Kinda seems like you just wanted to assert the person you're responding to is ignorant, when in actuality news papers advertisements are very inherently less "dark" than ads on websites. News papers are static content - they are in no way interactive, which is normally where "dark" advertisements live. Click a thing, see an add. News papers cannot dynamically throw ads into your face, where websites can.

But yes, in previous generations bad things were bad, too.

Your point that ads have always existed is well taken, but if newspapers looked like a local news site today people wouldn't have bought them (its more akin to the free weekly tabloids than a real newspaper). Newspapers used to make money through classifieds in addition to subscriptions. If only there were local-oriented services newspapers could provide - I hope someone figures out a better model soon.

Newspapers had a monopoly on distributing written information back in the day: printing presses, typesetters, journalists, delivery staff, etc are all expensive. Now anyone can self-publish on Medium. Technology has changed the game, and we whatever business models work in the future probably won't be the same as those in the past.