[HN Gopher] What If We Made Advertising Illegal?
___________________________________________________________________
What If We Made Advertising Illegal?
Author : smnrg
Score : 589 points
Date : 2025-04-05 17:57 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (simone.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (simone.org)
| Terr_ wrote:
| Another approach with overlapping effects is to make companies
| extremely liable for misuse or mismanagement of personal
| information.
|
| There would still be advertising, and maybe even some
| personalized advertising, but in many cases they might decide the
| risk isn't worth it.
|
| It would also impact data-brokers and operations that don't
| strictly rely on direct-to-consumer advertising, like background
| checks, but credit scores, sales leads, etc.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I'm extremely skeptical that there's any meaningful reform to
| be had with liability for misuse. Demonstrating misuse is a
| substantial legal hurdle that no one is going to litigate in
| court. Even with severe and proactive enforcement, it'll just
| incentivize shell companies to act as liability shields.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Which is normal in a lot of European countries
| tabular wrote:
| Could you name 3?
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Europe has perhaps stricter rules on ads, but they're
| absolutely not banned, at most they're restricted but that just
| means you'll see different ads, rather than no ads
| eobanb wrote:
| You're referring to outdoor advertising; the article is talking
| about something much more fundamental. But of course you would
| know that if you had read it
| hinkley wrote:
| Don't need to make it illegal just make it not deductible.
| remram wrote:
| It's deductible?
| daedrdev wrote:
| This seems to focus on online advertising. The question is how
| would you pay for many things on the internet?
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Sign me up for a monthly internet pass. Shit, bake it into my
| monthly internet access fee and make it so the service
| providers then pay back into internet infrastructure. Just like
| we do for radio and TV.
|
| I'd love to see the internet become relatively non profit,
| instead of the current for-profit, for absolutely shit model we
| are living in.
| thfuran wrote:
| >I'd love to see the internet become relatively non profit
|
| The stocks haven't gone down enough for your liking?
| SecretDreams wrote:
| They've gone down mostly for terrible reasons. I could at
| least accept lower stock prices for a better internet for
| me and my kids. Much like housing prices, haha.
| cpinto wrote:
| How many things on the internet do you really need and that are
| paid for via advertising?
| wood_spirit wrote:
| I remember fondly the early internet which was full of hobby
| sites and forums and niche link rings. This was an innocent
| better time where the internet was full of small scale
| creativity and sharing and mostly kindness.
| sejje wrote:
| The early internet, which I was a part of, and think of
| fondly, didn't have anywhere near the utility of the modern
| internet. It was fun to explore, but you couldn't DO much.
|
| I hosted my own site, in my bedroom. I hosted a counter-
| strike server, too. Comcast hadn't shut hosting down yet.
|
| Anyway, that has nothing to do with online banking, services,
| security, apps, media. Let's just use youtube--one of the
| greatest sites of all time, hands down. Huge utility, huge
| entertainment. Free, via advertising. Would have never
| happened without it.
|
| There's so, so much trash, webspam, etc on the modern web. I
| hate it, too. I don't even have warm feelings about youtube
| anymore. But advertising opened a lot of doors.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Comcast hadn't shut hosting down yet.
|
| They still haven't. I host a site from my Comcast
| connection just fine.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Ha ha, so your answer is, everything that advertising pays
| for, which is like 99% of the internet usage today, would go
| away.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| There must be a reason someone hasn't invented a browser plugin
| for microtransactions on the internet?
|
| I'll gladly pay 25 cents to read an article from a news
| website, but I won't subscribe for a whole year for $25+,
| especially when there's dozens/hundreds of sites.
|
| Obviously credit card transaction fees would be a problem, but
| that could be mitigated by depositing say $15 at a time and
| deducting from the balance each time.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is something I explain too. I'd gladly pay maybe 10
| cents for IntelliJ but it's the Pirate Bay otherwise. Just
| set the pricing appropriately. It costs $0 to make a copy so
| it's an infinite margin. Same with most SaaS. About 20 cents
| per month should be the maximum. Any more than that is
| gouging.
|
| Hiring engineers is even worse. I think about $20/hr should
| suffice but there's this big fuss kicked up about "they're
| not willing to pay enough".
| SteveNuts wrote:
| I mean the alternative is they get nothing from me at all
| once I hit their paywall..
|
| And I don't think ad revenue is paying the bills so I'm not
| sure what other options there are. I just went to a few
| major news sites:
|
| Wapo: $120/yr Reuters: $45/yr WSJ: $349/yr NYT: $195/yr
| Bloomberg: $299/yr
|
| That's just a few. Is it better if I just choose one and
| only get my news from a single site? Or should it really
| cost thousands of dollars per year to be informed?
| lukev wrote:
| This is the great white whale of the internet. A platform for
| this would clearly be a thing of value, but extremely
| difficult to do because you need to booststrap a two-sided
| market in an environment where all the existing established
| players are incentivized NOT to participate.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Blendle did exactly this, actually. With similar pricing.
| For many years. It generates very little money but maybe
| that's because German/Dutch news isn't valuable.
| adiabatichottub wrote:
| At first I scoffed at this idea, but then I had a tangential
| thought: what keeps me shopping at Amazon or ebay all the
| time instead of smaller retailers? It's not product quality
| or selection, that's for sure. It's mostly the friction of
| signing up for another site, entering my payment and shipping
| information, adjusting my mail filters, etc. What would
| really help would be complete automation of this process,
| where I click "Checkout", my browser goes through its
| workflow of asking me once if I approve, and a day or two
| later I get my product. So I guess if you had payment
| processing built into the user agent then you can have all
| the micro transactions you want.
|
| So what's keeping this from being a reality?
| SteveNuts wrote:
| No idea but I'd use it over maintaining 15 subscriptions
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| The problem with microtransactions is, who defines the
| minimum unit? Instead of just publishing a $0.25 article, a
| site could publish a $1.25 five-part series, each part duly
| ending in its own cliffhanger. And they'll do it as long as
| enough readers still keep reading it. (It doesn't matter how
| you'd prefer to read it, it only matters what they can get
| away with before profits start to decline. And it wouldn't
| have to be as drastic as this example, it would be a more
| subtle trend of less information expressed in more words over
| time.)
|
| Also, with 10x or more value on each reader's copy of the
| article, say hello to more stringent copyright enforcement
| (either legally or socially: how dare you replicate the work
| of this beloved blogger and deprive them of income!). And the
| complete death of independent search engines.
|
| I just don't see ubiquitous microtransactions leading to
| anywhere good on a social level. And of course, without a ban
| on advertising (however that's supposed to work), you'd just
| end up with sites full of ads on top of microtransactions.
| graemep wrote:
| I am pretty sure that if people had to find away to make things
| profitable they would.
|
| There are plenty of payment mechanisms already used online.
|
| IMO it would be well worth paying for things so I am the
| customer instead of the product.
|
| Many things could be replaced. My use of FB could be replaced
| by forums, for example. I would quite happily pay the bills for
| old style forums that replace the FB groups I admin (although
| not the costs imposed by the Online Safety Act, but that is a
| UK only problem).
| thrance wrote:
| We can rely on donations, look at Wikipedia or personal blogs.
| The best parts of the internet are free and non-profit.
| toomim wrote:
| This begs the question: how could you reliably distinguish
| advertising from other forms of free speech?
|
| The courts already distinguish "commercial speech" as a class of
| speech. Would we prevent all forms of commercial speech? What
| about a waiter asking you "would you like to try a rose with that
| dish? It pairs very well together." Is that "advertising" that
| would need to be outlawed?
|
| What about giving out free samples? Is that advertising, and thus
| should be illegal?
|
| What about putting a sign up on your business that says the
| business name? Is that advertising?
|
| I hate advertising and propaganda. But the hard part IMO is
| drawing the line. Where's the line?
| graemep wrote:
| I think it is a good question, but there are some answers. For
| one thing, it is paid for, though a system set up for the
| purpose of putting commercial speech on someone else's profit
| making media.
|
| Many laws do draw lines in areas that are equally difficult.
| Its a problem, but far from a fatal one.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Well, the thought piece had one simple answer: Were you paid to
| say it, with the intent of motivating said person, to buy a
| product?
|
| Though, this piece made me groan with the buzzwords "a micro-
| awakening of the self." Great way to make me cringe if I send
| it to someone.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > Were you paid to say it, with the intent of motivating said
| person, to buy a product?
|
| For the waiter, this is probably true.
| goatlover wrote:
| So we exempt waiters. No one seriously thinks waiters are
| what the article is about.
| hfgjbcgjbvg wrote:
| Then illegal. Simple. And I like it tbh
| logicchains wrote:
| Think for a moment about what kind of horrible
| totalitarian system you'd need to be living in for it to
| be able to jail a waiter just for making a product
| recommendation. Given the current US administration, how
| could anyone in their right mind think it's a good idea
| to give the government that kind of power?
| jason_oster wrote:
| Who said the punishment would be imprisonment? Fine the
| waiter $5 for every violation. Such a small fine will be
| orders of magnitude higher than what advertisers pay.
| logicchains wrote:
| What happens if he doesn't pay the fine? He goes to jail.
| All laws are enforced with the threat of jail, otherwise
| nobody would follow them. So not only do you need an all-
| pervasive surveillance system to identify when a waiter
| tries to market something, but also a justice system with
| the power to jail him for doing so.
| readams wrote:
| Presumably they can't have a menu either? The menu might
| induce you to buy something.
| saulpw wrote:
| You can always opt-in. Advertising is specifically
| information that is not requested.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Many lines are hard to draw but we benefit from trying to draw
| them. Worrying too much would be bikeshedding
|
| The biggest example that comes to mind is gambling. Japan says
| it's not gambling if the pachinko place gives you balls and
| then you have to walk next door to a "different" company to
| cash out the balls. I say it sounds like their laws are
| captured by the pachinko industry.
|
| Video game loot boxes are technically legal but most of us
| don't want children gambling. Even if the game company doesn't
| pay you for weapon skins, there's such a big secondary market
| that it constitutes gambling anyway. Just like the pachinko
| machines.
| uniq7 wrote:
| Any laws with blurred lines will be used by the people in
| power against their political adversaries to keep them in
| power.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I agree with this. Any law that's not universally enforced:
| speeding, jaywalking, tax audit, etc is a tool for
| political persecution.
| IshKebab wrote:
| _All_ laws have blurred lines. I guess you could say some
| are a lot more blurred than others.
| autoexec wrote:
| > I say it sounds like their laws are captured by the
| pachinko industry.
|
| It wasn't just the pachinko industry that tied the hands of
| Japanese government. It was the people too. It's a lot harder
| to ban something and keep it banned when everybody wants it.
| Thankfully, not many people want ads, but pachinko was
| popular enough that it makes sense to continue to let people
| do it. You're right about still getting a benefit. Even after
| carving out exceptions, banning gambling broadly otherwise is
| effective enough to solve a lot of the problems that
| unregulated gambling can cause.
|
| I do think video game loot boxes are something that needs
| regulation. Not just because it is gambling, but because the
| games can be unfair and even adversarial. Casinos exploit and
| encourage adult gambling addicts but at least those games are
| required to be "fair" (no outright cheating) and they have to
| be honest about how unfair the odds against you are. A
| supposedly impartial third party goes around making sure
| casinos are following the rules. Video games don't have any
| of that and they're targeting children on top of it.
| what wrote:
| >video game loot boxes
|
| Is buying packages of random baseball/pokemon/etc cards
| gambling then?
| binarymax wrote:
| Hard rules are fallible, but we can lean on precedent in the
| supreme court for an adjacent topic (obscenity):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
| Apreche wrote:
| The answer is the same way we banned cigarette ads.
| kiicia wrote:
| There are two ways of trying to achieving goal. One is to start
| from big picture, think if we even want to do something, then
| plan how to go there. Second is to start from technicalities
| and probably immediately go nowhere.
|
| You are starting from technicalities before you even took the
| moment to actually think of goal is worth it.
|
| If it is worth it and we would indeed be better off - plan how
| to go there, it may not be easy, but it will be possible this
| way or another. If it is not worth it after all - just say it,
| no technicalities needed, redirect time and effort elsewhere.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| It's not speech that needs to be regulated, it's broadcast
| (which should not have 1A protections at nearly the same
| level). Even if a waiter is giving recommendations, those are
| limited to the people at the table and there is clearly a
| mutual exchange of value. Broadcast (aka Industrial)
| advertising is something we accept, but not because it
| particularly benefits the viewer. It benefits the broadcaster
| and advertiser and makes the viewer into a product.
| ambicapter wrote:
| I think this is the best insight on this thread. Laws of this
| kind would be like banning billboards in cities, which has
| been done.
| throwanem wrote:
| And we already regulate actual broadcast on this basis.
|
| For example, it violates no rule to include valid Emergency
| Broadcast System/Emergency Alert System tones (the
| electronic, machine-interpretable "chirps") in a movie or
| TV show, or to publish that via streaming, DVD etc. But no
| one _does_ this, because broadcasting spurious tones (and
| triggering spurious automated broadcast interruptions)
| carries serious first-instance fines to which FCC licensees
| (ie distributors via broadcast) agree as a condition of
| licensure. They know they aren 't allowed to do this and,
| very occasional and expensive mishaps excepted, they won't
| take the risk. (1) So program material that wants to
| include those tones has to make sure they're excluded from
| the TV edit, or decide whether the verisimilitude is worth
| the limit on audience access.
|
| While the specifics of course vary among cases, the basic
| theory of broadcast (ie distribution) as distinct from and
| less protected than speech, with the consequential
| distinction drawn specifically along the scale at which
| speech is distributed, seems clear.
|
| (1) Some may note instances such as one of the Purge films
| (iirc) that seem to contradict this claim. Compare the
| tones in those examples with the ones in test samples or
| generated by a compliant encoder [1] for the "Specific Area
| Message Encoding" protocol. Even without a decoder, the FSK
| frequencies and timings have to be resilient to low-
| bandwidth channels designed to carry human voice, so it's
| all well within audible ranges and you can _hear_ the
| difference between real tones and what a movie or show can
| safely use. Typically either the pitch is dropped below
| compliant ranges, or the encoding is intentionally
| corrupted, or both. But almost always, the problem is just
| sidestepped entirely, since it 's the attention tone that
| everyone really notices anyway.
|
| [1] https://cryptodude3.github.io/same/ is no more
| certified than mine but has, unlike my own implementation,
| been tested against a real EAS ENDEC. At some point I want
| to test mine against that one and find out how badly I
| screwed up reading the spec ten years ago...
