It doesn't matter if there is no telemetry (and if this were to be normalized, there would eventually be telemetry. Such are the economic incentives in the ad industry. When it's possible for telemetry to exist, advertisers will desire it and some engineer will eventually decide to profit from implementing it) Advertising is propaganda inherently contrary to the interests of anybody subjected to it. It's rife with psychological manipulation. FM radio ads have no telemetry, but can anybody seriously deny that FM radio ads are sleazy as fuck?

E.g. would we better off if we couldn't advertise that free software alternatives exist?

If anybody needs proof of this, install an adblocker and observe as your life does not fall apart despite your now limited exposure to advertising.

That is naive thinking. Advertising exists to reduce friction in the market. I'm a lot more likely to buy something if I know it exists. I won't go to the movies unless I've seen a trailer, for instance.

Maybe installing an adblocker doesn't super negatively impact your life but if we completely stop advertising as a practice then spending would slow and all of our lives would be worse off.

Far from negatively impacting your life at all, blocking ads significantly improves it. Try it out yourself. I think you'll find that through various interactions with the general public, people who aren't paid to lie about products or services, you still find out about movies worth watching.

Ads need not be scummy, and just because some are doesn't mean all are. Ads _can_ be primarily informational without being "scummy" or "sleazy".

Sure, yes, most of the ad industry is currently about being manipulative and invasive, but it need not be that way. We, as a society, need to figure out how to stop it from being that way across the board, because as you said, good actors will be at a disadvantage to sleazy actors.

(To the extent that bad products get more enthusiastic advertising, in a perverse sense viewing ads might actually make you a more informed consumer if you deliberately avoid any product with slick marketing. However I cannot advocate for such an approach because I think the theoretical advantage here is washed out by the practical reality that advertising will effect you in ways contrary to your own interest, but in line with corporate interests.)

Here are some examples from a 2010 model railroader. https://photos.app.goo.gl/RvRzECgs7MaTo7tP8

Some, especially the Kato model Amtrak one, have some aspects of an aspirational ad, but I don't know if I'd condem them as such. They usually, as the Kato one has, information about the specific items that are now available and often some "ambiance" information that many hobbiests, especially people new to the hobby like to look at.

I don't mind ads like these as they're not designed to make you feel as though you need to purchase something to be better and they're not in a public space. They're they're to matter-of-factly says a service or product is available.

I could also show you the local pennysaver or Craigslist. All of those are also add, but they're not the "aspirational" kind. They're more matter-of-factly that someone is selling so (used) item, or provides some kind of service, or that there is a garage or estate sale at such-and-such address. How else would this information be made readily and easily available?

Specialized magazines (hobbyist, regional, etc) seem to hit the absolute right balance for this. People advertising in them know who they're advertising to, in general, and people picking them up know what they're getting; some interesting content (hopefully) and some ads relevant to their hobby/region.

Online ads have gone way, way, wayyyyy too far in getting into the scummy hyper-profiling, and they're not even selling stuff I'm then interested in! So what's the point? I mean, in practical terms the point is to try and differentiate their profiles of me from other people's profiles of me -- marketing techniques applied to the business of marketing -- but in real terms, who (aside from the companies building these profiles) benefits?

I'm personally holding out hope that the US will adopt a "you own your data and can determine its uses" legal framework, and bring the hammer down on anyone amassing profiles on the populace. Google, Equifax, Facebook, the million anonymous marketing and list-selling firms, all that stuff needs to come under heavy regulation.

Adware is malware. It's software that does a thing the user doesn't want it to do. That's definitional.

About the only exception I can think of would be oldschool stuff like the AllAdvantage toolbar that would pay users for watching ads. That was intentionally installed.

The longer term plan for tubermap, was to essentially have the site be a way of people determining where they should live based on commute times, cost of rent etc.

In that sense what you're calling an ad would actually be the primary purpose of the site, i.e. you'd go and look for apartments now you've figured out (based on that pricing information) where makes sense.

It just never actually materialized because, well, other projects, jobs, etc. The beta version has rent pricing but it was inaccurate due to people selling parking spaces as 1 bedroom flats on APIs etc.

So it's more like kernel.org having a link to lwn.net or something. No-one actually uses the site for navigation because there are better tools for that.

You'll note that none of my sites have third party ad networks, analytics, any of that nonsense. If I use CDN's anywhere subresource integrity should be on but there might be some older stuff that doesn't.

I still think that definition is unworkable. What "the user wants to do" isn't even an objective measure. Is VIM malware because it includes s message urging the user to donate to charity, which is unrelated to it'd purpose as an editor? Is apt-get malware because it included an Easter egg? By that definition, the answer is both yes and no, since it depends on who is using it wanting that or not.

When Microsoft put live tiles and telemetry in Windows, whoever signed off on that knew they were crossing a line.

It doesn't need to be defined that strictly. The OP talks about FM radio adverts. An announcer telling you that a new song like, exists, could be construed in some sense to be an advert, just as my profile telling you that I am indeed a software developer could be.

But that's not really what's pissing people off and abusing their attention here.

> Once again: All I need to do is think of one counterexample where both parties gained value (monetarily and psychologically)

You know damn well, but are unlikely to admit unless perhaps called on it, that an advertising professional that gives value to a consumer one day will be just as willing to take it the next. The advertising professional is not motivated by a desire to help the consumer and cases where that happens are incidental at best (and rare.) There is a lot of delusion in the industry too. Advertisers in the pharma space will swear themselves blue that they're helping consumers to find medication that will earnestly help them, but these advertisers are not altruists, they do I because they're paid. And more damning, their industry (pharma advertising) is illegal in other countries with good reason. But this is an industry that regularly turns its own techniques in on itself, using their rhetorical/persuasive skills on their own, to reassure their own that what they're doing is humanitarian.

Claims without specifics or examples.

>Those who brushed up against it and didn't rejected it are irredeemable.

Very vague. No specifics.

>Those who haven't yet corrupted themselves are the ones I hope to help, and I believe I can do so by creating a fanatical anti-advertising mob mentality that allows feelings of self-righteousness.

Reminiscent of No True Scotsman.

>You know damn well, but are unlikely to admit unless perhaps called on it, that an advertising professional that gives value to a consumer one day will be just as willing to take it the next.

Attributing things to the other party in a conversation is a tried and tested method of making a conversation go downhill.

>Advertisers in the pharma space will swear themselves blue that they're helping consumers to find medication that will earnestly help them, but these advertisers are not altruists, they do I because they're paid.

I don't recall that advertisers claim to do things out of altruism. The grocery store owner down the road is not an altruist either. Nor is pretty much any non-profit entity out there. You're merely pointing out that advertisers are in the same category as all businessmen.

Quite apparent in all your comments: A willingness to preach, and not a willingness to have a conversation. Even your response to me missed pretty much the entire point of my comment. Trying to convince me that advertising is bad is a clear sign of that.