[annabellish]

Marketing isn't _intrinsically_ evil. If you buy widget A from FooCorp, but wish it had some piece of functionality it didn't and make a post on their feature request tracker saying you wished it had that functionality and then, upon the release of widget B they email you telling you they've released that and it does that thing you wanted, then that's a) marketing, and b) not evil.

Not only is it not evil, it's a targeted ad! You were _tracked_ to produce that ad!

In reality, that isn't how a good 90% of marketing really works. Instead, you got an unsolicited letter about widget 1 from a different company who bought your data from FooCorp, and widget 1 doesn't even do what you want, and because you don't buy it they sell your data to even more unscrupulous companies to get some return from their purchase.

I think it's important to recognise, though, that this didn't happen because marketing is evil. If everybody had just stuck to ethical forms of marketing then everyone would be better off, and we wouldn't need extensions like this which do screw things up for the people trying to be ethical.

It's just like ads: You can do ads well, and we _didn't_, and now good ads need to be thrown in the trash alongside everything else. The next thing we try and do we should _remember_ these common stories, and maybe next time we can be a bit more ethical and not poison our own well.

[ouid]

I suppose it depends on your definition of intrinsic. Marketing is certainly ubiquitously evil because the people that produce it are strongly incentivized to con you, and there are no penalties for doing so.

[kbenson]

That depends on the business selling the items. If they are stable, known and looking for any sort of repeat business, they are strongly incentivized to not con you, at least not in a way that leaves you upset with them later (if they trick you into buying something you like, I doubt that generally has negative consequences for them regardless of those other factors).

There's a big difference between the random online e-shop and the downtown storefront, or even big names like McDonalds. Many places are only successful because they've established a good, or at least reliable, reputation and people know what to expect.