Advertising isn't the original sin. Surveillance is.Pluralistic: The technopolitics of ad-tech (19 Oct 2026)

The internet's original sin is not advertising but surveillance, a decision to fuse the two that was chosen rather than inevitable.

Plenty of people blame advertising for the internet's surveillance dystopia. But advertising itself is not the problem; surveillance is. For centuries advertising needed no spying at all. The fusion is recent, and it was a choice.

Surveillance is a political choice

Langdon Winner's 'Do Artifacts Have Politics?' argued that technology carries political leanings. Robert Moses built low bridges on Long Island parkways precisely so buses could not pass under them, keeping poor Black people away from the beaches.

But advertising and surveillance are not bound together like that. The internet is fully compatible with privacy. Politicians simply stopped making and enforcing privacy law, and ad-tech companies moved in. The fusion is a decision, not a law of nature.

Surveillance ads barely pay off

The industry insists surveillance ads are sharper. In reality, they deliver only about 5% more value than contextual ads. Google and Meta hold roughly 80% of display advertising, letting them overcharge advertisers and underpay publishers.

Meanwhile, 80% of web users run privacy blockers, so surveillance ads often never even load. Publishers get less, advertisers see less, and the only winners are the monopolies.

Contextual ads are the better path

Contextual ads match content: fridge ads next to cooking articles, roadside diner signs on highways. Publishers know their own material better than any platform ever could, so they should control the matching.

A Dutch public broadcaster found that dropping surveillance ads actually raised publisher revenue. No user tracking means no consent pop-ups either. A federated system without middlemen is technically feasible.

Surveillance ad-tech is built for middlemen and monopolists, degrades media quality, blocks privacy laws, and feeds authoritarian states. Contextual advertising rewards creators, supports diverse voices, and needs no weak privacy environment. Surveillance ads should be banned.