Here's my hot take on this.

If I want a product, it better be out of my own free will. If I wanted AI assisted ways to learn languages, I'd be perfectly capable of researching what's out there. If I see an ad, out of principle I won't pay a cent for anything, unless maybe it's literally the best thing since sliced bread.

Ads provide negative value to me as a consumer, therefore I want them banned.

But the economy! But the jobs!

What's the purpose of both of these? To address people's needs and wishes, or to plant new needs and wishes in the brain of consumers to then extract capital out of them?

If a product is worth creating it could be created, bought, and made profitable in an ad-free society as well. The problem is it's an arms race. A good product + ads will always win against an equivalent product without. Everybody has to do ads because everybody else does them. So going ad-free only works if everybody does it at once, and I believe that requires regulation. Of course I'm also not opposed to you buying ads to promote your product, I'm opposed to the fact that the market forces you to.

Trees haven't figured out how to all reach sunlight without using enormous resources to grow high. States haven't figured out how to all stay secure without spending enormous sums on defense. This situation is similar but I feel we have a good shot at saving ourselves a whole lot of trouble by heavily limiting the ways in which advertising can legally be done.

You're conflating promotion and advertising - as do most people.

Billboards, commercials, and advertisements fall under "advertising", the act of trying to coerce consumers into buying a thing or patronizing a product through manipulation.

Promotion, on the other hand, actively involves someone talking directly with someone else about their product, or using some other form of demonstrable evidence of your product or works.

Let's take a few examples:

* An artist sharing their latest work to their social media feeds is promotion, while shoving it in your face with incentives to buy it at their website on a random forum post is advertising.

* A lawncare company that asks a client if they could leave a small sign behind promoting their services after a job is fine, but buying advertising time on a television spot with CGI graphics and staged visuals is not.

* Demonstrating your product at a kiosk at a mall or event is promotion, but spending money on a pre-roll YouTube spot with imagery deliberately cultivated to induce purchase is advertising

I am fine with promoting something; I am not fine with advertising something. Promoting often just takes time, which anyone can reasonably do; advertising costs money, and equating that to speech means admitting money is speech, which I think most folks would agree is a very bad thing.

If you're encountering issues with promoting your product, it's likely because it's coming off as advertising. Instead of saying "I built a new app over at this URL and would love your feedback", be more specific with what you're asking for: "Is my business model viable?", "Is the UX legible and accessible by folks using screen readers?", "Could someone try penetrating my tech stack before I go live?"

Promotion as a way of soliciting feedback has to be done in a specific way, else it is advertising. That's why forums and sites are very particular about anti-advertising/anti-spam/anti-promotion rules. As long as it's not the equivalent of shouting, "HEY, LOOK AT ME" through a megaphone that's unsolicited by the forum or venue inhabitants, generally most folks in my experience are going to be fine with it.