| JuettnerDistrib wrote:
| How would this work for a personal blog? Would I need to be
| careful not to endorse or even talk about companies and
| products? And if I didn't have to, wouldn't that open the
| door for advertising masquerading as news or opinion?
| Genuinely interested in this.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Were you paid to talk about the product? If not, then it's
| constitutionally protected speech. If there is any kind of
| payment, it's advertising. If it's advertising, follow the
| law.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Put this way I almost think we should ban anything that makes
| "people into the product"
| niemandhier wrote:
| Money. It's advertising if mony or anything equivalent flows in
| any form, even after the act.
|
| Many countries have laws against corruption that are structured
| like that.
| OJFord wrote:
| So if you accept GP's waiter's rose suggestion, it was
| advertising, and if you don't it was not?
|
| (Schrosedinger, if you will.)
| DeepSeaTortoise wrote:
| So if a restaurant rents a property to build a really nice
| looking outdoor dining area, do they have to surround it with
| walls so people arent convinced by it to dine there?
| thfuran wrote:
| No. Why would they?
| djoldman wrote:
| In the communications industry there are SOME fairly bright
| definitions:
|
| - Advertising and marketing are when an entity _pays_ some
| other entity to transmit content
|
| - Public relations is when an entity, _without paying_ , causes
| another entity to transmit content
|
| - Public affairs is when an entity causes a governmental entity
| to consume specific content at minimum, up to possibly
| influencing decisions. It should go without saying that this is
| _without paying_ as well, otherwise it 's corruption/bribery
| kodt wrote:
| >- Advertising and marketing are when an entity pays some
| other entity to transmit content
|
| So all usage of the internet would apply?
| mc32 wrote:
| If money exchanges hands. If you pay someone to distribute
| flyers, or you pay someone to run ads.
|
| If you expect a this for that that benefits the giver. Like say
| a pharma offering free airfare and lodging to a medical
| conference if you talk up their product to patients.
|
| There will be corner cases, obscure circumstances, unforeseen
| loopholes, etc., but this would be a good start.
| antasvara wrote:
| Worth questioning who that benefits the most. It definitely
| benefits consumers in the sense that they won't be bombarded
| by advertisements.
|
| But it also benefits large businesses that _already_ spent
| millions advertising and now have a much deeper moat.
|
| It kind of reminds me of college sports before NIL deals.
| Back then, you couldn't pay college recruits. You'd think
| this levels the playing field, right?
|
| In fact, we saw the opposite effect. You see schools spending
| millions to add waterslides to their locker rooms, or
| promising "exposure" that smaller schools can't offer. You
| essentially had to spend twice as much on stuff that
| indirectly benefited the players.
|
| I'd expect similar things to happen among businesses. Think
| "crazy stunt in Times Square so that an actual news site will
| write about it."
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The ambiguity of these questions is a feature rather than a
| bug.
|
| Being unable to tell when something is "advertising" forces
| everyone to think twice before hawking their wares, which is
| exactly what we want if we intend to kill ads. The chilling
| effect is precisely the intention.
|
| It's the engineer's curse to believe that airtight laws are
| automatically better, or that justice springs from mechanistic
| certainty. The world is fundamentally messy, and the sooner we
| accept its arbitrariness, the sooner we can get to an
| advertising-free world.
| tener wrote:
| So we end up in a system in which those with money to
| litigate will do what they want? I'd rather have airtight
| laws instead.
| _def wrote:
| That's where we are right now. Airtight laws are impossible
| in complex systems.
| tener wrote:
| Sure, but I meant airtight as a point on a spectrum
| rather than absolute thing. Meaning: you should prefer
| laws which are both generic and unambiguous.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Can you point to an airtight law regarding speech that
| exists today - both as written and enforced? I can't.
|
| This is a worse is better[1] situation. Specifically, I'm
| arguing against the MIT approach to lawmaking.
|
| The MIT approach:
|
| > The design must be consistent. A design is allowed to be
| slightly less simple and less complete to avoid
| inconsistency. Consistency is as important as correctness.
|
| Thinking about laws like software terminates thought.
|
| 1. https://www.dreamsongs.com/WIB.html
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| No. This is called selective enforcement and is the worst
| thing in the world. It gives the enforcers the option to pick
| on whoever they want and give a pass to whever they want, as
| if there were no law at all. There is effectively no law at
| all, because literally anyone doing anything can be called
| either guilty or innocent at the whim of the person doing the
| enforcing, or whoever controls them.
| TuringTest wrote:
| You've just described how laws actually work - but we have
| created modern judiciary system so that it will tend to
| produce outcomes considered fair by the majority.
| Algorithmic enforcement of justice without human
| deliberation of case-by-case specifics would be worse that
| the worst horror stories about soulless bureaucracies.
|
| That's why we have judges and lawyers, so that the outcome
| can be decided as a communal process instead of just one
| person deciding what is punishable - even if the person is
| the developer building the automated justice dispenser and
| they'll be not around when the decision is taken, it would
| still be made by the whims of a single enforcer.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| You've just observed the fact that even the least
| ambiguous and subjective language possible still requires
| interpretation, not that laws are meant to be ambiguous
| or subjective.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| No, what it does is require the courts to interpret the
| meaning of the word and create precedent. That's not the
| same as selective enforcement.
| econ40432 wrote:
| There would be a chilling effect on speech. People would be
| afraid to speak or be imprisoned for saying the wrong things.
| North Korea is the only country that bans advertising.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > North Korea is the only country that bans advertising.
|
| Outright banning, yes maybe. But many countries or local
| governments severely _regulate_ advertising in one form or
| another, and no one is crying foul either.
| econ40432 wrote:
| These countries typically ban alcohol, gambling, children
| and pharma ads. They still let a large number of ads
| through.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Well those sound like a great place to start.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Some of us actually go as far as ban billboards,
| electronic billboards, or even during elections - some
| counties in Germany limit all kinds of election related
| propaganda to a few large billboards at the entrance
| roads, and the rest is kept clean from the bullshit.
| autoexec wrote:
| They didn't start out banning those ads. Those ads were
| banned because they were found to be more harmful than
| they are worth. We've come to realize that much of the
| ads we're subjected to these days are also harmful, so
| it's natural for us to want them banned as well.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| The free samples are interesting. No one got mad because people
| offered cheese samples at the grocery store, because they're
| not forced to eat them. I dread passing by the perfume island
| when I go shopping because the vendors can be persistent, but
| IMO that is also not blatant advertising. Offering free samples
| of perfumes inside magazines also doesn't offend anyone, but
| that's clearly paid advertising and would be illegal.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| In addition to sibling commenters mentioning incentive-side
| (eg. paid to promote) considerations, I also propose both an
| "immersion" and/or "consent" component.
|
| When you are dining, and are suggested food pairings -- I'm
| there to eat, so suggesting something food related from the
| same establishment, that may enhance my meal experience, makes
| sense and generally does not feel unduly interruptive. In a
| way, I consent to being offered additional interesting and
| available food items at that time and place. I would not find
| it acceptable if the waiter brought out a catalog and tried to
| sell me shoes or insurance.
|
| In a similar way, I don't mind (and often even enjoy or
| appreciate) movie trailers at the beginning of movies. I'm
| there to watch a movie, and in a fairly non-interruptive way
| (before the start of the movie) I am presented with some other
| movies coming out soon. Nice. I consent to seeing them at the
| start of a movie, and they are relevant to the subject matter.
| I would certainly be irritated if they were hoisted upon me in
| the middle of the movie, or if they were about new cars coming
| out soon.
|
| I have also at times been actively searching for something I
| need or want to purchase, but am unsure what exactly I am
| looking for or what are the best options. At that time I would
| certainly be more open and interested in seeing advertisements
| regarding the types of items I am interested in. I would
| "consent" to seeing interest based advertisements.
|
| Summary: I do not enjoy being interrupted with advertisements
| completely unrelated to whatever activity I am taking part in.
| I only want to see them when it is related to what I am doing,
| AND when I consent to seeing them.
| lostdog wrote:
| Airline credit card announcements on flights is a perfect
| example of what should be banned, but getting the law right
| is tricky.
|
| IMO it should be illegal due to using a system for safety
| announcements for non-safety profit related reasons.
| lukan wrote:
| I would start with obvious things, like banning distracting
| blinking advertisement next to roads and go further from there.
|
| Rule of thumb, all aggressive unwanted information.
|
| Clear? For sure not, like you said. But I am considering
| (rather dreaming) moving to La Palma, a vulcano island that
| banned all light advertisement (they did so, because of the
| observatories on top, but they are cool).
|
| Still, a city without aggressive lights would be nice. Some
| lights are probably unavaidable in big cities, but light that
| is purposeful distracting, should be just banned.
|
| And online is kind of a different beast, as we voluntarily go
| to the sites offering us information (but thank god and gorhill
| for adblockers)
| fragmede wrote:
| That's why it's such a stupid idea. People who want a world
| without advertising should create a product that will genuinely
| improve people's lives and be forced to work as a salesman
| selling that product and experience the practicalities of doing
| so before drawing lines. I'm not for unsolicited phone calls
| about my car's warranty during dinner, but advertising is not
| this universal evil that some make it out to be.
| imiric wrote:
| There's a world of difference between announcing the
| existence of a product to potentially interested
| demographics, and abusing people's privacy by collecting
| their personal data in order to build a profile of them so
| they can be micro-targeted by psychologically manipulative
| content that is misleading or downright false--oh, and their
| profile is now in perpetuity exchanged in dark markets, and
| is also used by private and government agencies for spreading
| political propaganda, and for feeding them algorithmic
| content designed to keep them glued to their screens so that
| they can consume more ads that they have no interest in
| seeing... And so on, and so forth.
|
| Whatever happened to product catalogs? Remember those? I'm
| interested in purchasing a new computer, so I buy the latest
| edition of Computer Shoppers Monthly. Companies buy ad space
| there, and I read them when I'm interested. The entire
| ecommerce industry could work like that. I go on Amazon, and
| I search for what I want to buy. I don't need algorithms to
| show me what I might like the most. Just allow me to search
| by product type, brand, and specifications, and I'm capable
| of making a decision. It would really help me if paid and
| promoted reviews weren't a thing, and I could only see honest
| reviews by people who actually purchased the product. This is
| a feature that ecommerce sites can offer, but have no
| incentive to.
| imiric wrote:
| We don't need to go into absurd discussions in order to prevent
| 99% of the harm that comes from modern advertising.
|
| The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote
| a product? That's advertising.
|
| Someone I know mentioning a product because they want to
| recommend it to me? Not advertising.
|
| Giving out "free" samples? Presumably someone is being paid to
| do that, so advertising.
|
| We can later quibble about edge cases and how to handle someone
| putting up a sign for their business. Many countries have
| regulations about visual noise, so that should be considered as
| well.
|
| But it's pretty easy to distinguish advertising that seeks to
| manipulate, and putting a stop to that. Hell, we could start by
| surfacing the dark data broker market and banning it
| altogether. That alone should remove the most egregious cases
| of privacy abuse.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| > The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to
| promote a product? That's advertising.
|
| this is _obviously_ not a clear line. No money is exchanged
| when I promote my own product through my own channels, nor
| when I promote my friends products, whether I disclose it as
| promotion, or disguise it as my genuine unaffiliated opinion.
| Sometimes it really _is_ a genuine opinion! Even worse:
| sometimes a genuine opinion _becomes_ an incentivized one
| later on as someone 's audience grows
|
| the good news is there is a solution that doesn't require
| playing these cat & mouse games and top down authority
| deciding what is allowed speech: you want better ways to
| reach the people who want your product.
|
| Ads are a bad solution to a genuine problem in society. They
| will persist as long as the problem exists. People who sell
| things need ways to find buyers. Solve the root problem of
| discernment rather than punishing everyone indiscriminately
| pishpash wrote:
| Yellow books used to do that. Because you're right it's a
| matchmatching problem.
| imiric wrote:
| > People who sell things need ways to find buyers.
|
| No, you've got that backwards. People who sell things
| should have a way of announcing their product to the world.
| Buyers who are interested in that type of product should be
| the ones seeking out the companies, not the other way
| around.
|
| The current approach of companies pushing their products to
| everyone is how we got to the mess we are in today.
| Companies will cheat, lie, and break every law in existence
| in order to make more money. Laws need to be made in order
| for companies to stop abusing people.
|
| You know what worked well? Product catalogs. Companies buy
| ad space in specific print or digital media. Consumers can
| consult that media whenever they want to purchase a
| specific product. This is what ecommerce sites should be.
| Give the consumer the tools to search for specific product
| types, brands, specifications, etc.; get rid of fake
| reviews and only show honest reviews from verified
| purchases and vetted reviewers, and there you go. Consumers
| can discover products, and companies can advertise.
|
| This, of course, is only wishful thinking, since companies
| would rather continue to lie, cheat, and steal, as that's
| how the big bucks are made.
|
| I honestly find it disturbing that with all of humanity's
| progress and all the brilliant technology we've invented,
| all of our communication channels are corrupted by
| companies who want to make us buy stuff, and by propaganda
| from agencies that want to make us think or act a certain
| way. Like holy shit, people, is this really the best we can
| do? It's exhausting having to constantly fight against
| being manipulated or exploited.
| beambot wrote:
| Product catalogs are advertising... The Sears catalog was
| full of products made by other companies, and Sears paid
| a ton of money to get those catalogs to as many people as
| possible
| PebblesRox wrote:
| I think the point is that they're opt-in advertising. You
| didn't pick up a book and find pages from the Sears
| catalog interspersed with the pages you were trying to
| read. You picked up the Sears catalog when you were
| considering a purchase and wanted to see what was
| available.
| beambot wrote:
| When you visit a ad-supported news website, you're opting
| in too... No one is forcing you to use that website
| versus it's ad-free subscription alternatives, it's just
| that most people have decided they'd prefer the former
| wat10000 wrote:
| The difference is that a catalog is advertising that the
| viewer actually wants to see. Ads on a news site are ads
| that the viewer merely tolerates because they go with the
| thing they want to see.
| what wrote:
| I get various catalogs/flyers/etc interspersed with my
| physical mail. They just send it to me, I never opted in.
| exac wrote:
| I think everyone knows that, but the distinction is that
| the catalog is "pull" in the sense that if you decide to
| keep your catalog, the advertising is inside the catalog,
| and you have to physically retrieve your catalog and open
| it to find what you're looking for (when you're looking
| for it), instead of the "push" method of running
| advertisements in every news article and on every bus.
