Their sheer volume. Drive into a major city in some country where ads are entirely unregulated. There will be billboards everywhere, impossible to take it all in or critically assess it.
as opposed to the internet, where the content is bounded and manageable? I fail to see how you can square such disdain for ads while taking part in an online forum like hackernews
My head has limited capacity. I'm happy to filter out ads. Thankfully, HN doesn't need the filter.
I also think constant lies on TV is a problem. I of course believe somewhat in my own ability to filter through, but at the end of the day, it is reality-distorting when it goes on in large scale and a societal problem!
The voting and moderation system on HN essentially distributes the load of managing & sorting all the information across many people, so that overall the workload is manageable. Most of us wouldn't be browsing HN if it was a free-for-all unmoderated cesspool.
