Comment by aucisson_masque

> So "advertising", in terms of "informing the market of a product" and "connecting customers to businesses in mutually beneficial transactions", is fine I guess. Good, even. Stalking, lying, manipulating, and rent-seeking through dominance are wrong.

yes, take driving for instance. Some people drive responsibly, watch for bicycle and walkers, others drive like maniacs yet it's the same thing, driving a car.

It's not so much what you do with advertisement than how you do it, but advertisement in itself isn't bad.

Now if you take the worst example possible, Facebook, Google, Microsoft etc. all these companies behaving like rats trying to extract as much data as possible from you, it's going to look bad. But for instance, when we still had phonebook you would look for a plumber and some plumber who paid for advertisement would get a bigger space, in exchange the phonebook company would make money and everyone would receive phonebook for free.

That is an exemple of usefull advertisement.