[mrob]

You don't need to ban advertising, you just need to ban paying for advertising. That doesn't harm free speech. When there's no money to be made the problem will sort itself out.

[initramfs2]

That's gonna probably just create a bunch of loopholes or hacks like paying with favors instead of cash

[mrob]

Loopholes can be addressed on a case-by-case basis. A solution being imperfect is not a good reason to leave the problem completely unaddressed.

[coldtea]

That's the same in every domain when there's a profit. Doesn't mean laws and bans don't reduce the related activity dramatically.

[mqus]

Ok, then I don't pay you for advertising. On an entirely unrelated note, could I buy a spot on your website(e.g. at the top) to put a piece of my own website on it? You have a news website, right? And I also have some news to share.

[paltor]

I don't think that would be much different from "renting a billboard to place whatever you want on it".

If what you put up on that billboard is an ad, then it's advertising and would be covered. If not, it wouldn't. So you could rent a spot on the website, but you couldn't put promotions on it.

This would be distinct from ordinary web hosting because you're not just renting a space on a site, you're also renting exposure (a spot on some other website).

Sure, you could probably find edge cases - "what if I put a table of contents on my page with every page URL on every site on my web host on it" - but the distinction would be clear most of the time.