| jasode wrote:
| _> I think everyone knows that, but the distinction is
| [...]_
|
| The discussion got muddied because in this subthread, it
| morphed from _" What if we made _all_ advertising
| illegal?"_ (original article's exact words) ... to gp's
| (imiric) less restrictive example of "acceptable"
| advertising such as _" product catalogs"_.
|
| So when the person crafting a reply is using the article
| author's absolutist position of no ads, the distinction
| doesn't matter.
| bawolff wrote:
| This metaphor seems a little tortured to me.
|
| If print media delivered to your door is considered
| "pull" because you have to open it, then i think so is
| instagram because you have to open the app.
| kodt wrote:
| You forget that people used to get spammed with catalogs,
| and you could opt-out of them with the postal service
| because it was such a problem. Receiving too many
| catalogs or magazines is absolutely a negative form of
| advertising, even though it is less of an issue today.
| eduction wrote:
| > The current approach of companies pushing their
| products to everyone is how we got to the mess we are in
| today.
|
| The most prosperous society ever known to man, a
| veritable wonderland of consumer choice and
| entrepreneurial opportunity that draws people from all
| over the world to study visit and move here. What a mess.
|
| So we have some annoying advertising. Small price.
| imiric wrote:
| > So we have some annoying advertising. Small price.
|
| Ha. Tell that to the millions of victims from false
| advertising of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma.
|
| That prosperous society and veritable wonderland is not
| looking so great these days. Perhaps the fact that the
| tools built for psychologically manipulating people into
| buying things can also be used to manipulate people into
| thinking and acting a certain way could be related to
| your current situation? Maybe those tools shouldn't have
| been available to everyone, including your political
| adversaries?
|
| But hey, glad you're enjoying it over there.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| The snark padding is a waste of screen pixels and
| undermines your point.
| vogelke wrote:
| > millions of victims from false advertising of Big
| Tobacco
|
| People have known that smoking is bad for your health for
| around 400 years. You can't fix stupid, not even by
| making advertising illegal.
| ansmithz42 wrote:
| Having lived overseas, the US isn't a "veritable
| wonderland of consumer choice". There are 5 grocery store
| chains, for the great majority of the country there is
| one way to travel: car. At the store (Kroger), I can buy
| 2 kinds of salt on the shelves. Where is the "veritable
| choice"? It has been told in the advertising but the
| reality is very limited.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| There are scores of grocery chains in the US, not 5.
| There are thousands of independent grocery stores. And
| literally hundreds of salt options, even at Kroger.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_
| in_...
|
| https://www.kroger.com/search?query=salt&searchType=defau
| lt_...
| ojbyrne wrote:
| The salt options must be customized regionally, because I
| only get 3 choices.
| relaxing wrote:
| Found the guy that doesn't actually shop at the grocery
| store.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seriously. Even the most basic supermarkets stock like at
| least 10 different kinds of salt. Iodized, non, kosher,
| sea, for grinding, packets, in disposable shakers, etc.,
| and often a couple brands, e.g. Morton and Diamond. And a
| larger supermarket will have pink salt (Himalayan),
| various fancy sea salts, fleur de sel, flavored salts...
| mindcrime wrote:
| Meh. This scenario does not seem broadly representative
| of the US to me. I mean, I don't live anywhere
| exceptional and near me alone there are Food Lion, Harris
| Teeter, Wegmans, Trader Joes, Aldi, and Whole Foods
| stores in addition to the grocery sections at Walmart and
| Target. And if one drives a little further, there are
| Publix, H-Mart, and several smaller local outfits -
| Compare, Li Ming's Global Mart, etc.
|
| And just Food Lion alone has probably half a dozen to a
| dozen different salt varieties on the spice aisle.
|
| I'm sure there are places in the US where choice _is_
| more limited, but that 's the thing about a country of
| the size of the United States... you can find all kind of
| scenarios in different regions.
| nine_k wrote:
| The "veritable wonderland" is big cities; come visit NYC
| or LA. Also affluent smaller cities. Elsewhere, it
| depends. You can reach parts of the consumption
| cornucopia by accessing sites like Amazon from basically
| anywhere in the US though.
| corny wrote:
| And we could make those catalogs more appealing to the
| general public by inserting a lot of exclusive content
| like news, essays, or short stories.
|
| I basically agree with the spirit of what you're saying
| but the line is not clear.
| tremon wrote:
| The appeal of a catalog is to interest a prospective
| _buyer_ , not the general public. Once you start
| targeting the general public, you run into the issues the
| GP has identified.
| liendolucas wrote:
| > I honestly find it disturbing that with all of
| humanity's progress and all the brilliant technology
| we've invented, all of our communication channels are
| corrupted by...
|
| Honestly, you couldn't have said that any better. I
| always think exactly about that. Where we are today, the
| technology that we have at our disposal, and yet this
| whole machinery working 24hs non-stop to put these
| consumption ideas on our heads, cheap propaganda and
| useless stuff to manipulate us like puppets. Really
| disgusting.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Buyers who are interested in that type of product
| should be the ones seeking out the companies, not the
| other way around.
|
| People are not born with a knowledge of all of the
| products on the market, and the current price ranges for
| them.
| addicted wrote:
| > No money is exchanged when I promote my own product
| through my own channels
|
| This is not really advertising, but it's not really a
| problem either. People expect you to promote your own
| products and take it with the grain of salt they should.
| Besides, there are only so many channels you can possibly
| control.
|
| > nor when I promote my friends products, whether I
| disclose it as promotion, or disguise it as my genuine
| unaffiliated opinion. Sometimes it really is a genuine
| opinion!
|
| Sure. Maybe this is advertising that slips through. If all
| were down to is people advertising their friends's products
| for no money then we would have eliminated 99.99% of the
| problem.
|
| Further, if you have a highly influential channel, the cost
| of promoting a non genuine opinion about a friend's product
| would almost certainly hurt your reputation, providing a
| strong disincentive to do such a thing.
| irrational wrote:
| > No money is exchanged when I promote my own product
| through my own channels
|
| Isn't it? You receive money when people buy your product
| because of your advertising.
| pishpash wrote:
| Why not just eliminate the sale of personal data? That seems
| pretty cut and dry.
| Rygian wrote:
| That's only part of the problem.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| I feel like all the "targeted audience" stuff is used more
| to sell ad space and get its metrics rather than actually
| "targeting" ads.
| autoexec wrote:
| I'd happily support that but the harms of advertising go
| beyond the problems of surveillance capitalism so heavily
| restricting ads seems like a good idea on its own.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| Simply make it illegal to base the choice of what ad to
| show on any data derived from the person accessing the
| content. The same content accessed by different people from
| different locations should have the same ad probability
| distribution. You can still do old-school targeting by
| associating static content with certain types of ad a
| priori, as long as the shown content is independent of the
| user and not generated from any user data.
| econ40432 wrote:
| Does CNN, Fox News, ABC, New York Times and CBS use money to
| endorse candidates on air? Is that advertising?
| ericjmorey wrote:
| Who would think it's not advertising?
| econ40432 wrote:
| So these news networks would be banned too?
| Ukv wrote:
| The networks themselves wouldn't be banned, but they
| wouldn't be permitted to endorse or give airtime to a
| candidate in exchange for money, I'd assume is the idea.
| econ40432 wrote:
| They're not endorsing candidates in exchange for money.
| They do use their money to run their networks, which they
| use to promote certain candidates and positions.
|
| Re: "The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order
| to promote a product? That's advertising."
| Henchman21 wrote:
| They're endorsing candidates to sell more newspapers or
| more airtime for advertisers. How is that not "in
| exchange for money"?
| theamk wrote:
| [delayed]
| tptacek wrote:
| Candidate endorsements (and political advertising in
| general) are core political speech. You can't outlaw it in
| the US.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Most advertising is done via "influencers," now...
| tptacek wrote:
| Commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment.
| sethammons wrote:
| Should it be?
| worik wrote:
| No.
|
| The purpose of "free speech" is to allow the spread of
| ideas.
|
| The purpose of advertising is to spread an idea.
|
| They are different things.
| tptacek wrote:
| I mean, if you're going to make up your own First
| Amendment jurisprudence. But it would be worth reading
| the line of cases from Schneider through Sorrell (there's
| a lot of them) to get the reasoning of several
| generations of jurists on why it's not this simple.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| What?
|
| Yes, the purpose of "free speech" is to allow the spread
| of ideas. The purpose of _any_ particular piece of speech
| (a book, a pamphlet, a poster, a sign, a rally, a
| concert, anything) is to spread an idea. The idea in that
| particular piece of speech.
|
| Do you want to preserve free speech but ban speech that
| tries to spread an idea? Your comment would be banned
| because you're trying to spread that idea.
|
| Commercial speech is a legal term for speech that
| promotes commerce [1].
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commercial_speech
| worik wrote:
| > The line is clear
|
| It is not. It never is. But that is not a big problem.
|
| Around the boundary cases there will be injustice and strife.
| But only around the boundary cases.
|
| We deal with this all the time in our societies. Some
| societies are better at it than others
|
| "The perfect is an enemy of the good"
| numpad0 wrote:
| I'm wondering if it's possible that the reality might be
| working the other way around than perceived. Could there be
| steaming can of worms that modern rampant commercial
| advertising is venting and holding down?
|
| Studio Ghibli made ~$220m on _Spirited Away_. What if they
| made $2.2T, is the quality going to go up, or down? And,
| would there be less ads, if no one made even $2.2 on them?
| timewizard wrote:
| > The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to
| promote a product? That's advertising.
|
| Let's say I have a journal. It costs money to subscribe. It
| covers a topic that many college students also study.
|
| Can I give the school a free copy? Can I give the teachers
| one? Can I give the students one? Is this advertising? When
| does the amount of "value" become offensive?
|
| > surfacing the dark data broker market and banning it
| altogether.
|
| This is why this has become a modern problem. I can live with
| erring on the side of free speech when it comes to
| advertising, but there is no side to err on when it comes to
| analytics and targeting.
| tptacek wrote:
| The line doesn't matter, because advertising is protected
| by the First Amendment.
| Vilian wrote:
| It's not because USA constitution is bad that it can't be
| applied to any other country
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to
| promote a product? That 's advertising._
|
| The line is absolutely _not_ clear.
|
| Is ABC allowed to run commercials for its own shows?
|
| ABC is owned by Disney. Is ABC allowed to run commercials for
| Disney shows? Is it allowed to run commericals for Disney
| toys?
|
| Can ABC run commercials for Bounty paper towels, in exchange
| for Bounty putting ads for ABC shows on its paper towel
| packaging?
|
| Literally _no_ money is being exchanged so far.
|
| I'm familiar with a lot of gray areas that courts regularly
| have to decide on. But trying to distinguish advertising from
| free speech sounds like the most difficult free speech
| question I've ever come across. People are allowed to express
| positive opinions about products, and even try to convince
| their friends, that's free speech. Trying to come up with a
| global definition of advertising that doesn't veer into
| censorship... I can't even imagine. Are you suddenly
| prevented from blogging about a water bottle you like,
| because you received a coupon for a future water bottle?
| Because if you use that coupon, it's effectively money
| exchanged. What if your blog says you wouldn't have bothered
| writing about the bottle, but you were so impressed with the
| coupon on top of everything else it got you to write?
|
| You can argue over any of these examples, but that's the
| point: you're arguing, because the line isn't clear.
| kragen wrote:
| > _Is ABC allowed to run commercials for its own shows?_
|
| Well, not if they pay employees to do it. Except that shows
| aren't products, they're services, so they'd be exempt from
| this proposal.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| > Except that shows aren't products, they're services, so
| they'd be exempt from this proposal.
|
| What does that mean? What's a service in this definition?
| Surely not in the normal definition of a "service", as in
| health care or tech? Like is a movie a service too?
|
| Or do you just mean something you get for free because
| it's a show on their own channel? What if you had to pay
| for shows ala carte?
| kragen wrote:
| I suggest reading
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_(economics). Some
| authors use the term "product" in opposition to
| "service", while others consider services to be a type of
| product.
|
| A show isn't made of matter. If you pay for it, you can't
| take possession of it or resell it later. If you, the
| buyer, aren't available at the time that it is provided,
| you get nothing of value out of the deal. These are
| attributes of services like surgery or internet
| connectivity, not products like antibiotics and
| computers. ("Health care" and "tech" are too vague to be
| useful.)
|
| Getting things for free is not, as you imply, a usual
| attribute of services.
| dmoy wrote:
| I agree with the general thought - doing something like
| this would give giant mega corporations a huge leg up from
| verticals.
|
| > Can ABC run commercials for Bounty paper towels, in
| exchange for Bounty putting ads for ABC shows on its paper
| towel packaging?
|
| I was with you until this one
|
| Under both IRS and GAAP rules, that's equivalent to money
| changing hands. So in a hypothetical "no money for
| advertising" world, that would be over the line.
| theamk wrote:
| [delayed]
| kragen wrote:
| Maybe you should post a proposal for a law that's a little
| more specific than "is money being exchanged in order to
| promote a product? That's advertising." Then we can see if it
| is in fact possible to prevent 99%, or for that matter 50%,
| of the harm that comes from modern advertising, without
| outlawing other things.
|
| Let's consider toomim's three examples: "would you like to
| try a rose with that dish? It pairs very well together,"
| giving out free samples, and putting a sign up on your
| business that says the business name.
|
| The first case seems like it would straightforwardly be
| illegal under your proposal if the waiter is an employee (or
| contractor) who gets paid by the restaurant, because the
| restaurant is exchanging money with the waiter in order to
| promote the rose, which is a product. It would only be legal
| if the waiter were an unpaid volunteer or owned the
| restaurant.
|
| The second case seems like it would straightforwardly be
| illegal under your proposal if the business had to buy the
| free samples from somewhere, knowing that it would give some
| of them out as free samples, because then it's exchanging
| money with its supplier in order to promote its products (in
| some cases the same product, but in other cases the bananas
| and soft drinks next to the cash registers, which people are
| likely to buy if you can get them into the store). Also, if
| one of the business's employees (or a contractor) gave out
| the free samples, that would be exchanging money with the
| employee to promote a product. You'd only be in the clear if
| you're a sole proprietor or partnership who bought the
| products without intending to give them away, changed your
| mind later, and then gave them away _yourself_ rather than
| paying an employee to do so.
|
| Putting up a sign on the business that says the business name
| is clearly promoting products, if the business sells
| products. Obviously the business can't pay a sign shop. If
| the business owner makes the sign herself, that might be
| legal, but not if she buys materials to make the sign from.
| She'd have to make the sign from materials unintentionally
| left over from legitimate non-advertising purchases, or which
| she obtained by non-purchase means, such as fishing them out
| of the garbage. However, she'd be in the clear if her
| business only sells services, not products.
