There's a world of difference between announcing the existence of a product to potentially interested demographics, and abusing people's privacy by collecting their personal data in order to build a profile of them so they can be micro-targeted by psychologically manipulative content that is misleading or downright false—oh, and their profile is now in perpetuity exchanged in dark markets, and is also used by private and government agencies for spreading political propaganda, and for feeding them algorithmic content designed to keep them glued to their screens so that they can consume more ads that they have no interest in seeing... And so on, and so forth.

Whatever happened to product catalogs? Remember those? I'm interested in purchasing a new computer, so I buy the latest edition of Computer Shoppers Monthly. Companies buy ad space there, and I read them when I'm interested. The entire ecommerce industry could work like that. I go on Amazon, and I search for what I want to buy. I don't need algorithms to show me what I might like the most. Just allow me to search by product type, brand, and specifications, and I'm capable of making a decision. It would really help me if paid and promoted reviews weren't a thing, and I could only see honest reviews by people who actually purchased the product. This is a feature that ecommerce sites can offer, but have no incentive to.