Can’t resist quoting
David’s Sling[1] (not a masterpiece of philosophy by any means, but makes some good points):
> We don't want to destroy advertising. We want to destroy manipulative advertising. We want to eliminate the kind of advertising that persuades the listener to buy in spite of the best information, rather than because of it. We want people to filter the informational content from commercial advertising—and all too often, when an advertisement is run through an informational filter, nothing is left.
The adversarial approach is the problem. This is akin to the difference between a jury trial or televised debate and an academic argument: neither permits outright lies, ideally, but in the latter intentional cherry-picking is (or should be) disqualifying whereas the former just dumps two opposing cherry-pickers in a bag and lets them fight it out. (Not coincidentally, an academic argument doesn’t require an audience.)
I’m not entirely sure that advertising, like law, can be different, because it may simply be impossible to do better when the participants don’t trust each other to act in good faith. But it’s also no wonder that the result seems revolting when a large portion of your identity is centred around seeing things as they are and not as you wish they were. In any case, defending manipulation and cherry-picking requires an argument (such as this one) stronger than “you still need to inform buyers about your product”.
(If you’re talking about convincing rather than informing, you’re already assuming the conclusion.)
[1] https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7661157M/