|
| A large blanket loophole in the law as you proposed it is
| that it completely exempts barter. So you can still buy a
| promotional sign from the sign shop if you pay the sign shop
| with something other than money, such as microwave ovens. The
| sign shop can then freely sell the microwave ovens for money.
|
| In this form, it seems like your proposal would put at risk
| basically any purchase of goods by a product-selling
| business, except for barter, because there is a risk that
| those goods would be used for premeditated product promotion.
| Probably in practice businesses would keep using cash, which
| would give local authorities free rein to shut down any
| business they didn't like, while overlooking the criminal
| product-promotion conspiracies of their friends.
|
| So, do you want to propose some legal language that is
| somewhat more narrowly tailored?
| kodt wrote:
| Well money must be exchanged to put up a sign outside of your
| business. Therefore it would be illegal.
| theamk wrote:
| [delayed]
| OJFord wrote:
| I would propose 'unsolicited salesmanship'.
|
| If I enter your restaurant, car dealership, etc. then you can
| pitch & try to up-sell your goods and services to me.
|
| If I drive down a motorway or use your website, third-parties
| can't advertise _their_ goods and services at me from spots you
| 've sold them. (But you can tell me it will be faster to exit
| onto your toll road or that I should buy or upgrade my
| membership plan on the site.)
| pishpash wrote:
| So no third-party advertising. But that would then create
| bundling schemes where the restaurant sells you a bundle of
| their goods and some third-party goods together, for a
| kickback on the backend, or they make referrals.
| OJFord wrote:
| No, that's why I said 'unsolicited' rather than 'third-
| party', so take the motorway billboard toll road example -
| if you also happen to own the car dealership or the webapp,
| you can't advertise _that_ , because that's not what I've
| come to your motorway for.
|
| And what's solicited or 'relevant' doesn't need to be
| rigidly defined in statutes (assuming common law) - the ASA
| or OfCom whoever it would be (UK examples) slaps fines on
| the rulebreakers and if they think they've interpreted the
| law correctly in good faith then it goes to court and we
| find out (and the growing body of case law helps future
| would-be-advertisers interpret it).
|
| The existing advertisement disclosure rules for social
| media for example don't allow the loophole you propose: a
| 'sponsored' segment shilling a product in a YouTube video
| isn't considered different from directly selling video time
| to the third-party in which to run their own ad reel.
| mulmen wrote:
| How do grocery stores work in this model?
| thfuran wrote:
| Same as they always have?
| josephpmay wrote:
| Most grocery stores charge brands for better shelf
| positions
| thfuran wrote:
| I see. Well, same as they always have from the consumer
| point of view, maybe with less extortion behind the
| curtain.
| tsss wrote:
| Most things that people post online, voluntarily, is
| essentially advertising of one form or another.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| No paid advertising, whether that involves financial
| compensation, in kind gifts, or something else.
|
| There would be no commercial ads online if google received no
| kickbacks to show ads. There would be no influencers, either.
| I'd be okay with non-profits and government agencies
| advertising benevolent things to us, like vaccinations.
|
| The only hard part is to develop systems to actually ensure
| nobody is receiving compensation if they are showing a product.
|
| I'd also be fine to make exceptions for internal advertising,
| e.g. you're already on the Google website and Google is
| advertising their own products/services to you.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| What about just restrict it to advertising on the internet?
|
| The internet is supposed to be an information retrieval tool.
| Advertising's whole goal is to stand between you and the
| information you actually want. And it does so by trying to
| anticipate instead of the thing you want, the thing you are
| most willing to buy next, whether that's actual products with
| money or propaganda. Whereas an ad in a magazine about
| computers offers me relevant ads for products about computers.
| And if you read old ad copy a lot of it is a serious effort to
| try and convince you to buy their product. From some kind of
| argument for it. Instead of simply using statistics and data to
| predict what you will buy next. So this required the product to
| actually deliver something to justify the effort to advertise
| it.
| thfuran wrote:
| >What about just restrict it to advertising on the internet?
|
| Why? I don't see the difference between a webpage and the
| magazine here, except that I guess you're assuming the
| webpage must be showing an unrelated ad.
| kodt wrote:
| Webpages also have the ability to capture far more data
| about who is viewing the ad, with the use of tracking
| cookies, browser fingerprinting etc..
| Epa095 wrote:
| It raises the question, it does not beg it. Begging the
| question is e.g saying 'If advertisement was bad for you it
| would be forbidden. Since it's not forbidden it's not bad for
| us. Therefor we should not forbid it.'
| glacier5674 wrote:
| I've heard so many respectable intellectuals use "beg the
| question" instead of "raise the question" that correcting the
| usage has surpassed pedantry and gone into ignorance of
| "definition b".
|
| It's like correcting someone on the pronunciation of French-
| English _forte_. It just gets you uninvited next time.
| tehjoker wrote:
| You don't need to draw a precise line, just one where things
| over the line are clearly undesirable, like billboards on
| roadways, TV commercials, etc. There are some countries with
| virtually no advertising. People who visit the DPRK come back
| saying it's like "Ad block for your life".
| ghssds wrote:
| Remind me why corporations are protected by human rights such
| as free speech.
| thfuran wrote:
| Corporate personhood exists so that you can be hired by a
| company instead of a specific person in HR or have a
| cellphone contract with Verizon instead of a particular sales
| associate and companies can buy real estate and so on without
| requiring a whole bunch of extra legal work defining all the
| ways in which corporations are legally treated like natural
| persons. That necessarily includes giving corporations some
| of the same rights and duties as natural persons. But I do
| think that corporations have been given too many rights which
| have been interpreted too broadly. The notion that a
| corporation has a constitutional right to spend however much
| money it wants to influence politics due to free speech is
| ridiculous.
| Gud wrote:
| Good question. Yet, unlock origin manage to filter out 99.99%
| of all all ads without blocking actual content, so must be
| possible!!
| Henchman21 wrote:
| This is _precisely_ the sort of statement that derails the
| discussion and makes it impossible to even have. I imagine
| there's a name for this sort of thing, perhaps some exquisitely
| long German word?
|
| So lets do this: ban all ads in print, video, and in-public.
| Make the fine so high that you're going to have to declare
| bankruptcy and close up shop. Or just straight up revoke
| corporate charters. There's your line. I'm happy to start here
| and negotiate backwards. But this needs to be in effect while
| we work it out. Advertising is killing us. I don't need or want
| myself or my family constantly assaulted by ads.
|
| Finally, to be frank I find advertisements a sibling of
| propaganda. I don't want either.
| sneak wrote:
| "begs the question" means something entirely different than
| "raises the question", fyi.
| blindriver wrote:
| More than ads, it's engagement algorithms that are killing us. We
| should outlaw those first and then see where we end up.
| Engagement algorithms do nothing except ruin society by
| incentivizing content creators to lie to us, and to make videos
| that are psychically horrible to society.
| thrance wrote:
| Most likely these algorithms would become useless in an
| advertisement-free world, where retaining users for longer on
| the platform no longers means making more money.
| hedayet wrote:
| Advertising has consequences, and I'm not a big fan of it, but
| it's also a necessary evil.
|
| It's easy to dismiss advertising as just a profit engine for ad
| platforms, but that's only part of the picture. At its best,
| advertising plays a meaningful role in solution and product
| discovery, especially for new or niche offerings that users
| wouldn't encounter otherwise. It also promotes fairer market
| competition by giving smaller players a shot at visibility, and
| by making alternatives accessible to customers, without relying
| solely on monopolistic platforms or the randomness of word-of-
| mouth.
|
| That said, today's ad ecosystem is far from ideal - often opaque,
| invasive, and manipulative. Still, the underlying idea of
| advertising has real value. Fair advertising is a hard problem,
| and while reform is overdue, banning it outright would likely
| create even bigger ones.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Advertising has consequences, and I'm not a big fan of it--
| but it's also a necessary evil.
|
| At one time, definitely. Now though? We all carry around all of
| humanity's collective knowledge in our pockets. If you need a
| solution to a problem you have, if you need a plumber, if you
| need a new car... you an get unlimited information for the
| asking.
|
| I don't _remember_ the last time I responded to an
| advertisement. If I need things, I search Amazon /Etsy/local
| retailer apps or just go to a store. If I need contractors, I
| check local review pages to find good ones or just call ones
| I've used before. And some of that I guess you could call ads,
| but I mean in the traditional sense, where someone has paid to
| have someone put a product in front of me that I wasn't already
| looking for? Nah. Never happens.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Review pages are often ad based. Unless you paid for it. But
| I still think having to pay for reviews is a better option.
| That way the reviews are the product not me.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Well some of this is a gray area right? If you have a
| listing website for example that lists all the electricians
| in a given geographic area, that's technically an ad, but
| you'd assume someone wouldn't be looking at the page unless
| they were looking for an electrician. I wouldn't call that
| intrusive or unpleasant or worthy of a ban and I don't
| think anyone would.
| hedayet wrote:
| 1. Discovery For known problems, sure! we probably don't need
| ads anymore. But for unknown problems, we still do. When
| you're not even aware that a solution exists, or that your
| current approach could be improved, advertising can spark
| that initial awareness. At that stage, you don't even know
| what to search for.
|
| 2. Competition If you know better alternatives might exist,
| yes, you can search for them. But how do you search for
| better deals, services, or products for every little thing in
| your life? You don't. Nobody has the time (or cognitive
| bandwidth) to proactively research every option. When done
| right, advertising helps level the playing field by putting
| alternatives in front of customers. And in doing so, it also
| pushes businesses to keep their offerings competitive.
| gmoot wrote:
| Your access to all of that collective knowledge is funded by
| ad revenue.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| So fund it in a way less corrosive to the human experience.
| lukev wrote:
| I disagree. Advertising is a zero-sum game. If _nobody_
| advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via
| search and word-of-mouth.
|
| It's only when some actors start advertising that the others
| must as well, so they don't fall behind. And so billions of
| dollars are spent that could have gone to making better
| products.
|
| It's basically the prisoner's dilemma at scale.
| logicchains wrote:
| >If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally
| discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.
|
| No it wouldn't. If someone opens up a new restaurant a block
| away there's not going to be much word of mouth when it just
| opened, and even if they make a website, web search will
| prioritise the websites of existing restaurants because their
| domains have been around longer and have more inbound links.
| drilbo wrote:
| well, web search is one thing that would look very
| different
| hedayet wrote:
| Theoretically: yes.
|
| Realistically: no, you can't stop big companies from
| advertising. Just having multiple shops bearing your logo
| gives you a level of brand recognition that's hard to beat.
| Even if no one advertised, they'd still find ways to dominate
| the conversation and outshine competitors through sheer
| presence. You're right that it becomes a kind of arms race,
| but in practice, trying to "opt out" often means falling
| behind.
| okr wrote:
| So, if no one competed to get ahead of competitors, by making
| better or cheaper products and to grab the available
| marketshare, we would just have better and cheaper products
| without it? Sounds flawed to me.
| saulpw wrote:
| Why? It's another prisoner's dilemma.
| lukev wrote:
| Not sure what you mean. People would definitely still
| compete on quality and price in a world without
| advertising: much moreso, because they couldn't just spend
| money for sales without improving their product. If they
| wanted to improve sales, they'd _have_ to either get better
| or cheaper.
| echoangle wrote:
| I disagree, one component of advertising is discovering
| things you didn't even know existed. Having to actively look
| stuff like that up would be much harder.
| em-bee wrote:
| i haven't come across a single ad that would have helped me
| to discover things i didn't know existed. and i don't think
| i missed out on anything because of that.
| mulmen wrote:
| Really? I definitely learned about Send Cut Send and
| PCBWay from advertising. I had no idea that kind of
| custom manufacturing was even possible let alone
| affordable.
| ambicapter wrote:
| That component doesn't matter because advertising also
| makes it harder to find what you need, since everyone is
| doing it. If you didn't know it previously existed, how do
| you even know if it will solve your problem like it says it
| does?
| echoangle wrote:
| I see an ad for the steam deck and think "wow, a portable
| gaming console allowing me to play computer games while
| on trips. Very cool!", but I am not actively googling for
| gaming consoles every month to see what's released.
|
| Or movies, basically all movies I went to a cinema for
| were because the trailers were played as ads somewhere.
| I'm not actively monitoring movie releases.
| Gaming8392 wrote:
| And why would you want to discover commercial products (NOT
| "things") that you didn't knew existed? That's some form of
| brainwashing that I don't accept and would gladly get rid
| of.
