Yeah, it's a private business, if you want to use them to reach people you need to pay. What exactly is wrong with that?
> regular methods of discovery
What are these "regular methods of discovery"? Do you think that small businesses didn't advertise before Facebook/Google/etc came along?
Being in the yellow pages.
Putting a flyer on a community board or telephone pole. My city has special poles just for flyers.
Word of mouth.
Newspaper ads.
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Sure, some of those are advertising but they're not intrusive or unethical. There aren't as many options for ethically advertising online but that's very intentional, with companies doing the digital equivalent of limiting word of mouth and tearing down flyers.
Even though the search engine is ad-funded (I don't know any free search engine) and can be more or less intrusive (IE. Duckduckgo is not)
Which channels have been intentionally nerfed?