OP proposed that advertising is psychologically manipulating people into believing their lives are incomplete and asked whether that is a harm. You conflated this manipulation with built-in desires; it is not that.
By analogy, it is as though OP argued that deliberately withholding food from prisoners to cause them distress from hunger is a harm and you are countering that OP may as well describe hunger itself as harmful.
> Most people don’t subscribe to the Buddhist point of view, though.
Buddhism does not consider desires an inherently harmful. Being captured by desires and constantly craving can be, but that's not the same as the mere existence of desires that can arise.
Does categorizing something as harmful depend on the agent? Shouldn’t the harm exist quite apart from whether or not someone deliberately inflicted it, and regardless of their motivations?
Perhaps you’re reading more into the original comment than I am, but what I took exception with was the notion that the type of emotions aroused by most ads are harmful. I don’t think it’s comparable with withholding food, in either the level of control or the magnitude.
Yes, you are right that desire is harmful. Not only Buddhism but most world religions address the harm of desire. But the argument about advertising is that it plays on our desires, for commercial gain. And then FB marshals other issues we face to feed us advertising, for their commercial gain. It's just a matter of following the money.
