Is this article a joke?<p>Suppose for the sake of the argument that instead of drawing an arrow from the consumer to ad tech, I drew an arrow to... any other market.<p>Couldn&#x27;t I make exactly the same argument?<p>People pay a &quot;consumption tax&quot; to fund every part of the products they buy.<p>That money flows into the pockets of myriad companies with intricate supplier&#x2F;client links.<p>Investors pour money into that market and create new companies hoping to make money back on their investment.<p>That happens when their investment manages to get market share by &quot;cannibalizing&quot; competitors.<p>Some investors lose their shirt. Some companies go bust.<p>My question is: so what?<p>It seems like there&#x27;s little more in the article, not to mention the complete absence of any numbers to back the claims that are made or give a sense of scale.<p>So my conclusion is that what the author really wants to talk about is how these bad companies own private data, yadda yadda. Nothing new here.<p>So I guess the author is just doing this to push his own ad-free product.<p>Inception.