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Advertising revenue is a necessary component of our financial strategy to not only keep the lights on, but to continue improving the site. It also allows us to bring new ideas to fruition so we can continue to be a source of human-verified truth in an increasingly AI-influenced world. Implementing improvements and new projects takes revenue, and we’d be doing a disservice to ourselves and you by not trying to find responsible means of maximizing that revenue to accomplish those goals.

So, what does this all mean in concrete terms?

Native ads will be added between Question posts, at a rate of one ad every five posts, with the first one being slotted between the 2nd and 3rd post of a site.

Native ads, by definition, are designed to look and feel like a natural addition to a site. As you can see in the image below, the team worked very hard to make the ads feel like a part of the site while still very clearly being labeled as an advertisement.

Native ads mockup image, with labels pointing out differently shaded background, "Sponsored" label, tags working as normal, etc.

Some key highlights to note:

  • Partner is clearly designated
  • Partner logo is on the left to clearly indicate a sponsored post
  • Providing links to the utilized tags (which go to their normal tag pages, not part of the ad) provides transparency on how the ads are being chosen/utilized
  • The native ads follow the same strict criteria required of partners who purchase our banner ads
  • The “Report this ad” link works the same as it always has, and is on every native ad
  • The tag links still lead to tag index pages

FAQ

Why is there not a background color on the ads?

The background color was removed from the early mockup image the moderators saw because it causes issues with readability/accessibility. For accessibility with color contrast and text we use APAC standards. Our minimum is Lc60 for text. NOTE - The image above is just a snippet screen grab, rather than the original file.

When are the native ads coming?

The current plan is to begin sales efforts this month, with the ads going live in January 2026.

What if we feel a specific ad doesn’t belong on a site?

Click the “Report this ad” link and fill in the requested information so the team can review the ad.

Will site ads be relevant to the site they’re posted on?

Yes, they will. (You shouldn't be seeing Java language course advertisements on Pets Stack Exchange, for example.) If you find one that isn’t appropriate, use the “Report this ad” link.

I currently have the ‘reduced ads’ privilege on this site. Will that impact these ads?

No. The “reduced ads” privilege only applies to leaderboard-style ads. More information on this privilege can be found here.

Can we opt out of seeing these ads?

No. Native ads will be displayed to all site users.

Will these ads be on MathOverflow?

No. The company has always had this special arrangement with MathOverflow, and we continue to honor it. Because Native Ads are rolling out only to sites that currently get ads, and MathOverflow does not currently get ads, the site will also not get Native Ads. This aligns with the text of the agreement as posted. If we decide at some future point to change this, we will reach out to MathOverflow, as specified in the agreement, and seek consent prior to doing so.

