Do you not recognize the irony of asking this question on Hacker News? And for an additional layer of irony, Hacker News doesn't advertise either (that I'm aware of).

HN regularly ban/kill political topics. Good or bad some topics don't belong here even if popular among users. Things like: "I want to be a governorn of Y region or representative of X country, here is my program" either won't get any traction or be killed. Buying ads is the cheapest and most effective way of getting eyes to your ideas. It's great it became more accessible. No wonder ruling elites in Europe want it banned tough.

Actually HN does advertise. Just yesterday I saw an add in the Google search bar for "news.ycombinator.com" on Firefox focus while searching "hacker news".

No. Irony implies expectation.

Do you expect people are all going to come online, visit HN or other forums, and then discuss politics willingly with potential candidates?

Do what that progressive in New York did to challenge the #4 Democrat in the house and win. (Osario-Cortez)

She did exactly that.

Campaign was as follows:

Identify policy platform and benefit to winning majority of voters.

Identify win numbers.

Two of hers were Medicare for All and Living Wages.

Organize volunteers to canvass. Break it down and insure coverage.

Canvass, hold events, town hall, rallies, etc...

Continue, until win numbers plausibly met.

Continue.

Win election, which she did.

The beauty of that campaign is the strategy I put here was announced and implemented. All well ahead of the election. Was nearly a two year effort.

No big money, no big media, no extensive marketing campaign.

The single most important thing that team did was actually ask people for their votes.

A ton of campaigns do not actually do that. They imply and or talk about how bad it can be if you do not vote.

Big difference. And it takes much more of a spend to do too.

This works at any scale.

Sanders showed it in 2016. Same overall approach.

Won 22 States and 45 percent of Delegates doing mostly that.

On a national level, some AD spends are needed, but are not the core of the campaign.

People to people politics work, but that is a clear vote for politicking, not the usual vote against we see most of the time.

On FOR type issues, very large numbers of people will invest FOR, because they see a clear return potential.

Without that, yes more ADS and such are needed, because the ask for vote part is not as prominent, often implied.

My point here is we totally have ways of politicking that work and do not require massive political contributions and or ADS.

I perfer them and would gladly regulate political ADS.

Do the same for perscription drugs, just because doing that makes about as much sense.

All those things are very expensive and someone without significant backing won't be able to afford them. Ads are cheaper and more effective, especially when you're just starting and don't know if you should invest more of your time and money.

Buying votes is way more expensive than asking for them is. About 30 people are in these mid term general elections doing exactly what I put there. None of them have significant means. Most of them beat the people doing it "the very expensive way."

You are not wrong, buying an office is not cheap. People lacking significant backing, or personal means cannot afford to do that.

That is not the only way to do politicking.

I am not wrong either.

It's not about buying the office. It's about getting your message to be seen without investing huge resources. No one with a job can afford organizing rallies and laying significant groundwork unless they are already rich, backed by major party or otherwise having most of their time free to do political activity. Ads are cheap way to try to get people to look at your message. It challenges monopoly of the media and gives platform to new players.

I am not sure why you talk about buying votes. Getting people to look at your message is not buying votes. Making crazy promises like free cash for everyone or flats for everyone as human right is.

Untrue.

Again, there are people in general elections who did exactly what I put here.

There are mutiple ways of politicking out there.