Re-reading your comment, it strikes me as extremely anti-capitalistic.
> Those behavior changes are intended to make you give the buyer more money than they paid.
That is literally the goal of every merchant everywhere. They need to sell stuff for more than they paid, otherwise they don't make money. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with this. They aren't forcing you to buy things, their buyers think that what they're selling is worth the amount they're selling it for (or they wouldn't buy it). This is the fundamental basis on which all commerce everywhere operates.
As for the Las Vegas angle, that's complete bullshit. Gambling operates very differently from commerce, and there's really no basis to make this comparison at all. Seeing an ad that's relevant to your interests has pretty much nothing in common with gambling beyond the fact that both of them involve money at some point.
An ad that's relevant to your interests is fine, but that's the best case scenario. How many people's lives were improved by clicking on "one weird trick" ads? Those ads sucked money out of people's pockets for no reason. Running experiments to find out the most effective ways to get people to hand over their money is a valid business practice, but that strategy in no way depends on the product adding value to your life. Anything that can be invented to get you as an individual to click on a buy button will be invented, whether it's good for you or not.
Profit-seeking has led to lots of progress in this world, but its record is decidedly mixed. Keep your eyes open.
"One weird trick" ads aren't targeted advertising, they're advertising based on psychological tricks. It's a whole different ballgame. Targeted advertising is based around "if we show ads relevant to the user's interests, the user is more likely to click them and buy stuff", which is a win all around. Ads based on psychological tricks is "can we trick the user into doing something that's harmful to them but beneficial to us?", which is of course not good for users. Conflating the two advertising techniques doesn't serve any purpose at all.
While they're welcome to improve their odds in our imperfect-information game, we should also be allowed to play in our interest by disallowing them information.
This is not about the total gain of both sides: Almost every transaction is positive sum. However; why should I simply accept the 90/10 distribution of the excess in their favor when I can aim for a favorable distribution for myself too?
Blocking Facebook ads on Facebook isn't denying them any information at all. As I already said in another comment, Facebook already has all this information. All you're doing by blocking their ads is refusing to see the ad, you're not protecting your privacy at all.
And I'm also confused by your talk about favorable distribution. Isn't seeing ads relevant to your interests better than seeing ads unrelated to your interests? The problem with targeted tracking isn't that it's targeted, it's that it relies on information whose collection is a privacy violation. But when we're talking about a company that you've already voluntarily given massive amounts of behavioral data to, then you've voluntarily given up your privacy so there's no violation going on.
> Those behavior changes are intended to make you give the buyer more money than they paid.
That is literally the goal of every merchant everywhere. They need to sell stuff for more than they paid, otherwise they don't make money. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with this. They aren't forcing you to buy things, their buyers think that what they're selling is worth the amount they're selling it for (or they wouldn't buy it). This is the fundamental basis on which all commerce everywhere operates.
As for the Las Vegas angle, that's complete bullshit. Gambling operates very differently from commerce, and there's really no basis to make this comparison at all. Seeing an ad that's relevant to your interests has pretty much nothing in common with gambling beyond the fact that both of them involve money at some point.