There is two things going on here that are getting lumped under the same umbrella. 1) Modern marketing that uses a deep understanding of psychology to treat people as a series of levers to be pressed in order to get a certain reaction. 2) Service discovery. This can be really valuable. Just imagine you made something you were truly proud of and thought would bring value to others lives, or of something you already think is incredible. Finding out about it brought you value.

These two things both get called advertising but we have (quite reasonably) different feelings about them.

> Service discovery

I don't consider this advertising either. If there is a list of services somewhere and people consult it voluntarily, then it's not really advertising, it's information. People are informing themselves about what's available.

For example, I don't consider an online store to be advertising. The whole reason I went there is to see products, so it's totally fine when products are shown. It becomes unethical when they start shoving products in my face everywhere I go.