Here's an ongoing example that should get someone put in jail:
Pharmaceutical companies target ads for addictive drugs at the people that are most likely to become addicted to those drugs.
(For the victim of this that I know personally, it wasn't painkillers. As far as I know, there have been no repercussions for the manufacturer of the drug in question or the ad networks.)
See also: The millions of comments on any thread on HN that discusses SEO, dark patterns, cookie consent, or apps that interfere with advertising revenue streams.
The argument is closer to "encouraging and profiting from illegal drug abuse is not 'responsible corporate stewardship'".
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/15/key-takeawa...
There's no point in additional discourse on the issue. We may as well be arguing about whether cigarettes cure lung disease.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa
Even for cities that do not outright ban it, outdoor advertisement is heavily regulated in many parts of the world. Compare you typical european and asian big city street. Clearly many people do not like ads even without the tracking.
> People want ads
Says who? Sounds like rationalization from someone who works in the industry. I could be wrong.
I actually don't really mind ads as long as the volume of them isn't too great. But I greatly mind the tracking that comes along with them.
> at least so far the dystopia hasn't arrived
I disagree. From my point of view, we reached the dystopia stage quite a while ago.
That seems unfortunate. And futile anyway, because the truth is that society as a whole actually wants advertising, in all its forms. We may find individual ads annoying but we still make our purchase decisions based on those ads and use those channels to hawk our own wares.
[1] The truth is that the big ad-driven internet companies have been, on the whole, actually fairly good stewards of this stuff. People don't trust them out of principle (or, just as often, tribalism), but at least so far the dystopia hasn't arrived.