This may not have been explicitly listed, but a user-centric communication medium does not perpetrate psychological warfare against its users and reward distracting them, stalking and profiling them, or exploiting their naïvete. It empowers them by giving them access to information on their terms. This is definitional.
If advertising were to reach the quality and targettedness that they were telling you about things you genuinely wanted, it would be a useful service. Kind of like advertising as a recommendation engine. That would be quite people centric.
I don't think we will get there though.
I agree with his characterization of advertising, and that to be "people centric", there would be no ads by definition.
And I only say that because I believe freedom of expression - and that includes commercial expression - is sacrosanct. In my opinion, a truly "people centric" platform allows my right to serve whatever I want (within the bounds of the law) to supercede anyone else's personal ethics.
The same principle applies to "people centric".
I think you keep inserting "ban" into what you're responding to when no one is saying that. Try rereading the article and the parent comments without that bias.