It is not simply that advertisements are evil, although they can be, by being manipulative, subliminal, and used for propaganda. Simply offering goods and services for sale is not what the advertising industry does.

Rather it is the overt and covert harvesting of personal information, the industry of selling, sharing, and parsing that data, and the provision of that data to state actors, criminals, and business organizations, for uses other than advertising, that is evil.

From Orwellian fascism, to blackmail, to inside business information used to profit from that data, horrible crimes against humanity are newly potentiated, furthered, and worsened. This is not advertising, but surveillance, and the collection of personal information by 'free' software and services is the tip of the economic and political manipulation iceberg that is a real threat to the free people and nations of the world.

While governments are variously limited in what kinds of information collection they are able to undertake legally, these frameworks are easily bypassed by 'offshoring' such data collection, retention, and manipulation services, which are provided by private companies, like Google, that overtly claim to gather our personal information in order to provide targeted advertising.

It is for this reason that I use this name, valued-customer.