Why is the conclusion absurd? Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Comparing it to theft is actually a very generous interpretation. To me advertising is more like mind rape for profit. Someone pays money to violate your mind and insert into it whatever noise they want whether you consent to it or not.
How could it not be completely different? We both came to HN. We saw this article about advertising. We clicked the "450 comments" link because we wanted to see what other people were posting. We wanted to participate. That's what we're doing right now.
I didn't pay money to put this comment on your screen to make you read it every time you try to do anything on your phone or computer. No, we're the ones who came here to talk about this stuff. Speech is not advertising.
Of course speech is advertising. In what meaningful way is what you're doing not advertising your own views, opinions, and values, same as any company might do so with a billboard?
As I said, I didn't pay money to bring this comment to you whether you wanted it or not. You came here looking for comments. You weren't advertised to, you simply got exactly what you wanted.
Discussing a topic in a place where people congregate for that specific purpose is not the same thing as spamming entire cities with audiovisual pollution that nobody wants much less asked for.