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| I think the answer is obvious, no? Because there may be
| products that can make your life better but you don't
| know about them. It's a bit like asking "why would you
| ever want a medical treatment you didn't know existed?"
| Because I, not being a doctor, don't know of the
| existence of most medical treatments but some may be able
| to cure diseases or other ailments I have.
| gameman144 wrote:
| Let me give you an example: I don't mind raking leaves,
| but I hate the step where you have to use the rake in one
| hand and your hand in the other to pick them up, spilling
| leaves on the trail to the bin.
|
| My wife saw an ad for "rake hands" -- I had never thought
| that a solution to my gripe would exist, but for twenty
| bucks a significant source of friction in my yard work is
| gone, and I would have never even thought to _look_ for
| such a solution.
| echoangle wrote:
| Because they could improve your life. To come up with
| good examples, one would have to know more about your
| preferences.
|
| But imagine there's an event (party, fair, game jam) and
| the only way to know it's happening is to specifically
| search for it, there are no posters or advertisements
| online. Don't you think that some people that would have
| wanted to go would miss it because they never even
| noticed that there was an event?
| lukev wrote:
| I'd happily exchange that discoverability for control of my
| own informational environment.
|
| Even if you're right, think about the positive effect
| that'd have on society. The people with cool, interesting
| products would be the ones who put a little intentionality
| and effort into it, incentivizing everyone to be a little
| more thoughtful.
| Uvix wrote:
| Without advertising you won't _have_ search, because that 's
| how search engines are funded. And you'll also lose pretty
| much all of the online options for word-of-mouth, too.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I pay for search. What do you do?
| phreeza wrote:
| I don't think it's a zero sum game. Some degree of
| advertising will make a product more discoverable regardless
| of whether competitors advertise or not.
| jdietrich wrote:
| _> If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally
| discoverable via search and word-of-mouth._
|
| Most consumers don't do extensive research before making a
| purchasing decision, or _any_ research at all - they buy
| whatever catches their eye on a store shelf or the front page
| of Amazon search results, they buy what they 're already
| familiar with, they buy what they see everyone else buying.
| Consumer behaviour is deeply habitual and it takes enormous
| effort to convince most consumers to change their habits.
| Advertising is arguably the best tool we have for changing
| consumer behaviour, which is precisely why so much money is
| spent on it.
|
| Banning advertising only further concentrates the power of
| incumbents - the major retailers who decide which products
| get prime shelf position or the first page of search results,
| and the established brands with name recognition and
| ubiquitous distribution. Consumers go on buying the things
| they've always bought and are never presented with a reason
| to try something different.
|
| A market without advertising isn't a level playing field, but
| a near-unbreakable oligopoly.
| lukev wrote:
| I think a market without advertising is sufficiently
| "alternative reality" that it's difficult to say what it
| would look like. The giant incumbents are only giant
| incumbents because of ads to start with.
|
| In a world without advertising, our entire cultural
| approach to consumption would necessarily be different.
| Maybe it would be as you say. But, maybe we'd be more
| thoughtful and value-driven. Maybe objects would be created
| to last longer, and less driven by a constant sales cycle.
| Maybe craftsmanship would still be a valued aspect of
| everyday goods.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| > It also promotes fairer market competition by giving smaller
| players a shot at visibility,
|
| That's what they said about patents, and so far it just means
| players with more money buy up more patents. Do they not buy up
| more advertising too? Coca-Cola and Google spend huge amounts
| on advertising just to make people feel okay with the amount of
| control they have over everything
| hedayet wrote:
| > That's what they said about patents, and so far it just
| means players with more money buy up more patents.
|
| That's a bit of a strawman argument.
|
| > ...Coca-Cola and Google spend huge amounts on advertising
| just to make people feel okay with the amount of control they
| have over everything.
|
| I agree - some reform is necessary. The current system often
| exacerbates the imbalance, but completely dismissing
| advertising ignores its potential role in leveling the
| playing field for smaller players when done responsibly.
| glacier5674 wrote:
| Sometimes the man really is made out of straw.
| gist wrote:
| I don't think it should be referred to as a 'necessary evil'
| (by the following definition of that term):
| "something unpleasant that must be accepted in order to achieve
| a particular result"
|
| For one thing the term 'advertising' is broad same as many
| words (ie 'Doctor' or 'Computer guy' or 'Educator'). Second
| it's not unpleasant although like with anything some of it
| could be. (Some of it is funny and entertaining).
|
| > Advertising has consequences
|
| Everything has consequences. That is actually a problem with
| many laws and rules which look only at upside and not downside.
|
| Unfortunately and for many reasons you can't get rid of
| 'advertising' the only thing you can do is potentially and
| possibly restrict certain types of advertising and statements.
|
| As an example Cigarette advertising was banned in 1971 on FCC
| regulated airwaves:
|
| https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/tobacco-indus...
| georgelyon wrote:
| The idea of product discovery has value. Advertising funds
| product discovery by taking some of the funds that you pay for
| goods, and funneling that money to platforms and creators that
| are willing to help others discover that product.
|
| There is an alternative model where we simply pay professional
| product discoverers. Think influencers, but whose customer is
| the fan not the sponsor. It would be a massive cultural shift,
| but doesn't seem so crazy to me.
| massysett wrote:
| Businesses will then send the discoverers free samples,
| provide literature, and send "advisers" to talk with the
| discoverers, and you'll be right back where you started.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Is it a consideration with monetary value? Then it's
| advertising, much like how bribing public official is still
| (theoretically) illegal even if you don't do it in cash. If
| it's not, then the discoverer has no incentive to act
| according to the business's demand.
| massysett wrote:
| I'm not understanding why this is a good standard: right
| now, anyone who sees a billboard or a TV ad has no
| incentive to act according to the business's demand, yet
| you want to ban those. So you think it would be OK to
| advertise to discoverers, but not to final purchasers.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| In the billboard case, the consideration is not between
| the viewer and the advertiser, it's between the
| advertiser and the landowner.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Those existed once. They were called 'magazines'. But they
| mostly became ad-supported, and then got killed by the
| Internet.
| kiicia wrote:
| Ad business stopped to be necessary and started to be almost
| exclusively evil years ago. If you pay sociologists and
| psychologists to design ,,most effective ad" for you, something
| is clearly wrong. 100 years ago ads were indeed ways of
| discovering products and services. But now ads are almost
| exclusively battlefields for more and more money paid for by
| consumers' anxiety, wellbeing and health when ads are more and
| more dishonest and hostile.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > If you pay sociologists and psychologists to design ,,most
| effective ad" for you...
|
| It doesn't actually work like that. A/B tests learn the
| highest-yielding ad. Psychology isn't robust enough to
| actually predict these things.
| petra wrote:
| For discovery of niche products,The Google search ads(without
| spying) system is a great solution. The issues of monopoly
| should be handled of course.
|
| And regarding word of mouth: Is word of mouth for great
| products really random?
| bofadeez wrote:
| This is free speech. It's not open for discussion.
|
| Our right to free speech is not granted by anyone's consent or by
| government decree. It preexists the state and cannot be taken
| away.
|
| We hold this truth to be self-evident. We are endowed by our
| creator with certain unalienable rights.
|
| If any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
| right of the people to alter or to abolish it.
| vaindil wrote:
| I feel that this is a very black and white view of the issue. I
| don't want to see billboards as I drive down the freeway, but I
| have no choice (in the US) if I need to get somewhere far away.
| Several states have banned outdoor billboards, should those
| governments be dissolved?
|
| At some point the public interest overrides an absolute freedom
| of speech. We can debate where that line is, but "it's not open
| for discussion" is objectively incorrect.
| bofadeez wrote:
| It's just paraphrasing the declaration of independence. This
| is already the established world order.
|
| You have an extremist point of view that your right to free
| speech is granted to you by the government.
| vaindil wrote:
| I'm not sure what comment you meant to reply to, but it
| certainly wasn't mine, as you have my ideology backwards
| there.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > We can debate where that line is, but "it's not open for
| discussion" is objectively incorrect.
|
| This is inherently a subjective matter. It's not _possible_
| to be objectively incorrect on whether or not speech
| protection should be absolute.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| Of course it's open for discussion. Free speech is not
| limitless.
|
| You can wax poetically all you want about endowment by the
| creator, but try saying racial slurs on daytime TV and see how
| long that lasts.
|
| Advertisement is just another form of speech that can be
| limited.
| bofadeez wrote:
| "Congress shall MAKE NO LAW respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
| the Government for a redress of grievances."
|
| What part of that are you confused by? You are making a brash
| claim that the writ of the state includes the ability to
| censor speech.
|
| Your right to free speech is not granted by anyone. It's your
| natural right. It's not possible to separate this right from
| a human with a law.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| There are already established legal limits on speech.
|
| Again, try screaming racial slurs on daytime television.
| You will be met with a fine and/or imprisonment.
|
| I am not a lawyer. I am not a member of congress. I did not
| write the law. I don't particularly like or agree with
| those laws. But they exist, and unless I'm mistaken it
| seems like you're unwilling to acknowledge their existence.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| That a significant proportion of advertising involves
| deceit, coercion, and captive audiences says a great deal
| about the nature of it. The First Amendment codifies the
| right to say what you want, to print or otherwise make
| public your thoughts. That doesn't give anyone, or
| anything, a right to _force_ their ideas into the minds of
| the public or a subset thereof. And while advertisers are
| not quite yet forcing anyone to consume their product at
| the proverbial "barrel of a gun" they are far beyond the
| norms of human communication.
|
| It is not acceptable for a stranger to come up and start
| shouting at you while you're trying to read, or hold a
| conversation, do your shopping, or put gas in your car. So
| why is it somehow acceptable for advertisers to do so?
| Would you want to pay for a course of instruction, some
| unknown percentage of which was not instruction, but was
| actually conducted at the direction of unknown others, who,
| with no regard or concern for your life, liberty, well-
| being or happiness were trying to extract wealth from you?
| Yet that is exactly what happens with much of our media-
| mediated experience of the world.
|
| I think the underlying changes in the technology of
| communication have allowed advertising to grow without
| sufficient thought on whether such expansion was actually a
| public good. Like license plates - the impact of which
| changed radically when the government could, thanks to
| advances in technology, use them to monitor the position of
| virtually all vehicles over time, instead of being forced
| to physically look up who owned what vehicle - the
| explosion of media over the last century has been
| accompanied by an immense shift in the impact and
| capability and intrusiveness of advertising. And it's
| legality needs to be reassessed in that light.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > You can wax poetically all you want about endowment by the
| creator, but try saying racial slurs on daytime TV and see
| how long that lasts.
|
| You're conflating two senses of "free speech". Free speech is
| an ideal, which our society does not fully reach (as you
| correctly pointed out). But in the US, "free speech" is also
| sometimes used to refer to the legal protection from the
| first amendment. And in your example, that _does_ apply. I
| can say all the racial slurs I want on TV, and it would be
| quite illegal to put me in jail for it.
| bofadeez wrote:
| People in other countries also have natural rights. Even if
| they live under oppressive governments, the right to free
| speech still exists. It's the same logic used by
| abolitionists to justify ending slavery.
|
| "Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the
| laws or customs of any particular culture or government,
| and so are universal, fundamental and inalienable (they
| cannot be repealed by human laws, though one can forfeit
| their enjoyment through one's actions, such as by violating
| someone else's rights). Natural law is the law of natural
| rights.
|
| Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given
| legal system (they can be modified, repealed, and
| restrained by human laws). The concept of positive law is
| related to the concept of legal rights."
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| > I can say all the racial slurs I want on TV, and it would
| be quite illegal to put me in jail for it.
|
| This is not true.
|
| Under 18 U.S.C. Section 1464, "[w]hoever utters any
| obscene, indecent, or profane language by means of radio
| communication shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
| not more than two years, or both." Under 18 U.S.C. Section
| 1468(a), "[w]hoever knowingly utters any obscene language
| or distributes any obscene matter by means of cable
| television or subscription services on television, shall be
| punished by imprisonment for not more than 2 years or by a
| fine in accordance with this title, or both." Likewise,
| under 47 U.S.C. Section 559, "[w]hoever transmits over any
| cable system any matter which is obscene or otherwise
| unprotected by the Constitution of the United States shall
| be fined under Title 18 or imprisoned not more than 2
| years, or both."
| gibbitz wrote:
| Someone else made the point that ads cost money, so this isn't
| about free speech. I guess making advertising free would be the
| same as banning it since it exists to be sold.
| bofadeez wrote:
| Any voluntary transaction between two conscious, consenting
| adults is axiomatically ethical and moral.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > What if we made money illegal?
|
| Good luck.
| otterley wrote:
| > No one is entitled to yell at you "GET 20% OFF THIS UNDERWEAR
| YOU GLANCED AT YESTERDAY" with a dopamine megaphone in your
| bedroom. And to track 90% of your life to know when and how to
| say it. That's not free speech, that's harassment.
|
| The author is off their chair. Yes, even commercial speech is
| protected as long as it's not fraudulent. And there are already
| laws prohibiting nuisances. Advertising isn't a nuisance in any
| legal sense; it just comes along with the ride when you willingly
| consume sponsored media.
|
| Listen to and watch only public media, and stop going to
| sponsored websites and using social media if you want to avoid
| advertising. It isn't the most convenient thing, but it's not
| impossible.
|
| If you disagree with this comment, please respond instead of
| downvoting. Don't be a coward.
| refulgentis wrote:
| An outright ban on advertising makes for a compelling thought
| experiment, but ultimately it's too simplistic to work as a real-
| world solution. The fundamental issue isn't advertising per se;
| rather, it's the aggressive exploitation of personal data,
| invasive tracking, and addictive attention-maximizing techniques
| that power today's ad-driven business models.
|
| Banning ads altogether wouldn't automatically eliminate
| incentives for manipulative or addictive content--platforms would
| quickly shift toward subscriptions, paywalls, or other revenue
| streams. While this shift might alter harmful dynamics somewhat,
| it wouldn't necessarily remove them altogether. For instance,
| subscription models have their own perverse incentives and
| potential inequalities.
|
| Moreover, completely removing ads would disproportionately hurt
| small businesses, non-profits, and public service campaigns that
| rely on legitimate, non-invasive ads to reach their audiences
| effectively.
|
| Instead of outright banning ads--an overly blunt measure--we'd
| likely achieve far better outcomes through thoughtful regulation
| targeting the actual harmful practices: invasive tracking, dark
| patterns, algorithmic manipulation, and lack of transparency. A
| better approach would aim at reforming advertising at its source,
| protecting individual privacy and autonomy without crippling a
| large segment of legitimate communication.
| mmmu wrote:
| Immediately reminded me of something I read a couple of years ago
| https://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html,
| which has some strong opinions on _why_ advertising should be
| banned
| WalterBright wrote:
| Who is going to know about your product if you cannot advertise
| it?
| galangalalgol wrote:
| People who pay for consumer research type services. "I want a
| general-purpose systems programming language with a C-like
| syntax that compiles to native code. It should be statically
| typed and supports both automatic (garbage collected) and
| manual memory management." One micro payment later I have a
| list of links and reviews. In this case the research is the
| product instead of me.
| esafak wrote:
| Then your company would be beholden to the Yelp's of the
| world. Pay up or have your listing removed.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Nobody is even going to know to put you on their list,
| unless you do marketing and promotion.
| esafak wrote:
| As long as a search engine can find your product, so can
| they. That's their job. Whether they would be able to
| review every candidate is another matter.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've known several people who developed quite a nice product,
| but felt that promotion and marketing were unethical. They
| failed to move a single copy, and wound up bitter and
| disillusioned.
|
| > One micro payment later I have a list of links and reviews
|
| You won't get on those lists nor will you get any reviews
| without marketing and promotion.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I guess the idea is to ban certain types of advertising. It's a
| fun thought experiment and practical -- it's why some country
| roads don't have billboards and some do.
|
| Going to a conference to promote your product to participants..
|
| Do you allow the shills to shill?
|
| Well, shills gonna shill-- I sure wish I promoted my businesses
| more. It is uncomfortable at times but that's not really a good
| excuse to not promote what you know to be good.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I agree that billboards are a form of "visual pollution" that
| blocks scenic views. But paying for an ad on the side of a
| bus isn't a problem.
|
| No, I don't think we need to argue about where the line
| between the two is.
| hatutah wrote:
| I think taxing ad revenue and investing the proceeds in research
| and social programs is the middle path
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I like that a lot. Same reason plastics and fuels should be
| taxed but not outlawed. If some rich dude wants to drive a land
| yacht, he can pay it into the welfare system with his gasoline
| taxes, win-win
| Eavolution wrote:
| I actually in principle have no fundamental problem with
| advertising, but it's execution on the internet I have many, many
| issues with. Putting an ad in a newspaper, or on the side of a
| building, or during a break in a tv show seems perfectly
| reasonable to me.
|
| What I absolutely have issues with is targeted advertising,
| having to modify content to make it advertiser friendly (i.e.
| reasonable people on YouTube having to avoid swearing/use
| infuriating euphemisms for self harm or suicide etc in case it
| makes the video not advertiser friendly), and the frankly
| offensive and unjustifiable amount of tracking that goes along
| with it.
|
| I wish we could ban dynamic advertising (can't think of a better
| term, as in targeted, tailored advertising that is aware of what
| it's being advertised against) and just allow static advertising.
|
| I also wish it could be codified in law that what is shown to me
| on my computer is entirely up to me, and if I want to block
| advertising on my computer, that is my choice, in the same way I
| can make a cup of tea during the ad breaks in tv, and skip over
| the advert pages on the paper.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I agree and I just wish to god I could simply tell those poor
| advertisers what I actually am interested in because they are
| just so consistently wrong and it annoys me.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Ok...
|
| First, it is 100% free speech.
|
| Second, the government isn't allowed to make laws prohibiting the
| exercise of free speech based on the content of said speech. Nor
| can it take actions which are arbitrary or capricious.
|
| Third, restrictions on free speech MUST fulfill some _overriding_
| public good like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater or words
| meant to incite violence. Slander, libel, &etc.
|
| Fourth, why is it even necessary to explain this?
