at this point is only possible via government force, would make advertising cheaper and bring more exposure to companies and their products, which I fail to see as anything but a good thing for the economy.