[AlexandrB]

Marketing is very often a dishonest attempt at persuasion. That's the whole issue. In the kindle example, the marketers aren't trying to persuade you to buy books by extolling their virtues, they're "gaming the system" to give themselves a leg up in ways that make the system worse and borderline unusable for good-faith actors.

Modern marketing frequently "rides the line" of what's legal and has little to no concern for ethics. Teach kids how to annoy their parents so they buy your toys? Sure![1] Prey on teenage girls' insecurities to sell them cosmetics? Of course![2] Lie to folks that they're going to "win big" with your gambling app? Why the hell not!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pester_power

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_advertising_on_teen...

[thwarted]

"We have this thing that's awesome that we can convince people to buy" eventually becomes "We can convince people to buy". It's unfortunate that "convince people to buy" can be successfully used independently of the quality or appropriateness of the item being sold.

[CPLX]

Yes, of course, there's often dishonest or misleading or exploitative marketing.

But that's not really what the problem is, since marketing would still be annoying even with that solved. The problem is much more akin to a tragedy of the commons type of thing, where, when everyone is shouting, you can't hear what you want to hear. Usually, that's the thing that bothers people. Billboards, unsolicted emails, etc.

I think for people who really get annoyed at marketing it helps to take a couple of steps back and look at how we fit into the natural world, everything that frustrates you about human society is something you'll find an analog for.

Things like brightly colored frogs that are poisonous, fur spots that look like eyeballs looking backwards, peacocks, bugs that looks like sticks, etc.

All of these are what's called emergent behavior, and they're intrinsic to all complex adaptive systems, like natural ecosystems, and human society itself.