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > First, it is 100% free speech.
|
| It's speech for sure.
|
| > Second, the government isn't allowed to make laws prohibiting
| the exercise of free speech based on the content of said
| speech. Nor can it take actions which are arbitrary or
| capricious.
|
| Except that they can and do, as you outline below. All laws are
| arbitrary.
|
| > Third, restrictions on free speech MUST fulfill some
| overriding public good like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater
| or words meant to incite violence. Slander, libel, &etc.
|
| Firstly, the fire thing is a myth. Secondly, so we're just
| quibbling on "overriding" then?
|
| > Fourth, why is it even necessary to explain this?
|
| Well because none of your points are that conclusive?
| hfgjbcgjbvg wrote:
| > It's speech for sure.
|
| Good point. It's specifically paid speech that's the problem.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > Except that they can and do, as you outline below. All laws
| are arbitrary.
|
| The third rule follows from the second, the government isn't
| allowed to curtail speech except under extraordinary
| circumstances which has been whittled down to basically
| "panic and disorder" and "fighting words". The other two are
| civil torts if I'm not mistaken, you can't be arrested for
| slander or libel. There's others but they are extremely
| limited.
|
| > Firstly, the fire thing is a myth.
|
| Go spread panic and see how fast you get charged with
| disorderly conduct or whatever the equivalent local statute
| is. Bonus points if someone is harmed by your actions.
|
| > Secondly, so we're just quibbling on "overriding" then?
|
| No, the Supreme Court has some pretty hard and fast rules on
| this.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > There's others but they are extremely limited.
|
| By the laws that people write which the article proposes to
| change.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| The problem is you can't outlaw an entire class of speech
| as the article proposes.
|
| The other exceptions are, literally, extremely limited to
| things which hold no legitimate public value like child
| pornography. If you can name only one legitimate instance
| of advertising then they are, by definition, proposing a
| content based prohibition of speech -- they don't like
| what these advertisers say while those other ones are
| fine because of whatever reasons.
|
| They can change the laws but the courts place the burden
| on the government to prove that the problem can't be
| solved by any lesser means. And when they say "any" they
| really do mean "any", the problem can't be solved without
| making the targeted speech illegal.
| goatlover wrote:
| I'm not convinced modern advertising qualifies as free speech.
| It's often manipulative, used by bad faith actors, used for
| tracking, slows websites down, is obtrusive, disrupts
| concentration, etc.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| None of those things exempt something from speech protection
| in the US, as far as I'm aware. Different countries have
| different laws, but here you are legally allowed to say just
| about anything (including way worse stuff than any of the
| things you mentioned).
| teddyh wrote:
| Are cigarette ads still free speech? Are you saying those
| should be legal again?
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > Are cigarette ads still free speech?
|
| Apparently there was a "significant public health crisis
| associated with tobacco use" according to the google.
|
| I'm not even sure they're universally banned, I don't pay
| that much attention but seem to recall still seeing them in
| the windows of gas stations and whatnot.
| knowknow wrote:
| > The financial incentives to create addictive digital content
| would instantly disappear, and so would the mechanisms that allow
| both commercial and political actors to create personalized,
| reality-distorting bubbles.
|
| ...
|
| > But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for
| 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks
| worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities
| would now improve on that.
|
| Humanity had hatred and insular bubbles a millennia ago just fine
| without advertisements. There was genocides and wars before the
| current form of ads ever emerged. It's a shame that so many
| people think that changing a financial policy is all that is
| needed to change an ingrained human behavior.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| In the last 40 years how many millions of man years have been
| put into manipulating people/breaking down their internal
| barriers by the ad agencies? By social media companies? By
| media companies? In the hundreds of thousands of man years at
| least (but more likely in the millions to tens of millions).
| There have been around 80 billion human years of output in that
| time and sales are a huge part of civilization so easily in the
| 10s of millions of human years of energy put into how to better
| manipulate/break down/re-train people.
|
| If I go play chess against a rando at a park and lose, your
| above argument makes sense.
|
| If I go play chess against someone who spent 150,000 man years
| studying how to beat me, to say 'well, it was all up to your
| mental strength, same as it's always been forever, and you just
| weren't strong enough' is BS.
|
| Edit: The amount of focused research, science, practice,
| experience in manipulation humans is unprecedented. Never
| before have millions to tens of millions of human years been
| dedicated to things in such a continuous, scientifically
| approached way. Yet we act as if the world is basically the
| same as 1980 except we have smart phones/the internet.
| chasebank wrote:
| Define advertising. Studies suggest that as much as 80% of news
| articles may have been placed by PR firms rather than generated
| through independent reporting. This forum is a classic case where
| blog posts are masquerading as authentic content, when in
| reality, they're simply another form of advertising.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| No worries, we can make those illegal too.
| fixprix wrote:
| This makes no sense. I build a great product. How the hell am I
| supposed to tell anyone about it outside of my immediate friends
| and family? Am I supposed to rely on the network effect to reach
| an audience? That sounds insane.
|
| Capitalism depends on advertising to let people know of the
| product or service that is more cost effective than existing
| solutions. The advertising budget is dependent on knowing your
| product is actually good enough to justify the expense. Without
| advertising, competition itself doesn't work.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, personally, I think you shouldn't even tell your friends
| and family. That kind of "native advertising" is ruining human
| relationships. People should stumble upon your product. If
| someone mentions it to someone else, that alone should be
| grounds to shutter your company. Even so-called "catchy domain
| names" are a deep evil that we didn't have in the heyday of the
| US: the '70s. Your product should be named exactly what it does
| and your company should be named as the concatenation of its
| products.
|
| In this way we can eliminate manipulative marketing and rely
| purely on quality.
|
| Should parents even be allowed to name children or should the
| state choose a descriptive name based on their appearance and
| behaviour? Hard to tell but I think we need to think long and
| hard about manipulative naming in more than just the corporate
| sphere.
| fixprix wrote:
| I actually agree. Telling friends and family will get you
| more of a 'flash in the pan' response. They are not content
| creators or influencers. You need to do advertising to figure
| out if your product/business is even economically feasible.
|
| For example, run an ad campaign on Google, figure out your
| CPC (cost per customer). See if that is even below your LTV
| (lifetime value per customer) plus operating expenses. And
| then tweak all the variables in your product and campaign to
| actually create some sort of sustainable business flywheel.
|
| Having an amazing product and 'waiting' for your network to
| spread the word to all potential customers.. it's absurd to
| think that would work. It's hard enough even with big ad
| campaigns to reach potential customers.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, that's the classic The Mom Test insight innit
| omoikane wrote:
| Submissions from yesterday and 3 days ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43580586 - 8 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43558438 - 4 comments
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Most people who protest oil use cars, roads and plastics, all
| made of oil.
|
| And people who object to advertising live in a world in which
| their daily lives are provided for by companies that depend on
| advertising to exist.
|
| As PT Barnum said "Without promotion, something terrible
| happens... nothing!" and all the companies that make up our
| economic ecosystem depend on things happening .... sales, which
| don't happen without promotion.
|
| Advertising has been around since Ancient Mesopotamia 5,000 years
| ago and will be around in 5,000 more years.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted. "Make illegal the
| parts of the economy I see and I don't like, but not the parts
| of the economy that belong to the same category but I simply do
| not see" is just one of many flaws of low effort insight blogs.
| 3971671613 wrote:
| > And people who object to advertising live in a world in which
| their daily lives are provided for by companies that depend on
| advertising to exist.
|
| "We should improve society somewhat."
|
| "Yet you participate in society. Curious!"
|
| > Advertising has been around since Ancient Mesopotamia 5,000
| years ago and will be around in 5,000 more years.
|
| Someone probably made the same argument about slavery hundreds
| of years ago, but here we are.
| wronex wrote:
| Some countries (Poland?) has experimented with banning
| advertising in public spaces. Think bill boards. This has lead to
| very clean and good looking cities. I don't think the it's
| unreasonable to ban ads in other places too.
| iambateman wrote:
| To go halfway to the extreme of this article, I think banning
| large-scale billboards in my city would make a big difference.
|
| It feels like having a calmer public space is more in the public
| interest than reminding them to drink Miller Lite.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Vermont bans billboards and it is amazing.
| el_memorioso wrote:
| Sao Paulo implemented "Cidade Limpa" which banned posted ads.
| It was said to renew the city.
| mikestew wrote:
| Redmond, WA has a ban on billboards. Locals can see this
| demonstrated by driving 124th St. and crossing Willows Rd into
| Kirkland. First thing you'll see are billboards.
|
| Just got back from a trip to Florida. Billboards along every
| freeway, and 75% of them are personal injury lawyers. If you're
| a resident of Redmond, it is an obnoxious contrast.
| johntitorjr wrote:
| Some cities have exterior walls of buildings covered in ads.
| Other cities have them covered in murals. The latter are much
| more pleasant to be in.
| uneekname wrote:
| My hometown did this, and I was surprised how bad billboards
| can be when I moved away
| gentoo wrote:
| I love this article because I think this is the conversation we
| should be having. Lots of advertising is harmful, some of it is
| useful on balance, and some of it is too hard to ban without
| infringing on other desirable speech. But I do think we should
| be critically thinking about all advertising and outlawing
| certain flavors of it.
|
| Billboards let landlords skim extra money by making the public
| space significantly more hostile to everyone else. Fuck em.
| barbazoo wrote:
| There's a ban here in BC except on indigenous land. Which is
| scattered throughout where I live. So you have these primitive,
| ugly things sticking out in clusters wherever people are
| allowed to put them. I wish people didn't need the money to
| allow those on their land.
| pastor_williams wrote:
| I use ublock origin on Firefox and next dns on my router with a
| block list. I pay for ad free YouTube. My kids had a lesson in
| how annoying commercials are during a trip where they tried to
| watch a BBC animal documentary and had to see the same commercial
| five times in a row because I guess not enough advertisers signed
| up with the provider. I don't like billboards. I'm pretty
| sympathetic to getting rid of advertising and do so as much as
| possible in my own life.
|
| That said this article glosses over the first amendment which
| absolutely needs to be considered because (at least in the United
| States) that is the big barrier to any sort of restriction.
|
| Also the idea of what constitutes an ad. Billboards? What about
| large signs showing where a store is? Are people with big social
| media accounts allowed to tell us about their favorite products?
| Only if they don't get money? What if they get free products?
| We'll have financial audits I assume to make sure they aren't
| being sneaky. No more sponsored videos? What about listing the
| patreons that made the video possible?
|
| How will this be sold to the people that need ads for their small
| business? We'll need a majority support to pass a constitutional
| amendment.
|
| Anyway, this seems impossible but good luck!
| poidos wrote:
| Glad to see this, been noodling on it for a long time. My crazy
| proposal is to make advertising illegal, in the US... by
| nationalizing Craigslist. USList or some such.
|
| No more billboards, no more ads on TV or radio or podcasts or
| when you're on a plane or when you're in an Uber and they have
| that screen. No more ads in something you've _already paid for_ a
| la newspapers.
|
| You want to advertise to, say, all the people in Arkansas? You
| have to pay them directly to post your ad on Arkansas USList.
| Want to target further? Great, you have to pay the county to post
| on their board. Then, people that _want to see your ads_ can go
| to their local board, filter by their interests, and maybe see
| your ad. Want to target all the electricians in a county? Their
| union runs a board and you can pay them.
|
| Cities/counties/states/${localeType}s could opt to, say, issue an
| advertising dividend to their residents.
|
| My definition of advertising is the unwanted stealing of your
| attention by someone who wants you to buy something. Or be aware
| of something you could buy. It takes you out of a context you
| have put yourself in, stealing your attention (and therefore your
| time, which is all we really have in this life).
|
| My stupid USList idea flips this on its head by making it
| possible to only see ads when you want to.
|
| Movie trailers when you're at the cinema are ads, sure. But they
| are ads _that fit the context you 've put yourself in_. If you're
| at the theater, it makes sense for the playbill to list other
| shows. If you're at a restaurant, the list of specials, or a wine
| recommended by your server are both appropriate. Even a list of
| specials or deals _in the window of a restaurant_ , as long as it
| isn't 100x100ft and illuminaated, is fine by me.
|
| But an LED billboard distracting you with a 2-for-1 meal deal as
| you drive down the freeway is _out of your context_ (and
| dangerous! and needlessly polluting!) When we consider the
| tracking and spying that has become possible thanks to online
| advertising companies like Google, Facebook, etc... it 's scary.
| And entirely needless.
|
| Like I said, I've been noodling on this for a while and am
| definitely the crazy anti-advertising guy in my circles. But once
| I point out the prevalence of ads and how it's like being kicked
| in the knees all day, I've found people seem to start getting it.
| I've done more than a few pihole + wireguard installs, UBlock
| origin + Sponsorblock installs, etc.
|
| Fuck ads.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| You don't see how this could possibly be used by unethical
| politicians?
|
| Like, only Company A (who _completely coincidentally_
| contributed to my political campaign) is allowed to advertise
| inside the political boundaries I control?
| yegortk wrote:
| People market themselves when they put on makeup. Should makeup
| be banned too?
