When your business depends almost entirely on ads, you have to do anything you can to keep from losing revenue from ads and that results in screwing anyone and everyone and hoping your size makes it impossible to lose if it gets out.
Not long ago, a debate of two Mexican "influencers" [1] was doing the rounds in Mexican networks where one guy was debating another about how Marketing in itself is an evil/bad career: That people who go into the Marketing field basically learn how to deceive and lie to people for the sake of profit.
I agree with that that assertion. I think the current marketing trends are very exploitative and highly misused. Marketing tools like Google, Facebook and Twitter (marketing tools in that their main goal is to take Ads to certain demographics) give advertisers incentives for bad behavior .
business is marketing, not some separable element. if you work, you're working for a marketer. as with any facet of socioeconomic life, the problem isn't marketing so much as it is the perceived prevalence and acceptability of exploitation and dishonesty, and how that influences our individual and collective behaviors.
marketing, at its core, is bringing to market a useful product or service and exchanging it with others who find it more valuable than the cost. this core is net-positive, but on top of that is plenty of leeway to create net-negatives.
we have norms and shared ethics for a reason (to rein in negatives & benefit from positives).
If you go maximizing short term revenue at any cost, you will get evil. It doesn't matter what market you are on.
It's not because of the ads. Plenty of business relied on ads for very long times in the past without going evil. They are evil because they want the profits.
When your business depends almost entirely on ads, you have to do anything you can to keep from losing revenue from ads and that results in screwing anyone and everyone and hoping your size makes it impossible to lose if it gets out.