>not all ads are inherently evil.
All advertising is manipulation. Advertisers are bad and should feel bad.
How about search and email? All the major players are ad supported.
> essentially all of the ad supported sites I visit are diversions
And frankly, I even discovered products through ads I might have never found otherwise, even though that's not how it should be in a perfect world.
Today Google actively removes things from their index at the requests of various governments and entertainment industries. We have very little choice in search, leaving much of the web unlocatable.
One dimension of that distinction is intent - are you trying to persuade me having my best interests in mind (including not applying the technique if you're not sure about the consequences)? Then I'll probably be fine with it, and consider it an act of friendship. Are you trying to exploit me by convincing me to make self-harming decisions? I'd consider this an act of malice. An attack.
Advertising of all kinds would be fine if it performed just the information function - by honestly trying to paint the whole picture and give all relevant information to enable customers to make a rational choice. As it is today, it's squarely in the malicious, abusive zone.
I don't think it is. I'm connecting a producer and a consumer in both of their best interests. When the producer is the one who asks an entity like Facebook "who enjoys this author?" and advertises the new book to them, why is this evil?
People have desires, and without advertising it is very difficult to connect those people with producers who can fulfill them.
I think advertising isn't inherently evil, just some tactics used to persuade people with misinformation.
I might likely do the same for a search page if such a thing existed and the price was right. Until then I use startpage or duckduckgo to (attempt to) retain some anonymity.
If you already want something, then the ads are useless because the entire point of an ad is to manipulate me into buying something I didn't want to buy.
If I want to buy the book already because I am interested in the author's books then the books sell themselves without need for ads.