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    🤮 These "native ads" that look like real content are horrible. I'd even go as far as to say that it's deceptive, just because at a very quick glance, it doesn't clearly look like an ad. Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 17:47
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    This was announced to moderators in advance, where I got confirmation that ads will override ignored tags: it is possible to, say, get an ad tagged [dnd-5e-2024] even if you have questions with that tag hidden. Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 17:48
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    Are we going to continue using the same report this ad functionality that either doesn’t work or requires so much effort that they never get reported? Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 17:52
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    why does the report dialogue require an image at all? it is linked from a specific ad, so I'd assume you know which ad is involved. and 'appropriate to the site' is surely a joke. tex.se recently had ads for suitcases. what does that have to do with tex? we've also had ads where an accidental click resulting in half a dozen identical tabs opening, which is simply obnoxious. but I don't report them because the effort involved is just not worth it and I don't want to have to download copies of ads to my machine in order to upload them back to you, which I suppose is what would be needed. Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 18:47
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    Native ads are, by design, misleading. They are designed to look like content, but are not subject to the same editorial review as the other content. Native advertising is inherently sleezy, as are most of the companies and brands that push it. This will do significant damage to the Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange brands. Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 19:31
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    How about a special tag, all caps, extra large bold font, eg: ADVERTISEMENT Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 19:33
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    In the example screenshot, the "Ad" and "Sponsored" labels have a luminance contrast ratio of 3.8:1, which is below the WCAG's AA minimum threshold of 4.5:1. (The AAA guideline requires a minimum of 7:1.) Please fix this for accessibility. Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 20:48
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    Also, boo for interstitial ads. I understand and even support to a large extent advertising on free sites (like Stack Overflow). However, you should always place ads in sidebars, headers, and footers where they belong. Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 21:12
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    These ads will not be visible to people who arrive at a Stack Exchange question from searching the Web. So the target audience is people searching Stack Exchange websites directly. Aren't these people usually looking to answer questions or otherwise contribute? Are volunteers the target audience of the ads? Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 21:40
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    Wow, this is awful. I hope my adblockers work on it. Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 23:07
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    You say "so we can continue to be a source of human-verified truth in an ever-increasing AI-influenced world", but you also keep pushing AI on SO. How about you stop trying to shoehorn AI into SO so that you can "continue to be a source of human-verified truth in an ever-increasing AI-influenced world"? Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 3:59
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    From a $1.8 billion dollar acquisition to desperate enough to run native ads. The company was never worth that much, but pivoting from an increasingly rare strength (expert human answers) to a highly competitive weakness (mediocre AI features) sure didn't help. Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 5:55
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    "It also allows us to bring new ideas to fruition so we can continue to be a source of human-verified truth in an ever-increasing AI-influenced world." Your post really didn't need that sentence. It hasn't been even a week since you pushed AI Assist feature on the network and spammed everyone with its inbox notification. If it weren't for users fighting tooth and nail against AI features we would have them popping out of every corner including user posted content and AI bot answers. So this sentence sounds a bit disingenuous when you are talking about pushing rather deceptive ads to the sites. Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 19:19
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    Yet another announcement with a score below -100 about a new feature which will go ahead regardless of what we say. At what point should we vote to close all of these announcements as "does not appear to seek input and discussion from the community"? It's clear these announcements generate a lot of discussion and feedback, but also clear that SO, Inc. do not seek that discussion and feedback, and don't care about it whatsoever. Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 22:29
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    the team worked very hard to make the ads feel like a part of the site That's sort of like saying, "Mosquitoes work hard — they've actually evolved an anesthetic which they inject — so that you won't feel the prick when they insert their proboscis under your skin to suck your blood." The more different the ads look, the better. Commented Dec 10, 2025 at 22:26

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Besides all the problems (to put it mildly) already mentioned - although it seems some of y'all at SE seem (looking at the comments) to be gathering some carefully selected part of feedback, it appears that the timeline is already set for the ads to run in January.

It may somehow not be the case, but it doesn't appear like there is enough time to actually get and reflect on the feedback and implement the changes (especially with the holiday season around the corner)? Is this post simply an announcement, and these ads will run in whatever state they will be in in said January?

...though I'm afraid we already know the answer to that one.

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    Cherry-picking only domesticated feedback? Picture me impressed not. But yes, this is your standard "already decided, we are just posting this to pretend we consider feedback but we will just reply to the crafted feedback that matches our plan" Commented Dec 10, 2025 at 10:42
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  1. Echoing @ColleenV questions, will it affect RSS feeds? If so, how will we be able to identify your ads in RSS readers?
  2. Will it affect meta websites as well?
  3. Do you have a policy of banning ads that have the same title as existing questions, in particular popular ones?
  4. Will these links be identified by the HTML rel="sponsored" attribute?
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This does not inspire confidence in the idea that staff really wants Stack Overflow to be a repository of human-generated content.

Honestly, this makes me feel more like a product than a participant.

Here are at least two questions:

Are these ads going to be treated as content and treated with the same standards, or will you allow AI-generated copy in native ads?

Since vendors presumably do not need 1500 reputation to create tags, will they be able to create their own tags by paying?

Also, allowing ads to use tags that work like real question tags is not transparent. In fact, it's a horribly manipulative trick: Tags create the impression that these ads are real questions, and linking these tags to the real tag index compounds this deception.

These ads shouldn't even have tags! If you have to let ads piggyback on top of user tags, you should at least have a reserved tag that prominently identifies the post as an ad. This ad has to be larger and more legible than the remaining tags as well.

Then again, maybe all this is deliberate. You know what doesn't have native ads yet? AI Assist. Guess we should ask our questions there instead...

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Spontaneous thoughts in no particular order:

  • It seems to me that either a supporter tier (i.e. a small(ish) amount of money per month with not even any particular features attached; maybe a badge or a stylized highlight of the user name) or regularly happening donation runs (like Wikipedia does) could be successful without annoying anyone. Plenty of other websites or content creators do those and are just fine, financially. I think many people are aware these days that the internet is not free, and are willing to pay a bit for sites that they deem important.

