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> Any sort of communication of a novel thing would fall under this banner

Yeah, that was what I was getting at. I believe it in theory, but in practice I find all advertising to be the sort of implicit-mugging the grandparent is describing.

> but I learn about new FOSS projects on here every day because the maintainers and developers are willing to 'advertise' them to me.

That’s an excellent counter-point. I’ve had the same experience.

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I think the motivation is important. Many FOSS projects are sharing something the author considers useful to the world, as a way of making it better in a way that they know how. Its a lovely gift and I'm happy to know about it.

Others are there to promote lock in to some cloud service, or increase the authors rep as a 10x hacker and those are skeevy because the author is skeevy and did not have joy in their hearts.

All corporate ads ate the second kind.

> I find all advertising to be the sort of implicit-mugging the grandparent is describing.

Unfortunately, it's a useful thing that people have used to prey on our inquisitive simian brains.

Personally, I'm in favor of doing things like banning billboards &c, but it's hard to draw a line on banning advertising in general.

I think I'd be willing to extend it to all forms paid advertising that you are forced to see in the course of doing something else.

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