The hatred of targeted advertising comes more out of what it systemically enables, and incentivizes. The mapping and realtime exploitation of UUID like-metadata collected through ubiquitous surveillance. Dossiers were the things of novels and intelligence agencies, nowadays marketers have sold people (even those like you) that somehow this gratuitous invasion of your privacy is normal, desirable, acceptable, and even more insidiously, always was.
Nothing could be further from the truth. You now have multiple dossier's that will follow you around the world. Some governments will deny you entry unless you surrender access to any social media accounts.
None of what is normal about the web today was ever at all what made the early web magical. You weren't monetized. You were reaching out and leaving something of yourself out there, and finding that there were like minded individuals to you the world over!
You also had the cloak of anonymity. Anything on the net was a non-issue. Controversial viewpoint? Whatever. Really need some insight on XYZ? Trawl the BBS's or a chat room.
Nothing was as centralized as it is now. People didn't do daft things like trying to put things you shouldn't on a fundamentally insecure network. People weren't so dependent on things that the ne net was more... Relaxed. Not a full time deal.
I have no illusions the magic has faded not just due to age and familiarity, but to what it has become, and what it has enabled the world to become.