Buying second hand is only working up to a point is not sustainable if larger parts of the population did it. It also doesn't magically solve issues with the items themselves, like smart TVs or cars (ffs?!?!) tracking you. I'm not sure how easy it is to find working, second hand dumb TVs nowadays.

There are two issues with ads: ad display (manipulation) and tracking (privacy invasion). You can easily get rid of the first problem, for the most part. The second one is to some degree also handled by ad blockers, but is to some degree very hard to completely escape. Not buying things new won't automatically stop of tracking.

Support local. Get a pihole. Guard your privacy. Avoid the algorithm apps. Switch to grapheneos. Vote.

Yes it is, at least an important part. I'm buying very little in general, and it's either second hand or local most of the time - when I have to order things for repairs, farm or household, there's enough smaller online shops in my country or at least another European country. I despise big brands, big retail, big anything and try to stay away.

I'm blocking ads - and when I happen to see one on a friend's screen I'm confused - this is what people are putting up with between trying to read an article or listening to their music?

Not exactly. Don't get me wrong. It helps. But the solution to someone breaking into every house on your block can't stop at just locking your own front door. The marketing industry must end.

There is substantial tracking when shopping offline too. Retailers use cameras with facial recognition, sentiment analysis, and reportedly some are even beginning to use dynamic pricing.

It's also examining one's own personal consumption patterns. The more one engages with it, the more exposure he or she has.

I use neutral DNS, a variant of ad block on my router, waterfox ad block, ublock origin, and noscript. So I'm doing my part.

But yes the ultimate fuck you is just not buy stuff. I mean these days, if I do see an advert, maybe I will think about it, if when rarely it gets my attention, and then I'll forget and go on to do other stuff. I think the only thing I bought this year was a video game, and that was because I could get it for $4 since I sold all my CSGO skins. A lot of these companies shot themselves in the foot by making online shopping the major outlet. Personally, I can't be bothered to make an account nor do I really trust anything I don't see in person. Avoiding big brands is more difficult now since they rebrand the same stuff; think of Trader Joes.

I fix as much stuff as I can to avoid buying stuff, partially to take advantage of my skills and partially out of spite. Like my mouse, switches went bad, I upgraded them for a few bucks. Or the tea kettle stopped working, ripped off the panel where the switch is, turns out the plastic bit wasn't making good contact to trigger it; modified it to work.

When you say "Solution" your endgoal would have to be that the ad creep ends and this isn't done through personal consumption fir various reasons.

I start by telling you i am already participating in ethical consumption for decades you know what changed? Nothing.

1. The adcreep isn't the main problem our economy rewards cut throught capitalism.There are already enough reasons to stop buying shit but people keep doing it.
2. Second Hand, i already by almost exclusivly second hand and so many others do that so second hand prices where raised so much that it often isn't cheaper anymore. If second hand became so popular that the industry needs to react they will just addcreep for "second hand"
3. Repairing things is easier said than done, things aren't made to last long, repairing them is very timeconsuming if you have no idea how it is done. Spending money and freetime on something that you can just buy new for cheap is unrealistic on a bigger scale.
4. buying from smaller brands from where? Any supermarket belongs to a megacorp. Just research what brands belongs to which supercorp. You almost can't escape it. And even if you buy from small unifiliated brands once they get too popular big corp is just scooping them up.

I could go on and on but the main problem is that you would need a critical amount of people doing the same as you and they will not people will take the easiest way and you can be mad about it but you shouldn't blame them. The crux of the issue is how the economy works. We need regulation that forces companies to act responsible anything else is doomed to fail. I am not saying don't consume ethical where you can but if you want to really have an impact you need to focus on politics.

Not shopping on line will most often cause consumers to spend more time to find what they are looking for locally and will cost them more money. Whichever way we go (on line or off line), it is going to cost us in some way.