There are ways to do advertising that works and is not annoying (or at least less annoying). Context advertising are ads that are directly related to the subject matter of interest. For example, ads from companies that are in the business of meeting the needs of the boatbuilding community would be welcome or at least tolerated in a boatbuilding community. Those same ads shown to a programming community would be less welcome, even if there happens to be significant shared membership.

For example, the paper magazine “Small Craft Advisor” recently transitioned to online only via Substack. It didn’t take long for subscribers to actually complain about the loss of advertising and SCA had to respond with self-promotion articles from former advertisers.

Context advertising requires no user profiling, no user tracking, and no data collection. “Oh, you sell epoxy (or sails or plans)? Well here is a community (as distinct from a user profile) that is likely looking for what you sell and probably already discussing products in your line of business.”