  • Generally, ad "partners" will always be in a tug-of-war against the rules, no matter how strict those are, and will always, by the nature of the business, try to go right to the edge of what's allowed; being as annoying as possible, while just skirting a ban. This sounds like so much obvious trouble to me; I don't feel SE is in a position to invite this right now?

  • Once ad "partners" have big payments going towards SE, they will be able and willing to influence the content of the site. Maybe not in the first months of the feature, but possibly down the line. And not necessarily openly, but indirectly, by threatening to pull their business if certain things are not changed by SE.

  • Heavy users will just come up with ad filtering solutions right away and nothing much will come from it? Casuals or really new people will quickly be turned away? I know for sure that when I see a new site that has frequent ads, especially intermingled with the regular content, there is little that turns me away quicker.

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    Regarding supporter tier or donation run - I would have been an enthusiastic supporter of this idea a decade ago. In 2025, after a $1.8B buyout and years and years of bad management? Lol no, I'm not donating or paying a single cent to SE until they respect the community wishes. Same with merch - I wouldn't wear a SO shirt or hoodie if you gave it to me for free and paid me to wear it. Not sure how many of the more engagend users share a similar sentiment but looking at the scores of most SE announcements over the past few years I suspect you won't find many donors or SE "gold" account buyers. Commented Dec 10, 2025 at 13:30
  • Well sure @l4mpi, I wouldn't either (in my case it's because although I've been here for 10+ years I very much enjoy answering questions from the Hot Topic list as kind of an intellectual challenge and for relaxation, but have had little luck asking my own questions. So I am indeed getting plenty of entertainment from SE but certainly nothing or very little that would be worth paying, for me personally). But still, even if not everyone pays, maybe there are some that do; the expectation is not for SE being paid only by one facet, just as an alternative to the new ad scheme. Commented Dec 10, 2025 at 14:21
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    The question is if there are enough people who would still pay to make any sort of impact. If SE launch a "premium" account and only get a few hundred signups that will probably not even recoup the dev costs. A donation drive has less up front costs associated with it but depends even more on community goodwill, and that's a pretty rare resource at the moment. Commented Dec 10, 2025 at 14:59
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I don't believe the purpose of making the ads look like part of the page is to trick people into clicking on them. I think it is designed to stuff more ads on the page without making the amount of space that is non-content apparent at first glance. People will figure it out as they start to engage with the page though and for some of them it will leave the same bad taste that something like this does:

A news website page where the ads take up more space than the content

(If you want to experience the fully-animated horror for yourself, just pick any random article on www.dailymail.co.uk and turn off your ad-blocking)

Will the ads will also be embedded in site search results, custom filters and RSS feeds or is that something that will be coming in the future? How does the AI assistant fit in to this since it seems to bypass the question page ads entirely? Are you getting other sorts of revenue from our engagement with that feature that offsets the ad revenue?

I feel like y'all are boiling the toad here and the ads are just going to get worse and worse as each escalation doesn't return the amount of revenue you were hoping for. In my opinion, you should start investigating other sources of revenue that leverages the community's good will, like selling merch, instead of making us your product.

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  • I'm not sure how ads really work. I haven't clicked on one for ages (or maybe only on accident). I cannot remember any thing about an ad I have seen lately. Typically my mind goes blank for some time, when I recognize advertisement. I really don't care about ads. I think they are an utter waste of time and a useful ad is as rare as a pink moon. But I guess companies also pay simply for getting on my screen even without a click. Or not? Commented Dec 11, 2025 at 22:31
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    hopefully you will realize that "being turned off by a page where the ads are more important than the content" and preventing people noticing by making it so that "(the ads) don't look like ads at first glance" is precisely "making the ads look like part of the page to trick people". I don't care if this is because they also hope to get user to click the ads by mistake or simply not realize that the page is as bad as the dailymail one and it is just looking better because they don't even have the spine to be blatant about what is actually an ads and what isn't. Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 8:34
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    You really think that the dailymail example is worse? Having to choose between two ads-filled pages I would choose the one where the ads don't try to disguise themselves at content everyday. Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 8:34
  • @ꓢPArcheon I see you're unfamiliar with the Daily Mail. Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 11:03
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    @wizzwizz4 I don't know if they also try to disguise ads as content, but my point was the same as this other answer here: "The thing you call "Native ADs" is - while less overtly aggressive - even worse, in a sense, because it poses as genuine content, only to be an ad instead." Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 11:37
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    @ꓢPArcheon Yes, the ads are meant to trick people into thinking they are looking at a page that has more content than it does; I don’t think the goal is to trick people into clicking on them. I agree that it’s worse to camouflage the ads so that people mistake them for content and read them. I’ll try to find some time to reword this to make that more clear. Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 12:02
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    something like "I thing their main goal is to make people at least read the ads by mistake, actually clicking it by mistake is probably not part of the plan"? Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 12:06
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    Yes. The ads are clearly marked, and they do put the “sponsored” bit first and replace the voting buttons, so it’s not as evil as it could be. The shadiest thing about them is adding the tags IMO. Explaining why an ad was served up could be accomplished by other means, and the lie that the tags are about transparency pisses me off. Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 12:15
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    And no, I don't think the dailymail page is worse - that is an example of how I believe some people will perceive the SE page once they recognize the ads. And yeah, they'll probably be annoyed they were tricked. Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 12:34
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  1. Will the native ads be targeted based on our SO/SE profiles?