| remram wrote:
| Article clearly says "advertising".
| conqrr wrote:
| A lot of corporate environment is perception manipulation. I feel
| it borrows a lot from the general public perception manipulation
| that companies and governments do which is through ads and media.
| There needs to be a better way to go about these things as it
| affects everything. Skills are less values these days, at least
| in Big tech, compared to perception manipulation.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Says the person paying a provider to get their voice out there to
| make themselves look better or influence the world.
| kaponkotrok wrote:
| Don't ban. Educate.
| spaceywilly wrote:
| "What if we made advertising illegal?"
|
| Many small companies would go out of business, that's what. Yes
| we definitely need advertising reform, but advertising is a very
| important part of any business if they want to be successful.
| Making it illegal would cut a lot of businesses off from their
| potential customers. The author doesn't seem to propose any
| alternative solution for this.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| It would also create a lot of new businesses. So allowing
| advertising at the moment has killed all those businesses.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm not convinced by the argument that it shouldn't be considered
| free speech. What exactly we mean by a private place... I dunno,
| but I definitely feel like I'm "going to" content, even if it is
| just digitally, when I'm on a phone. So, it doesn't feel like
| they are invading my privacy. It is an annoying person in public,
| usually protected unless they are violent.
|
| In terms of "let's try this surprising new change in the laws,"
| I'd rather see it become illegal to collect a lot of information
| about people. Maybe we can consider what Facebook/Google and data
| brokers do something like stalking.
| maxclark wrote:
| 99% of consumer tech would die
| krapp wrote:
| Cool. Is there a downside?
| mathattack wrote:
| I like open questions like this. It forces us to think from first
| principles, and potentially tackle consequences.
|
| One problem that would come up... It would be very hard to get
| word out of new (better) products. If you have a great product
| that doesn't lend itself to word of mouth, how will anyone know
| if you can't advertise?
| ambicapter wrote:
| What does "doesn't lend itself to word of mouth" mean? Products
| you can't speak about?
| mathattack wrote:
| There are products people are either embarrassed to admit
| they need (many health care examples) or just don't want to
| share for competitive reasons (a better parts supplier, or
| perhaps even a good SAT tutoring service).
| amarant wrote:
| I had this idea before, but thinking about it, you very soon run
| into some pretty uncomfortable tradeoffs.
|
| The internet would change fundamentally. The article lists social
| networks as things that would disappear, and good riddance, but
| we'd also lose (free) search engines.
|
| Further, I'd argue that some forms of advertising are actually
| desirable. If I'm planning a vacation abroad, and want to make a
| reservation at a hotel, I'd typically go to booking.com or one of
| it's competitors. Those sites are pretty much 100% advertising,
| but how else am I gonna find a hotel on the other side of the
| planet, in a country I've never been before?
|
| You also run into some tricky hairsplitting questions. Where do
| you draw the line on advertising? Are webshops allowed to list
| 3rd party products? Or is that advertising? I don't want to
| outlaw online shopping entirely, it's extremely handy! What about
| search engine results from those webshops? Free search engines
| will disappear, but let's say I have a paid account and search
| for "buy dell laptop". Are the results advertising? How do you
| differentiate and define the cases legally?
|
| I think it's a good idea, but it's gonna be quite tricky to
| implement well. And executing this idea poorly is potentially
| quite bad.
|
| Getting it implemented at all is going to be hard: even well
| executed, this idea is going to have a huge impact on the
| economy, and people are not going to like that. This idea would
| be good for democracy, but ironically democracy is not good for
| this idea.
| permo-w wrote:
| >but we'd also lose (free) search engines.
|
| I doubt this. more likely we'd end up in a scenario where, as a
| way of capturing market share, large companies subsidise their
| search engine with other branches of their business, for
| example, hosting. also since we're speaking hypothetically
| about government interventions, there's no reason that a
| government couldn't set up a publicly owned search engine, in
| fact one may already exist, I don't know
|
| >Further, I'd argue that some forms of advertising are actually
| desirable. If I'm planning a vacation abroad, and want to make
| a reservation at a hotel, I'd typically go to booking.com or
| one of it's competitors. Those sites are pretty much 100%
| advertising, but how else am I gonna find a hotel on the other
| side of the planet, in a country I've never been before?
|
| it's not advertising if it's on their own website
|
| >You also run into some tricky hairsplitting questions. Where
| do you draw the line on advertising? Are webshops allowed to
| list 3rd party products? Or is that advertising? I don't want
| to outlaw online shopping entirely, it's extremely handy! What
| about search engine results from those webshops? Free search
| engines will disappear, but let's say I have a paid account and
| search for "buy dell laptop". Are the results advertising? How
| do you differentiate and define the cases legally?
|
| these are very simple dilemmas:
|
| are webshops allowed to list 3rd party products? yes, because
| you're on a webshop. practically all shops sell 3rd party
| products. advertising is listing products and services on non-
| commercial public places where people haven't chosen to engage
| with products
|
| you search for "buy dell laptop", and the search engine has to
| produces the results that naturally bubble to the top from its
| algorithm
|
| the issue I'd be more worried about with banning advertising is
| taking away the freedom it can allow small creators on places
| like Youtube, where now suddenly they'd be relying on
| subscriptions and/or donations, which can be a lot harder to
| come by than baseline advertising revenue. you'd get a lot more
| begging and pleading, and you'd get a lot more creators needing
| to rely on working under the umbrella of a larger organisation
| like they did before the internet
| kodt wrote:
| >it's not advertising if it's on their own website
|
| Is SEO advertising though?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Reminder for everyone: HN is a advertisement for Ycombinator.
| This "free discussion website" is an ad.
|
| I really think people take so much for granted that even when
| they think about what they take for granted, they still can
| only scratch the surface.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Already solved elsewhere in the thread: Ban unsolicited
| advertising. Product recommendations in places where the
| consumer is explicitly visiting to get product recommendations
| are not unsolicited.
| amarant wrote:
| Ooh, that's pretty clever!
|
| This is why I like HN, people here are smarter than I am
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| > I'd typically go to booking.com or one of it's competitors
|
| Thats the difference, you opted into the advertising by
| visiting a website which catalogs hotels. I think most people
| are against "push" advertising where you are fed an ad for
| something you were not looking for.
| djoldman wrote:
| This is a really interesting question.
|
| Some thought experiments:
|
| What do [search engines, social networks, newspapers] look like?
| I assume they'd all be paid and you'd get some free tastes and
| then decide which you'd pay for in the long term (a la kagi).
|
| By removing the third party payer, the service provider has no
| incentive to do anything for them, whether aligned or not with
| the user. That is the big plus.
|
| What about all the money that companies use to promote their
| products and services through advertisements and marketing? Some
| portion of that would probably go to making their products
| better. The rest... from their standpoint, how do they even get a
| potential customer to know they exist? That's tough.
| djoldman wrote:
| Thinking through this more...
|
| All money and energy spent on advertising might be funneled
| into employees and workers. We would see a huge rise in
| promoting a company's products through their employees through
| any medium possible.
|
| If you're a company, you can't pay a third party to get the
| word out, so you massively increase public relations spending
| and attempt to get publications to do articles on your product.
|
| We would see all advertising hide under the guise of public
| relations: PR firms would sky rocket in workforce and there
| would be many more "review" sites and "news" sites. SEO would
| increase even more than it is now.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm not sure why every state doesn't outlaw billboards. That
| would seem to be a low-hanging fruit. A few states have already
| done it.
|
| Get it on a ballot measure.
| neom wrote:
| Humans, incentives, and capitalism are fundamentally intertwined.
| Capitalism at its core is simply a game we play daily together,
| driven by incentives. Banning advertising doesn't remove
| incentives, just rearranges them.... If you change one rule (like
| banning advertising), the system has is always very quickly
| reorganize around the new incentives. Also, given we live in a
| fully 100% market driven society, trust, not attention, is the
| true currency. As long as humans exchange value, influence is
| inevitable. To effectively improve the system, you can't just ban
| advertising because the idea should not be to try to stop
| persuasion, it's a requirement in a functioning free market
| driven society as it enables many many many downstream effects.
| Veserv wrote:
| The problem is that, as the article mentions, there are "good"
| forms of advertising that are actually meant to inform people.
| Unfortunately the overwhelming majority, and even more so in
| "high-end" advertising, is not that. So, the question is how can
| we distinguish the good from the bad?
|
| One of the key distinguishing factors is that "bad" advertising
| is _intentionally deceptive_. The explicit objective is how to
| overstate colloquially while _technically_ saying something that
| is not untrue if interpreted by a genie or monkey 's paw.
| Advertisers run war rooms and focus groups to make sure that the
| message they are promoting is verifiably and scientifically
| misinterpreted by the target audience while having legal review
| so that if it comes to court they can say: "Technically, your
| honor..." we meant something different than what we explicitly
| and intentionally aimed for.
|
| The standard is backwards. The more money you spend on
| advertising, the more intentionally truthful it should be. You
| should run focus groups to verify that the message is not
| misinterpreted to your benefit the larger the advertising
| campaign. When you go to court and say: "Technically, your
| honor..." you should immediately lose (after reaching certain
| scales of advertising where you can be expected to have the
| resources to review your statements). Misinterpretation should be
| a honest surprise occurring despite your best efforts, not
| because of them and the litmus test should be if your efforts
| were reasonable at your scale to avoid such defective speech.
|
| The standard is trivially assessable in court: Present the
| message to the target audience and ask them their interpretation.
| Compare it to the claims of deception. If the lawyer says:
| "Technically, your honor..." they lose. However, they can present
| evidence that they made reasonable efforts to avoid
| misinterpretation and that the specific form of the
| misinterpretation is unlikely or unexpected.
|
| The standard is easily achieved by businesses. Make intentionally
| truthful claims and have your advertising teams check and test
| for misinterpretation. Err on the side of caution and do not
| overstate your claims to your benefit and the potential detriment
| of your customers. If you think "technically speaking", you are
| on the wrong track. If you would not tell that candidly to your
| relatives or friends, you should probably stop.
|
| It is not like people do not know they are being deceptive, they
| just need to be held to it.
| frogperson wrote:
| I don't know if advertising should go, freedom of speech and all
| of that.
|
| I could see an argument for eliminating targeted advertising. I
| think everyone gets the same message or none at all.
|
| Being able to precisely target a desired group for a desired
| outcome seems too powerful and dangerous to exist as it does
| today.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| If we're going to do the _extremely hard thing_ , why not just
| make ads opt-in: Your meal will cost $2.39
| less if you watch an advertisement for Irish Spring soap and
| another for Liberty Mutual insurance. Do you accept these terms?
| pishpash wrote:
| That's typically not the target audience you want, people who
| are not willing to spend money and whose time is worthless.
| ksec wrote:
| >It's such a wild idea that I've never heard it in the public
| discourse.
|
| >Algorithm-driven platforms like Instagram and TikTok that
| harvest and monetize attention, destroying youth, would lose
| their economic foundation.
|
| I guess the author has never been on HN.
|
| This simply assumes Instagram would no longer function because of
| zero ad placement dollars. I guess the author doesn't know how
| KOLs works in product launch and promotion.
|
| I get a lot of stick every time I had to say this, but a lot of
| people in tech, has a very simplistic view that all ads are evil
| without understanding how ad works in the first place. Especially
| beyond digital ad. And to make matter worst any discussions about
| Ad's argument has been downvoted in the past 10-12 years. Some of
| the questions which toomim purpose would be instantly dropped. I
| guess the vibe shift is real.
|
| But if there is one type of ad we should ban. It would be
| political ads. A candidate's legitimacy should not be partly
| dependent on amount of ad money you throw at it.
| greentea23 wrote:
| Start with banning billboards.
| dhfbshfbu4u3 wrote:
| This is as ridiculous as asking, "What if we made agriculture
| illegal?"
|
| You don't make a planet of 8 billion people work without the
| trappings of civilization, good and bad. You certainly don't make
| it work without commerce and freedom of speech.
| starfezzy wrote:
| EDIT: When I said "I've felt the same way", I meant about
| outlawing advertising. Propaganda in general should be allowed--
| especially the political kind. But consumerist propaganda (aka
| advertising) needs to be abolished.
|
| ___
|
| I've felt the same way. Some thoughts I had while reading:
|
| > Propaganda is advertising for the state, and advertising is
| propaganda for the private. Same thing.
|
| Rare to see someone else recognize this. Not all propaganda is
| malicious; all systematic spreading of ideas aimed at promoting a
| cause or influencing opinions is propaganda.
|
| > Think about what's happened since 2016: Populists exploit ad
| marketplaces
|
| This feels like calling out conservatives. Ironically, it's
| through relentless propaganda over a century that progressivism
| has become ascendant. We're reminded 24/7 from every mainstream
| institution, that what has historically been radically unpopular
| is ACTUALLY "normal" and "respectable". Indeed, it's only through
| such incessant propaganda that overwhelmingly unpopular trends
| have been able to take hold.
|
| > what poisons our democracy is a liberating act in itself. An
| action against that blurry, "out-of-focus fascism"
|
| What poisons our republic is progressives forgetting that they're
| ascendant and how they got there.
| tagami wrote:
| Some sort of default Anonymity layer may be worth exploring
| swisniewski wrote:
| Digital content is not "published" in the same way as traditional
| content.
|
| Digital content is published by placing data on a computer,
| connecting that computer to the intent, then running software on
| that computer that allows software on other computers to connect
| to it and download that content.
|
| Attempting to ban ads is an attempt to censor the content of that
| communication. It's analogous to attempting to ban the things
| people can say over telephone calls. It would be a clear
| violation of the 1st Amendment.
|
| The Author's points about "Dopamine Megaphones" and "tracking"
| don't hold up.
|
| Posting something online is not the same as yelling through a
| megaphone. And restrictions on tracking are about behavior, not
| speech.
|
| One can outlaw both of those things without unreasonably
| restricting speech.
|
| But banning ads is absolutely unreasonable restraint of free
| speech rights.
|
| If I speak on the telephone, I am allowed to hand the phone to
| someone else for a moment and let them speak. Banning such a
| thing would be unconstitutional.
|
| Many online ads work in the same way.
|
| Similarly, I can take money from someone, and in response speak
| things they want me to speak. Restraining that is also a
| violation of free speech rights.
|
| Just because online ads are horrible, doesn't mean they can be
| outlawed without trampling on fundamental rights.
| bertil wrote:
| I just wish I had an option to say I'm not interested.
|
| If you give me extra wishes, I'd love three options, to either
| say that the ad is annoying, the brand isn't for me, or I don't
| want to be offered that type of product.
