Dang I'll just have to pay for 0.00000001ml of my morning coffee some other way! Thanks and please share by all means. One of my siblings rightly points out how terrible modern online ads are: autoplay, clutter, surveillance, intrusion, malware, etc.

They're totally right of course and my question is - how bad would all this be if the biggest ad market maker wasn't an actual literal convicted-by-multiple-courts criminal with the second biggest market maker not far behind? What if these guys had just followed the existing laws that are on the books?

Well I don't know but I bet it would be better somehow and the only way to find out is to finally start enforcing the law.

I'm sure ads would be better somehow if there were fewer criminals involved. One obvious theory is that Google is underpaying the publishers and the publishers have resorted to dirtier tricks in response. Another is that Google implements stuff everyone else hates because hello monopoly, where else are you going to go? Maybe the lawbreakers cause the slop.