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Comment by kimjune01 | Hacker News Reader

would you prefer that they advertised? Or is your life good enough to not need to learn about new offers?

Advertisers always say they are educating and informing, so that their "audience" is "learning" about their product.

And there's a bit of truth to that, for new products - people don't know about it yet. But it quickly goes from awareness to persuasion, then lies, and finally mindless repetition of a logo and tagline.

The endgame of ads is not information flow, it is programming the emotions and memory of the "audience."

How about if I'm interested in going out and getting something I look it up on my own time? Just don't tell me about it.

Congratulations, you just confirmed the need for SEO in all its forms.

Lmao “if I need it I’ll just Google it and give my business to whoever paid the most to show up on the first page, thankfully those people don’t also spend tons on advertising too”

That's more than a little bit of a strawman. I would expect most people would shop around and do some research (now, comparison and review websites are also now a cesspool of spam and misshapen incentives, but at least that's only annoying while I'm researching what to buy. If companies only spent their advertising budget on SEO and buying reviews I would be fair bit happier)

Just because you can think out of alternative abuse that sleazy actors can resort to doesn't mean that we should accept the abuse under discussion.

Not all SEO is deceitful. Yes, it is useful for me for the website for your product to appear in relevant searches.

Cold email is a form of advertising, but if your question is do I consider any form of advertising acceptable: sure I do. I don't mind display ads or video ads where there is a quid pro quo etc. But cold outreach (email, calls, door to door etc) is unethical

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