And what have we gained from it? Toxic unconstrained social networks, more methods to make everyone feel uglier and worthless, endlessly consume random crap without producing anything of value, and robotic hamburger making shops that no one asked for and are somehow IT related?

This site, for one, is funded by job ads. No one forces you to use it, or any other "toxic" site that makes you feel "ugly and worthless". If you think the entire web (or the entire ad funded web) is toxic and makes you feel "ugly and worthless" what are you doing here?

I don't think anyone would have a problem with advertising if all advertising was as respectful and unobtrusive as HN's job ads.

Do you think Apple's changes will affect HN's ad business?

No. The discussion is about ads in general.

Vacation homes in Lake Tahoe, the most important thing in life.

By your logic the conclusion is that the modern web is heavily cancerous, which arguably it is. There are other ways to pay for innovation and tools, to be preventative-proactive so cancer can't exist or at least not thrive.

Clearly those unspecified other ways aren't working well enough, or ads wouldn't be so dominant.

The problem is that the advertising way is "cheating" in the sense that its victims are not aware they're being exploited; otherwise this article wouldn't have been written and the proposed UI change (which aims to shine light on what the advertising industry is doing with your personal data) wouldn't cause such an uproar.

There are areas where a totally "free market" doesn't work in the long-term benefit of society and regulation typically steps in. This is why for example health and safety is a thing (even though not caring about that would make businesses more profitable) or that in most civilized countries you are not allowed to dump toxic waste in the river even though it's cheaper than paying to have it recycled.

economic engine !== automatically good. The Triangle Trade was an economic engine, too.

Given the number of newspapers and blogs closing every year, it doesn't actually seem to be the case that adtech successfully pays for the "modern Web".

Lots of businesses go broke, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the idea of paying for things as "cancer", similarly the fact that some websites go broke doesn't mean we should dismiss ads as "cancer".

I was replying to someone who asserted that adtech pays for "the modern web". I dispute that statement. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and nobody has ever provided evidence that adtech actually pays for what we know as the Web today. We get lots of assertions as to such, but never proof.