  2. If a native ad uses a tag that matches one on my watch list, will it be highlighted just like other posts that match my watch list tags?

  3. If a native ad uses a tag that matches one on my ignore list, will it be hidden/grayed-out (depending on my settings)?

  4. If I click on a tag under a question, I get a new list of questions based on that tag. If I click on a tag in a native advertisement, will that still happen or will I be sent to the advertiser?

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    I mentioned in a comment on the question too -- ads with ignored tags will still be shown. Commented Dec 8, 2025 at 22:21
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    quote: "Tags Work As Expected"... mhm. sure they do. Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 3:11
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    1- The targeting is not based on the profiles, but on the topic tags and sites themselves. 2 - Watched tags (or ignored tags) within a native ad won't be highlighted/have the eye icon to show they are one of your watched tag. 3 - No. At launch, confirmed you'd still see the ad. At some point in the future after the initial launch, it may get blocked, but unlikely due to limitations on the amount of data sent via the ad request. 4 - The tag links still lead to tag index pages. They are not part of the advertisement and you will not be sent to the advertiser when clicking on a tag. Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 19:24
  • @Dalmarus. Thanks for the info. Targeting based on the topic tags themselves makes sense if you're searching on a particular tag. If you're just viewing the Recent Questions list, then it sounds like there's nothing specific to target on, so one could expect a random sampling of ads cluttering up the list. Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 19:45
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    Just to be clear about the technical aspect of the ads: The tags are part of the ad creative, but clicking them takes you to the regular tag page. Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 21:38
  • @Dalmarus I'm pretty sure #2 is talking about the ad item as a whole- not just the tags inside the "native ad", judging by how "it" is compared to "other posts". Commented Dec 10, 2025 at 4:59
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Couple of thoughts -

The front page is generally the part of the site you don't generally mess with. Folks already get annoyed with automatic bumps - having additional non-content is (as you've seen) controversial.

Practically speaking for people who are regular here, the site front pages are pretty much sacred, and any changes need to be a marked improvement. Ads generally are not, and reduce information density in unwelcome ways interspersed with content.

No user wants to accidentally click on an ad thinking its a post especially on say mobile devices.

Advertising revenue is a necessary component of our financial strategy to not only keep the lights on, but to continue improving the site.

We've heard "keeping the lights on, and improving the site" as a reason for many changes - but a lot of them haven't panned out to benefit us. We've pretty much had variations of this over the years, but that's more often than not resulted in lean periods for Q&A work rather than ongoing, steady improvements. We're not really reassured that the disruption native ads will cause will result in the company keeping their promises.

There's also always been a bit of a social contract - folks contribute content and we're generally seeing less ads. That this isn't really something affected by the see less ads, and that while the company has been cool with adblock usage over the years, that its explicitly designed to get around it also sort of goes against the social contract we've had over the years.

We've also had a fairly poor track record on the suitability of these are, and reporting being occasionally broken. Once again, this is an ongoing problem that makes the company look bad.

We'd probably be a lot more reassured if we saw (not heard) changes addressing these issues.

It also allows us to bring new ideas to fruition so we can continue to be a source of human-verified truth in an increasingly AI-influenced world. Implementing improvements and new projects takes revenue, and we’d be doing a disservice to ourselves and you by not trying to find responsible means of maximizing that revenue to accomplish those goals.

Quite a few of these ideas and projects seem... at odds with what the community prefers or are speculative projects. I'd ask - are these projects for the benefit of the network and public platform, and critically the Q&A network that built all these, or for something different from the platform we know and love.

