Just wanted to mention I appreciate seeing a different perspective here.
I know there's a lot of negative reaction to it, and I can empathize with that because there's a long history of negative behavior by the advertising industry. But there's no doubt that there are benefits too, and seeing some nuance on HN is always a win.
So its immoral for a math tutor to post a flyer about his services in a local coffee shop?
Advertising is a very wide spectrum and I think its way too heavy handed to say it is all intrinsically immoral. Some is, maybe even most of it, but surely not all is immoral.
I'd argue that advertising in general is a good thing, but that there are a few parts that are bad. One bad part is the vast surveillance and privacy intrusion of modern digital advertising is what is bad. Another are the advertising tactics used to manipulate people into buying things they shouldn't.
Perhaps what is immoral is when the volume of advertising and the workload it places on the brain becomes too much.
The coffee shop with far too many flyers or 7 by the same local tutor becomes very hard to handle. With experience you fight through the flyers to read the menu and get to the counter to order that coffee.
There is so much 'opportunity' in the world at any moment for which the provider of the opportunity's ad thinks that it could be relevant to me. I can accept a little of that every day without it being bad, but patience wears very fast.
I know there's a lot of negative reaction to it, and I can empathize with that because there's a long history of negative behavior by the advertising industry. But there's no doubt that there are benefits too, and seeing some nuance on HN is always a win.