The internet became usable after implementing the Pi-Hole. So much noise, so much wasted bandwidth, so many unnecessary lookups, gone with a Raspberry Pi and a few packages.
While other commenters are getting into the technical weeds of things, the reality is that the OP is right. Ads don’t inform, they manipulate. They’re an abusive forced-marriage that we cannot withdraw from even with ad and script blockers, because so much of society is built upon the advertising sector that it’s impossible to fully escape them. People like the OP and us are mocked for moves to block billboards in space as being “alarmist” or out of touch, yet driving along any highway in the USA will bombard you with ads on billboards, on busses, on rideshares, on overly-large signs with glowing placards, in radio and television, on streaming providers who raise our rates on what used to be ad-free packages.
Advertising is cancer, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not. Let’s get rid of it.
That's the most "hacker" newsy thing to me. Whenever advertising critical articles come up, there's a large percentage of people commenting pro advertising. Yeah, I get it, you don't bite the hand that feeds you but come on. Does working in ad tech somehow influence your brains like the ones you are targeting?
My theory is that the people who fight against changing the status quo are just fundamentally opposed to change itself, not necessarily supporting the system as it currently stands. They know the ins and outs of the current system, and changing it means they have to dump knowledge and re-learn things - which they're fiercely opposed to doing. The enemy you know, over the enemy you don't, in a manner of speaking.
Those of us who can visualize futures starkly different than a continuance of the present day are a threat to those people who demand indefinite complacency and an unchanging world. Unfortunately for them, the universe is chaos and change is inevitable - so finding your own stability amidst the chaos is a skill more people need, such that necessary change might be embraced.
I've made a product. The people who use it, like it. But I have no online following or presence, and I'm really not the kind of charismatic person who could build one. All the "community" places where I could share it in good faith are incredibly hostile to self promotion, I think because of the wave of people selling vibecoded openai wrappers as language tutors.
I can pay £40 for reddit ads, and while it has negative ROI, it gives me lots of feedback that I can use to iterate. Sure, my project seems to be a commercial dead end - people find it valuable, but most people don't find it quite valuable enough to pay for the high cost of translation - but I still think those ads had a lot of value.
That said, I use an adblocker myself, I wish more intelligent people worked on rockets rather than targeting algorithms, and I do agree that ads have a negative effect in a lot of places - it's just that they do have a real (and IMO moral) utility in some places. If you banned advertising for everything, you'd just encourage bribing moderators to let you self-promote or ensure only people with existing followings can make things.
(it's https://nuenki.app, if anyone's curious)
Billboards, commercials, and advertisements fall under "advertising", the act of trying to coerce consumers into buying a thing or patronizing a product through manipulation.
Promotion, on the other hand, actively involves someone talking directly with someone else about their product, or using some other form of demonstrable evidence of your product or works.
Let's take a few examples:
* An artist sharing their latest work to their social media feeds is promotion, while shoving it in your face with incentives to buy it at their website on a random forum post is advertising.
* A lawncare company that asks a client if they could leave a small sign behind promoting their services after a job is fine, but buying advertising time on a television spot with CGI graphics and staged visuals is not.
* Demonstrating your product at a kiosk at a mall or event is promotion, but spending money on a pre-roll YouTube spot with imagery deliberately cultivated to induce purchase is advertising
I am fine with promoting something; I am not fine with advertising something. Promoting often just takes time, which anyone can reasonably do; advertising costs money, and equating that to speech means admitting money is speech, which I think most folks would agree is a very bad thing.
If you're encountering issues with promoting your product, it's likely because it's coming off as advertising. Instead of saying "I built a new app over at this URL and would love your feedback", be more specific with what you're asking for: "Is my business model viable?", "Is the UX legible and accessible by folks using screen readers?", "Could someone try penetrating my tech stack before I go live?"
Promotion as a way of soliciting feedback has to be done in a specific way, else it is advertising. That's why forums and sites are very particular about anti-advertising/anti-spam/anti-promotion rules. As long as it's not the equivalent of shouting, "HEY, LOOK AT ME" through a megaphone that's unsolicited by the forum or venue inhabitants, generally most folks in my experience are going to be fine with it.