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How will the advertisers and ads be screened before appearing on the site? That'd go a long way towards ensuring honesty and safety. Hopefully there will be some transparency about the advertiser that visitors can see if they click for more info.

If the number of ad variations are expected to be so voluminous that the company can't screen them all, perhaps consider letting trusted moderators and or users screen ads similar to how review and training ground posts are handled.

Mentioning these since nothing about screening or trustworthiness of the native ads and advertisers was mentioned in the original post. Given the native appearance and popularity of the site, they may be a target for abuse so care must be taken with what's allowed on the site; not to mention continuing to monitor ad landing pages for changes and malware.

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    I'd hope to say "thoroughly and and by humans" but my gut says "if we're lucky they'll use a half-assed program, if not... well, not at all". There are a number of examples of "bad" ads slipping through and giving advertisers a much more exploitable point of attack will attract the worst sorts of advertisers Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 8:16
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I read this post and my first impression was

damn ... they almost got me with that April Fool's joke this time

Then I remembered it's December. Then I remembered the general trend of recent management decisions and I'm not even surprised.

Some points:

Advertising revenue is a necessary component of our financial strategy

OK, then maybe it is wrong financial strategy. All of the contributors, content creators, moderators are working as volunteers. For free. This should not be abused to create a revenue that benefits few individuals.

(...) to continue working on improvements to the site

Frankly, I don't see any improvement on the site since Staging Ground feature. Nor can I see any immediate field that needs to be improved (and no, increasing number of users just for the sake of having big number of users is not the reason why SE was created).

(...) we’d be doing a disservice to ourselves and you by not trying to find responsible means of maximizing that revenue to accomplish those goals

No, only to yourselves. I am not contributing to SE for profit.

Then, about overall design of this new adds feature: you basically follow Google's, Microsoft's, (could perhaps find more examples), transformation pattern, from the reliable and popular tool to a garbage dump composed of sponsored content and blatant misinformation.

I will continue contributing to SE, mostly SO, however sad true is that under this management strategy the site will inevitably stop delivering quality content and become inactive web archive.

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    You're working on the assumption that Stack Exchange is purely voluntary, and it is not. Stack Exchange Inc employs roughly 95 people. They get a salary. The website also needs to maintain a high availability for a large volume of traffic, this doesn't come for cheap. Revenue IS important. Commented Dec 10, 2025 at 10:18
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    @Snow yes yes, I understand this and I know the company size. I believe that supporting 100 employees is a negligible effort considering the size, popularity, importance of the whole SE network. If fundraising effort requires transforming the good product into what this post describes, then in my opinion it's a wrong financial strategy. Commented Dec 10, 2025 at 10:33
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    The financial strategy is not in place so that the 100 people get paid. The driving force is the last acquisition of the company for something like $1.8 billion, I think? And now the owners are trying to turn a profit which is understandable but also very amusing. Good job for whoever got them to pay that price for something practically worthless (apparently). Commented Dec 10, 2025 at 23:20
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    @Snow I agree, making sure people get paid is important, but the Stack Overflow was acquired for $1.8 billion and has a revenue of around $125 million. A lot of the enshitification we have been seeing is a direct result of the Prosus overpaying for the site and IP during acquisition. Commented Dec 11, 2025 at 16:11
  • @anonymous Interesting, the revenue isn't listed on SE's wikipedia page, so I didn't know about that. Now I look further, I see that revenue is rising year on year with 2024 being a 20% rise. In this case, it looks very much as though Prosus are wanting a return on their investment. Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 8:07
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This particular change will not be much of hit to those that use Stackoverflow a lot. Most know that StackOverflow's search is far inferior to Google's (which also does this "native ad" thing). I have often needed to go back to google to search StackOverflow. Google then links me directly to the question I need (bypassing any StackOverflow native ads).

But I am guessing that AI is causing a crunch on StackOverflow's income. The standard process now is to check your AI of choice first, then go from there.

Under this model, a site like Stack Overflow is still useful, but not as lucrative as it was before. This means more aggressive monetization is needed. (Until it becomes other once-useful-site that was crushed under the weight of too many ads.) In the current setup, AI seems to not be sustainable because it destroys the very processes that feed it.

