> Your friend telling you about some cool product is not advertising because he wasn't paid for that. I often get told unpaid by my friend about cool product b

> Your friend telling you about some cool product is not advertising because he wasn't paid for that. I often get told unpaid by my friend about cool product because: a) my friend wants to be viewed as a trustworthy influencer (trustworthy to ad execs) and hopes or expects to be paid later, b) my friend is unconsciously parroting marketing speak from advertising they have seen, neither of which are particularly helpful to me. Stopping these cases would be an additional benefit of banning (or heavily taxing) paid advertising, I would expect it to be somewhat self-regulated.