Fwiw, I work in an industry I've come to abhor (computer vision for security, often euphemised to "smart cities"). I hold my nose and wear my golden handcuffs reluctantly, and "technology transfer" FOSS into garbage products for incompetent middle managers by day, then talk shit about them at night to feel better.

Perhaps the author is in a similar situation?

All of us are "living in the glass house" [1]. If you're taking a strong position, I expect people to be a) self-aware b) state their biases/hypocricy upfront.

It is the holier than thou ("Look how bad things are. tsk tsk") that I cant stand.

The message would have been much better if was like "We live in this economy, and wouldnt it be nice if we could .. oh and by the way, I am part of the problem and here's what I'm doing about it."

The article is no different than a drug dealer saying "the drug problem in this country is out of control.

[1]: People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

FWIW, we don't do any tracking with Buzzsprout Ads. We can tell you which podcasts accepted the ads, how many plays the episodes received, but we don't track the end user at all.

Again, not knocking on the business plan, but how you square that with your stated position?

> But over the past ~30 years, the internet has become much more commercial.

You work for a company doing podcasts, distributed over internet, which lets creators make money. It is the definition of commercial.

> Every page is optimized for engagement, so your attention can be resold to ad companies.

You can rewrite that "page" with "content", and then how different is your podcast? "Every content (podcast) is optimized for engagement, so your attention can be resold to ad companies".

> We can tell you which podcasts accepted the ads

How do you know which podcasts accepted ads? Yes, by tracking. To be honest, it isnt a bad word at all - but you made it to be a bad word, and I'm pointing that out.

EDIT: Your company uses GTM, which I'm sure you look at as the Head of Marketing.