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Advertising is a monetary transaction between an advertiser and a publisher. The customer (or product) is not involved in the transaction; it is their attention

Advertising is a monetary transaction between an advertiser and a publisher. The customer (or product) is not involved in the transaction; it is their attention that is being bought and sold. That's a different model than paying a technical writer to do technical writing.

AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
You're contrasting authorship with distribution. The advertising equivalent to paying a technical writer is paying an ad agency to create the ad. The customer isn't a party to that transaction either. But now how are you distributing either of them?
- jason_oster 8mo ago
  I am not making such an error. Paying a technical writer for labor is not the same as paying a publisher for conversions. The scenario you posed was "hire someone to write the documentation and then someone else to distribute it." Those are two parties, each of which is paid independently for services rendered. The customer is not selling their attention, here. The customer is (presumably) purchasing a product and is reading the documentation to understand how to operate it. Advertising is not distribution. Publishing is distribution, and advertising sometimes comes along for the ride.
  - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
    The proposal was to "outlaw compensation for advertising". That would presumably include paying people to create ads and not just to publish them, hence the first example. What you're arguing is that the first example is different from the second one, but they were intended to be, because they map to two different parts of the process. > The customer is (presumably) purchasing a product and is reading the documentation to understand how to operate it. Product documentation is also available to prospective customers so they can review it to decide whether they want to purchase the product. And then the question is, how do they get it? There are many ways to distribute. They could pay to print it out on paper and put it in the lobby in their corporate offices, but then customers would have to come to their corporate headquarters to get it, which most won't do, so obviously some methods of distribution have a higher likelihood of being seen. Then companies will prefer the ones that allow them to be seen more. But they're paying someone for any of them, so "is paying for it" isn't a useful way to distinguish them. And then we're back to, suppose you pay Facebook to host your documents on your company's Facebook page. Furthermore suppose that they, like most hosting companies, charge you more money if you get more traffic. Meanwhile their "hosting customers" on the "free tier" (i.e. ordinary Facebook users) have a very small quota which is really only enough for their posts to be seen by their own friends. So paying them for distribution -- like paying for any other form of distribution -- causes your documents to have better visibility. Now you can show up in the feed of more people before you run out of quota, just like paying more for hosting means more people could visit your website before you exceed your transfer allowance. How do you tell if someone is paying for computing resources or eyeballs when the same company provides both? Notice that "don't let them do both" is a bit of a problem if you also don't let them sell advertising, because if they can't sell ads or charge for using the service then what are they doing for revenue?
    - jason_oster 8mo ago
      Indeed, advertisers would layoff or displace their marketing teams, as the role would have no value to the company if advertising was outlawed (meanwhile, technical writers would be just fine). I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing the framing you put forth that equates advertising with technical writing. > Product documentation is also available to prospective customers so they can review it to decide whether they want to purchase the product. I agree with this statement, but it is irrelevant. The primary purpose of documentation is what I said: for understanding how to operate the product. The only purpose of advertising is to make a sale. Advertising has no secondary purpose. These are not the same thing. The test is quite simple: Is the sole purpose of the payment to make a sale? If so, it is advertising. We don't really need to discuss documents any longer. Documentation is not an advertisement.
      - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
        > Indeed, advertisers would layoff or displace their marketing teams, as the role would have no value to the company if advertising was outlawed They would obviously redeploy them to drafting or working to influence whatever means exists that still allows them to get new customers. > The primary purpose of documentation is what I said: for understanding how to operate the product. The only purpose of advertising is to make a sale. Advertising has no secondary purpose. These are not the same thing. This is like saying the primary purpose of advertising is to display media content. The only purpose of the entire company is to make a sale. They ship the product from the factory to retail stores because that makes more sales than requiring the customer to come to the factory. They write documentation because more customers are willing to buy a product with documentation. And the documentation carefully portrays the product in a favorable light and directs customers to the company's own offerings -- how often do you see a commercial product's documentation recommending that the customer use a competitor's product under circumstances when that would actually be to the customer's advantage? Meanwhile advertising also has secondary functions as well, like informing customers of product features they might not have been aware of, or informing them of risks or drawbacks of competing products, or providing active rather than passive notification for time-sensitive information like that a sale is happening, etc.