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    This will be a hit to some of us who use the site frequently. Nowadays, whenever I look at the 50 most recent questions, approximately 30-40% of them match my ignore tags, and 0-5% match my watch tags. This list will soon be diluted with another 10% of "stuff" I'm never going to interact with but will have to scroll past in order to find the bits I care about. That's a lot of scrolling. (I don't think Google puts native advertising in regular web search results. YouTube search, however, absolutely does.) Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 2:13
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    " This means more aggressive monetization is needed." That is always in demand. It's called theory of enshittification. Problem may be that not aggressive monetization may lead to even less usage, may lead to even not aggressive ..,.. a race to the bottom. Commented Dec 9, 2025 at 5:28
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    @NoDataDumpNoContribution I didn't know this enshittification was actually a real concept/word, I had to google it and oh. I was surprised. but also not surprised. Commented Dec 12, 2025 at 19:54
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StackExchange is the new ExpertsExchange.

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    How long till it becomes the next "Yahoo! Answers"? Commented Dec 15, 2025 at 11:29
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    @CharonX Considering that Yahoo! Answers no longer exists, I hope it'll take some time. Commented Dec 15, 2025 at 18:38
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    @wizzwizz4 I hope it too, but the course they are taking (have been taking in the past couple of years) are severely harmful to the long-term health of the sites. The "basically allow LLM questions/answers" disaster was narrowly avoided by a concerted moderator strike, but there have been plenty other ill-liked and ill-received changes that make things worse in the long run - on top of them usually ignoring their userbase. Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 8:44
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I'll just block them.

If you want to make the internet even more unbearable for both people still using the web without an ad-blocker, be my guest, but it seems a bit mean-spirited.

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Will site ads be relevant to the site they’re posted on?

Yes, they will. (You shouldn't be seeing Java language course advertisements on Pets Stack Exchange, for example.)

Of course. No one will click on a Java course advertisement because it's clear it's not a real question. However, I don't think any user asked for the advertisement to be disguised as a real question.

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"Advertising revenue is a necessary component of our financial strategy to not only keep the lights on" How did you live without them for such a long time? What has changed?

I will probably quit this SE when you do this!

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  • They didn't live without ads. There were always ads (at least for the last 10 years). But they probably had more traffic in the past. For them there is probably an optimum somewhere, where some people leave but overall revenue is still increasing. Or maybe not. We are about to find out. Commented 2 days ago
  • @NoDataDumpNoContribution: I did not understand you: currently I do not see any ads. Commented yesterday
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The coming soon part is always a very promising start. It creates some sort of suspense, even excitement.

Native ads, the natural additions to a site, themselves are sufficiently mysterious. What makes native ads native? There is room for some deep conversations there.

To Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. A place of 17 years of trusted and high-quality knowledge, of 83 million questions and answers (and counting), of 21 seconds between new questions on average, and of 113 billion times reused knowledge.

I can't wait to see them myself in January 2026 and to really show how much I like them. I have the feeling this will make a lasting impact.

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    Thanks for the insight, ChatGPT Commented Dec 18, 2025 at 11:47
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    @seagull This doesn't appear to me to have been written via ChatGPT, though I am having trouble telling whether it's meant to be sarcastic or not. Commented Dec 18, 2025 at 11:50
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    @seagull No thanks for the comment, seagull. Commented Dec 18, 2025 at 12:00
  • @F1Krazy Not meant as sarcastic. I'm generally not very sarcastic, maybe a little ironic. Commented Dec 18, 2025 at 12:00
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    Are you sure? My Sarcasm Meter is making strange noises Commented Dec 18, 2025 at 15:18
  • @JourneymanGeek Sarcasm is not overly intended. But it should have become clear that I'm kind of past caring much what other people think of me. Commented Dec 18, 2025 at 15:25
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    My reading comprehension is not so good right now. What are you trying to say with this answer? Commented Dec 20, 2025 at 0:23
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    @Anerdw Okay, here is the interpretation. It's an Oracle of Delphi like answer that can be read two ways. I think that people really hate or really like ads, but there is typically not much in between. That's why they will either tolerate this despite of the negative answers here or they will leave and not come back. I myself think about logging out and not actively participating anymore, but who knows. I also use what SO says about itself, which is an ad by itself. People seem to not like it much. I also want to criticize that native ad may be an euphemism. And all that in an artistic style. Commented Dec 20, 2025 at 8:09
  • @NoDataDumpNoContribution So yes, you were being sarcastic. Commented Dec 22, 2025 at 21:01
  • @InHocSigno Maybe. I don't care. To me sarcasm has a negative, somewhat mean, connotation. That's not what I wanted to convey. Commented Dec 22, 2025 at 22:31
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