It&#x27;s worse. In a typical tragedy of the commons scenario, common resource eventually get depleted and the responsible parties leave. Here, you can&#x27;t really <i>deplete</i> the commons, you can only compete for the share in it. Which means there is no limit within the system for the negative feedback loop that occurs.<p>Advertisers play a zero-sum game, committing more and more resources to one-up each other. They&#x27;re wasting ever increasing amount of fuel, minerals and man hours on epsilon marginal benefit. Those are real, tangible costs for society.