AnthonyMouse 8mo ago

You're contrasting authorship with distribution. The advertising equivalent to paying a technical writer is paying an ad agency to create the ad. The customer isn't a party to that transaction either. But now how are you distributing either of them?

jason_oster 8mo ago
I am not making such an error. Paying a technical writer for labor is not the same as paying a publisher for conversions. The scenario you posed was "hire someone to write the documentation and then someone else to distribute it." Those are two parties, each of which is paid independently for services rendered. The customer is not selling their attention, here. The customer is (presumably) purchasing a product and is reading the documentation to understand how to operate it. Advertising is not distribution. Publishing is distribution, and advertising sometimes comes along for the ride.
- AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
  The proposal was to "outlaw compensation for advertising". That would presumably include paying people to create ads and not just to publish them, hence the first example. What you're arguing is that the first example is different from the second one, but they were intended to be, because they map to two different parts of the process. > The customer is (presumably) purchasing a product and is reading the documentation to understand how to operate it. Product documentation is also available to prospective customers so they can review it to decide whether they want to purchase the product. And then the question is, how do they get it? There are many ways to distribute. They could pay to print it out on paper and put it in the lobby in their corporate offices, but then customers would have to come to their corporate headquarters to get it, which most won't do, so obviously some methods of distribution have a higher likelihood of being seen. Then companies will prefer the ones that allow them to be seen more. But they're paying someone for any of them, so "is paying for it" isn't a useful way to distinguish them. And then we're back to, suppose you pay Facebook to host your documents on your company's Facebook page. Furthermore suppose that they, like most hosting companies, charge you more money if you get more traffic. Meanwhile their "hosting customers" on the "free tier" (i.e. ordinary Facebook users) have a very small quota which is really only enough for their posts to be seen by their own friends. So paying them for distribution -- like paying for any other form of distribution -- causes your documents to have better visibility. Now you can show up in the feed of more people before you run out of quota, just like paying more for hosting means more people could visit your website before you exceed your transfer allowance. How do you tell if someone is paying for computing resources or eyeballs when the same company provides both? Notice that "don't let them do both" is a bit of a problem if you also don't let them sell advertising, because if they can't sell ads or charge for using the service then what are they doing for revenue?
  - jason_oster 8mo ago
    Indeed, advertisers would layoff or displace their marketing teams, as the role would have no value to the company if advertising was outlawed (meanwhile, technical writers would be just fine). I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing the framing you put forth that equates advertising with technical writing. > Product documentation is also available to prospective customers so they can review it to decide whether they want to purchase the product. I agree with this statement, but it is irrelevant. The primary purpose of documentation is what I said: for understanding how to operate the product. The only purpose of advertising is to make a sale. Advertising has no secondary purpose. These are not the same thing. The test is quite simple: Is the sole purpose of the payment to make a sale? If so, it is advertising. We don't really need to discuss documents any longer. Documentation is not an advertisement.
    - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
      > Indeed, advertisers would layoff or displace their marketing teams, as the role would have no value to the company if advertising was outlawed They would obviously redeploy them to drafting or working to influence whatever means exists that still allows them to get new customers. > The primary purpose of documentation is what I said: for understanding how to operate the product. The only purpose of advertising is to make a sale. Advertising has no secondary purpose. These are not the same thing. This is like saying the primary purpose of advertising is to display media content. The only purpose of the entire company is to make a sale. They ship the product from the factory to retail stores because that makes more sales than requiring the customer to come to the factory. They write documentation because more customers are willing to buy a product with documentation. And the documentation carefully portrays the product in a favorable light and directs customers to the company's own offerings -- how often do you see a commercial product's documentation recommending that the customer use a competitor's product under circumstances when that would actually be to the customer's advantage? Meanwhile advertising also has secondary functions as well, like informing customers of product features they might not have been aware of, or informing them of risks or drawbacks of competing products, or providing active rather than passive notification for time-sensitive information like that a sale is happening, etc.