Yes, and those should in fact be banned. (Although complaining those specifically is like complaining about mercury tilt switches in a pinball machine in a cafe down the street from a factory that dumps thousands of tons per day of assorted toxic waste into the nearby river.)

You can hide them like any other post, so I don’t see that they are as impactful to user experience as most other ads, which require third party browser extensions and/or DNS level blocking. On balance, I think HN does ads “right” and the only way I think they could be improved is with explicit labeling indicating that they are sponsored, unlike user-submitted posts.

Being entirely anti-ad is an acceptable position to hold, and I don’t really disagree, though it feels a bit of a cheap shot to single out HN like this.

> I don't see that they are as impactful to user experience as most other ads

Yep. Hence the comparison to mercury tilt switches.

> it feels a bit of a cheap shot to single out HN like this

Yep.

If someone is entirely anti-ad, they have to be anti-ad-on-HN.

Exactly. Sponsored posts are ads and need to go, but this is not particularly significant on either side. HN in general is no more a ad than donating money to charity for PR reasons is a ad, and it requires a considerable confusion of ideas to think otherwise. (Or a confusion of what "ad" means. FWIW, BGP address advertisments are not ads either.)

They're not identified as such? I thought it was required to identify such ads.

I thought so too, at least in EU? I remember social media influencers getting in hot water for not labeling sponsored content as such.