Earlier quoted context omitted.
The proposal was to "outlaw compensation for advertising". That would presumably include paying people to create ads and not just to publish them, hence the first example. What you're arguing is that the first example is different from the second one, but they were intended to be, because they map to two different parts of the process. > The customer is (presumably) purchasing a product and is reading the documentati…
Indeed, advertisers would layoff or displace their marketing teams, as the role would have no value to the company if advertising was outlawed (meanwhile, technical writers would be just fine). I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing the framing you put forth that equates advertising with technical writing. > Product documentation is also available to prospective customers so they can review it to decide whether they w…
They would obviously redeploy them to drafting or working to influence whatever means exists that still allows them to get new customers.
> The primary purpose of documentation is what I said: for understanding how to operate the product. The only purpose of advertising is to make a sale. Advertising has no secondary purpose. These are not the same thing.
This is like saying the primary purpose of advertising is to display media content.
The only purpose of the entire company is to make a sale. They ship the product from the factory to retail stores because that makes more sales than requiring the customer to come to the factory. They write documentation because more customers are willing to buy a product with documentation. And the documentation carefully portrays the product in a favorable light and directs customers to the company's own offerings -- how often do you see a commercial product's documentation recommending that the customer use a competitor's product under circumstances when that would actually be to the customer's advantage?
Meanwhile advertising also has secondary functions as well, like informing customers of product features they might not have been aware of, or informing them of risks or drawbacks of competing products, or providing active rather than passive notification for time-sensitive information like that a sale is happening, etc.