My reply had nothing to do with Tesla. If a definition says “ad” is basically any piece of text on the internet, the definition is wrong. That seems uncontroversial.

I'm no Tesla fan, but I maintain that the standard understanding of an "advertisement" implies paid. Just because a company puts something out there into the world doesn't make it an advertisement. (Things like classified job posting "ads" notwithstanding.)

That's nothing to be embarrassed about. You're wrong, that's all.

This kind of silly semantic argument is both weak and tedious. They're ads, start to finish. It's advertising. There is no other honest description.

Is that kind of hostile/dismissive language actually necessary or helpful do you think? What if instead we investigate the disagreement in good faith?

One of the two definitions of an "advertisement" from Webster was quoted. The other is this:

> the act or process of advertising something

Which links to "advertising":

> the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements

Emphasis mine. So perhaps we have some middle ground here. I would argue that this is the advertising definition we're talking about when we're discussing whether something is an "advertisement", not the sort of public event or job posting, commonly referred to as a "classified ad", referred to by the other definition. Maybe that's where we disagree. Or maybe it's the salience of this "especially by paid announcements". In my experience, that is the general understanding of the term: advertisements are generally paid. But I acknowledge that it says "especially by", not "only by", so some room for interpretation is left.

So, given all that, I figure if you want to label this an ad, that's reasonable. What I find less reasonable is declaring anyone who disagrees to be objectively wrong, and then using dismissive language like the above to try and win an unnecessary argument.

> So perhaps we have some middle ground here.

No, you are objectively wrong. It's advertising, straight up and down.

The lengths you're going to to defend an obvious lie are strange. That's the odd psychology of it where you're more willing to keep going down the rabbit hole than you are to simply admit you're wrong.