> addiction is the wrong word

I used that word mostly because of the name of that book "Hooked".

> like the snake oil salesmen of yore

the problem is that you could run that guy out of town in the past and his damage was localised. Nowadays he can be the biggest player in town.

> Sidetrack: I had the idea recently that unscrupulous advertising might be a tragedy of the commons for the clients en masse, and harmful for the economy in general. Based on the intuition that lying can't be doing any good.

I'd go further and state that all advertising is bad, but I might be a touch too radical. Also it might be too late, given how strong "native advertising" and product placement now is. The content and the adverts have merged. LLMs might offer some brief respite as I think it will be hard to reliably advertise inside that content.

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card_zero 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Defining advert is hard. Store signage saying "we sell things here" seems essential information. Standing in the street and yelling about bananas and peppers? What if I step that up and yell that I have red hot peppers for sale? People have to know what's available, and I have to be free to sincerely talk it up. Then it can get intrusive and insincere, but you can only police that at the extremes of intrusion and dishonesty.

	▲	Quarrelsome 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There's no need for insane abstraction, we're talking about motivation for negative effects. Silicon valley hooks our children into unproductive activity where they are often fed misinformation because they want to advertise to them. Entertainment News only wins because it brings in more money for adverts. Nobody cares about a sign in a street or someone yelling in the street. The answer to this (if it exists) is to withdraw the motivations for spreading misinformation or find another means of tempering their impact. Idk what the solution is, I just find it odd we make our society obviously worse in order for someone to sell some diet pills or smth.