&gt; advertising is much more powerful&#x2F;effective today than it ever was before<p>There&#x27;s just so much information available to us now through the internet&#x2F;TV&#x2F;radio that it has really become exhausting to conduct the necessary critical analysis to defend against malicious ads. <i>Who</i> is funding this advertisement and <i>why</i> - how does the value flow back into their pocket at the end of the day? If the ad industry keeps the firehose on, we get tired of asking these questions, and some ads will inevitably get through our mental defenses.<p>Sometimes biased&#x2F;misleading ads are pretty easy to spot, such as in most Tech Crunch&#x2F;VentureBeat articles where the product or service that is being &quot;objectively reviewed&quot; or covered on a seeming whim is clearly sponsored content. In some other cases its much harder...PG&#x27;s 2005 essay &quot;The Submarine&quot; [1] is a great read and continues to gain relevance 10 years later. PR&#x2F;ad agencies manufacture what is hot and trending, and it&#x27;s usually incredibly hard to determine how or why.<p>So I&#x27;ve engaged two different strategies to help deal with malicious and&#x2F;or deeply submerged ads:<p>(1) Disconnecting from many social media sites that serve as media&#x2F;info aggregators. Facebook, snapchat, and instagram all had to go. I stay on HN because I find the community to be a bit more ad conscious and averse, but it always pays to remember that HN is both a great tool for discussion and a marketing tool for YC.<p>(2) Engaging friends and family heavily before making any sort of major &quot;upgrade&quot; decision. Perhaps your friends in said city would have had some interesting advice to share with you about your move had you asked for their frank and honest opinions beforehand.<p>One negative side effect of the constant barrage of ads&#x2F;info is a certain critical, skeptical, and frankly negative mindset that has become SOP when digesting any new information. It&#x27;s really a problem of trust at the end of the day, which is the fabric of any healthy and productive unit, whether that be a relationship, a family, or a society. It&#x27;s not a new problem, but I feel like it&#x27;s a hard and important one that has increased in difficulty with the rise of the internet.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;submarine.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;submarine.html</a>