[Cthulhu_]

Depends. How many products are you using which you first heard from via HN? That's a form of advertising too, albeit a lot less sleazy.

[stale2002]

Aggregation sites, that use crowd sourcing to bubble up interesting content and products is a fundamentally different beast than paid advertising.

[icelancer]

Is it? Can you easily differentiate fake "bubbled up" content? That is what the best advertising agencies have their hands around and have for some time.

[Nition]

It is until advertisers conspire to bubble their own content up.