|
| The quality of ads would skyrocket if I could just stop seeing
| efforts to get me to be interested in things that I will never
| buy.
|
| Just before joining Facebook, I was living abroad and confronted
| to ads in a language I didn't understand constantly. As my
| bootcamp task, I measured that this was 4% of ads shown to users.
| At the time, this was already billions of dollars. My manager
| deemed that to be a ridiculous and pointless exercise. One night
| at the bar (there were three bars in the London office at the
| time), I mentioned it to a guy who happened to be the big ad
| boss, who immediately prioritized the project, I got a couple of
| smart guys who joined after I was promoted for finding this.
|
| A bit later, I checked the conversion rate by how many times
| you've seen the same ad before. It was a precipitous cliff:
| people click on things they've never seen before. Ranking ads
| from the same advertiser happens to be one of those SQL/Hive
| query that doesn't scale well, so I had to use the fact I came to
| the office early and has 12 hours of uninterrupted server time
| before the daily queries were hammering anything, and I had to
| sample a lot--but I realized I could sample by server, which
| helped a lot.
|
| I tried to mention it to the same guy, who said he knew about
| that problem, but empowering users like I suggested would not
| work: it would shrink the matching opportunities, AI was getting
| smarter, etc. In practice, the debate around privacy got very
| toxic, and Facebook couldn't let people do that without some
| drama about storing a list of advertisers that they said they
| didn't like.
|
| One of Sandberg's trusted lieutenants lost a child late in her
| pregnancy; it was a whole thing. She started seeing ads for baby
| clothes just after, which triggered an optional ban on alcohol,
| gambling, and baby stuff. That's still there. I worked with her
| briefly a bit later (after months of bereavement) and asked if it
| made sense to expand the category. She replied that those were
| two legal obligations, plus her well-known personal drama that no
| one dared push against, so she was able to push for those three,
| but that the company had changed. No other categories could be
| added: at that point, it would be too difficult. Mark used to not
| care about ads, but he started having expensive ideas, notably AI
| (to ban horrendous content); he needed the money, and he started
| to care about raking as much dough in as possible. I had worked
| on horrendous content (instead of ad language) enough to know
| that it mattered, so I was very conflicted. It felt surreal how
| much things had changed in nine months.
|
| All that still feels like a giant waste, not the least how much
| energy goes into making and showing ads to people repeatedly
| swearing at their screen, begging to make that annoying copy
| disappear.
| kujaomega wrote:
| Well, it would be great if we could simulate an ad free
| environment
| asimpletune wrote:
| Better would be to make targeted advertising unprofitable. This
| could be done by requiring data retention to be accounted for as
| a liability on the balance sheet.
|
| E.g. If a business want to run an ad in the newspaper, go for it.
| But if they want to follow me around on the internet and collect
| information on everything that I do, then they should be required
| to record what they collect. Congress could then vote to make
| laws introducing taxes on that quantity.
|
| Once this stuff is measured then appropriate counter measures
| could be taken to discourage socially damaging enterprises.
| senderista wrote:
| So some of the most critical public goods of our age, which are
| currently mostly ad-funded, like web search, video hosting, email
| hosting, smartphone navigation, etc. would become publicly
| funded? Great, I'd like to live in that world too. But this
| article says nothing about how to get there (actually it
| considers the demise of Google et al to be an argument in favor
| without even considering the fact that in the absence of
| advertising, Google's services would need to be either restricted
| to those who could afford them or taken over by the government).
|
| Advertising certainly has plenty of negative externalities, but
| the positive externalities of the free ad-funded services I
| mentioned are absolutely mind-boggling. Try to imagine living
| without them (if you couldn't afford to pay for them yourself).
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| you can pay money for goods and service. (just saying)
| senderista wrote:
| YOU can.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| All ad-funded services are really customer-funded.
| Ukv wrote:
| I'd claim services being ad-funded is not dissimilar from being
| funded by a JS crypto miner - which is to say while it does
| move money to that service, it's on net a waste of resources
| and average affordability would be better without it.
|
| For instead of your ISP spending 20% of their resources
| advertising (because otherwise they'd lose market share to ISPs
| that _are_ advertising), they could likely offer email hosting
| and basic web hosting without you paying any more than you do
| currently. Competition between companies should be directed
| towards productive ends (improving their product) else it just
| becomes a giant zero-sum game of resource wastage.
| trod1234 wrote:
| This take is extremely ill conceived, and neglects the origin of
| the problems, instead blaming the issue on advertising and then
| pushing forward a narrative whose indirect consequences upon
| integration would quell free speech, and disagreement which
| causes society, culture, and civilization to fail to violence
| based in the natural law.
|
| Why this is happening is beyond simple if you follow the money.
| Compare the Ad industry today compared to the 90s, how is the ad
| industry able to outcompete every advertising venue thereafter?
| Its clear in hindsight that there were companies that had
| constraints, and there were companies that didn't, and this
| wasn't a matter of competition either.
|
| The main difference if you dig into the details is you will find
| that the money being pumped into advertising seemingly endlessly
| without constraint comes from surveillance capitalism, in other
| words the money is subsidized by the government and the US
| taxpayer, through a complicated money laundering scheme. What was
| once called advertising in the 90s isn't what we have today. This
| shouldn't be possible, except in cases of money printing, and
| they all end badly for the survivors.
|
| Banks engage in money printing through debt issuance to collect 3
| times on the amount loaned. They loan out money they don't have,
| the principle of which must be repaid. They get paid a required
| interest on that amount which includes the interest double
| dipping and compounding. Finally the balance sheet gets into
| arrears so far to the point where they require a bailout usually
| once every 8-10 years. A bailout is required to balance the
| ledgers before default and its paid by debasement of the
| currency, without it you get a Great Depression where the credit
| providing facilities have all been burned to the ground like what
| Pres Coolidge did through inaction and lack of regulation.
|
| Legitimate market entities are producers that are bound by a loss
| function relative to their revenue. State-run apparatus have
| suckled up for their share to a money printer entity, growing
| like a cancer since the 70s, and will continue to do so long as
| the slaves feeding it can continue, and that is based upon
| producers capable of producing at a profit (self-referentially).
|
| Legitimate producers cease operation and accept a buyout or close
| down when they can no longer make a profit. This naturally occurs
| when the currency ceases having a stable store of value as a
| monetary property. The money printer apparatus are not exempt
| from this requirement either, and you have growing corruption and
| sustaining shortage when purchasing power fails, which collapse
| to deflationary pressure.
|
| The slaves in this case are anyone that transacts in the medium
| of exchange/currency. History covers this quite extensively as it
| happens in runaway fiat every single time given a sufficient time
| horizon.
|
| When do producers have to cut their losses and cease production?
| With the currency, the point where money cannot ever be paid back
| is that point. The same as any stage 3 ponzi, where outflows
| exceed inflows.
|
| If the GDP > debt growth, smart business will cease public
| exchange and operations. All other business will be bled dry by
| the money printers. You get collapse to non-market socialism,
| which has stochastic dynamics of chaos as an unsolveable
| hysteresis problem based on lagging indicators. The results of
| which include sustaining shortage (artificial supply constraint),
| to deflation, famine, death, and socio-economic collapse. Workers
| that are not compensated appropriately (and they can't be) will
| simply stop working. Letting it all rot.
|
| The time value of labor going to zero also causes these same
| things. That is what AI does.
|
| Without exception, every slave eventually revolts, or ends their
| and/or their children's existence as a mercy against suffering in
| the grand scheme.
|
| What makes anyone think AI accidentally achieving sentience won't
| do something like that when biological systems in the wild favor
| this over alternative outcomes, in this thing we call history ?
| paxys wrote:
| > But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for
| 99.9% of its existence
|
| The key word here is "current forms of advertising". Advertising
| as a concept has been around since the invention of commerce and
| trade, so pretty much since the beginning of human civilization.
|
| So sure, you can have specific issues with browser popups or data
| collection or billboards or whatever else, but saying "any form
| of paid and/or third-party advertising" should be illegal is
| nonsensical. Unless you can make money and trade illegal
| advertising will continue to exist.
| doug-moen wrote:
| Advertising was originally illegal on the internet. It was for
| non-profit activities only (university and industrial research
| and educational activities). When the world wide web first
| deployed in 1989, web advertising was illegal. The rules changed
| some time in the early 1990's.
|
| I do remember a major scandal that occurred in the 1980's when
| somebody posted an advertisement to usenet. At the time, there
| was a lot of online discussion about why this was prohibited. I
| looked this up, and found that the internet backbone (the NSFNET)
| was funded by the NSF, who enforced an acceptable-use policy,
| prohibiting Backbone use for purposes "not in support of research
| and education."
| [https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/253671.253741]
|
| So yes, it's possible, because we already did it once.
| hedayet wrote:
| I'd love to have an ad-free internet, sure. But simply
| introducing regulations won't make that happen. There's too
| much money in advertising to stop it, and that money can fund
| an alternative, ad-supported internet that could offer a
| significantly superior experience: FOR FREE!
|
| When we talk about banning ads, we tend to underestimate the
| power of capitalism and consumerism, while overestimating how
| much people truly value the privacy of their online privacy.
| p3rls wrote:
| Noted non-commercial entities like AT&T, HP and IBM were among
| the first owners (renters) of 2nd level domains on .com (for
| commercial) in the mid-80s though. These rules have always been
| murky and mostly used to beat down those of us without lawyers
| on retainer while established players will do whatever they
| want.
| financetechbro wrote:
| Anecdotally, my QoL has gotten much better once I made a
| conscious attempt to avoid being fed advertisements. I've stopped
| using social media and pay for YouTube premium. It's night and
| day difference in terms of my purchase patterns and overall level
| of happiness with the things I currently have.
| qwertox wrote:
| What annoys me the most are advertised contracts like "Only
| 9.99EUR per month*"
|
| * First 3 months 9.99EUR, 42.99EUR per month thereafter, 1 year
| minimum
| Animats wrote:
| Sao Paulo, Brazil, made outdoor advertising illegal. That worked
| out quite well.
|
| The US used to forbid prescription drug advertising. That seemed
| to work.
|
| Ads for liquor, marijuana, and gambling are prohibited in many
| jurisdictions.
|
| The FCC once limited the number of minutes of ads per hour on the
| public airwaves. That limit was below 10% of air time in the
| 1960s.
|
| The SEC used to limit ads for financial products to dull
| "tombstone" ads, which appeared mostly in the Wall Street
| Journal.
|
| A useful restriction might be to make advertising non tax
| deductible as a business expense. That encourages putting value
| into cost of goods sold rather than marketing.
| barbazoo wrote:
| That idea about taxation is interesting, I've never considered
| that angle.
|
| It would be very unpopular with the people I'd imagine.
| Animats wrote:
| Historically, marketing cost was a small fraction of
| manufacturing cost. Gradually, marketing cost took over in
| many sectors. STP Oil Treatment was noted in the 1960s for
| being mostly marketing cost.[1] Marketing cost began to
| dominate in long-distance telephony, in the era when you
| could pick your long distance company. Retail Internet access
| is dominated by marketing cost.
|
| The total amount of consumer products that can be sold is
| bounded by consumer income. Advertising mostly moves demand
| around; it doesn't create more demand, at least not in the US
| where most consumers are spent out.
|
| Think of taxing advertising as multilateral disarmament.
| Advertising is an overhead cost imposed on consumers. If
| everybody spends less on advertising, products get cheaper.
| Tax policy should thus disfavor zero-sum activity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STP_(motor_oil_company)
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| > Sao Paulo, Brazil, made outdoor advertising illegal. That
| worked out quite well.
|
| it was just a gimmick in the end. yeah the city is cleaner, but
| i doubt there's even the slightest difference in sports betting
| in sao paulo vs places with outdoors, for example.
|
| ...and did the us forbid prescription drugs ads? thats
| literally all i see on daytime tv.
| drekipus wrote:
| [delayed]
| hollerith wrote:
| What if every service offered on the internet supported by
| advertising were legally required to offer an ad-free version
| (which is allowed to carry a monthly fee)?
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| Just tax it.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Not surprising that people react as negatively to this in this
| forum as they do. Most people here would lose their jobs after
| all. Though keep in mind that once the dust has settled you'd
| also have the opportunity to do something more meaningful with
| your life than AB testing ways to make number go up faster.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Just from the headline alone: _oh please dear god yes_.
|
| The internet became _usable_ after implementing the Pi-Hole. So
| much noise, so much wasted bandwidth, so many unnecessary
| lookups, gone with a Raspberry Pi and a few packages.
|
| While other commenters are getting into the technical weeds of
| things, the reality is that the OP is right. Ads don't inform,
| they manipulate. They're an abusive forced-marriage that we
| cannot withdraw from even with ad and script blockers, because so
| much of society is built upon the advertising sector that it's
| impossible to fully escape them. People like the OP and us are
| mocked for moves to block billboards in space as being "alarmist"
| or out of touch, yet driving along any highway in the USA will
| bombard you with ads on billboards, on busses, on rideshares, on
| overly-large signs with glowing placards, in radio and
| television, on streaming providers who raise our rates on what
| used to be ad-free packages.
|
| Advertising is cancer, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.
| Let's get rid of it.
| junga wrote:
| > Advertising is cancer, and I'm tired of pretending it's not.
|
| That's the most "hacker" newsy thing to me. Whenever
| advertising critical articles come up, there's a large
| percentage of people commenting pro advertising. Yeah, I get
| it, you don't bite the hand that feeds you but come on. Does
| working in ad tech somehow influence your brains like the ones
| you are targeting?
| snailmailman wrote:
| Youtube so badly wants me to pay for premium. But the ads they
| show me are almost entirely scams and questionably legal
| content. Ads for guns. Ads for viagra knockoffs. Ads for "stock
| market tips" that use AI generated celebrity impersonations.
| Ads for "free money the government isn't telling you about".
|
| It's _constant_ and ever-increasing. I stopped watching a 30
| minute video recently after the 5th ad break just over 10
| minutes in.
|
| On desktop uBlock still works in Firefox at least. But I've
| basically given up YouTube on iOS.
| tptacek wrote:
| Here's how not constitutional this idea is: municipalities can't
| even ban circular flyers, which is essentially junk thrown onto
| the doorsteps of everybody's houses, junk nobody wants, because
| the First Amendment proscribes those ordinances.
| titaphraz wrote:
| A start would be banning of misleading statements and half-
| truths.
|
| A panel of randomly selected 100 people will be the judge and
| jury.
| glacier5674 wrote:
| What's the threshold they have to meet to ban? Half of them,
| give or take, will probably not be able to recognize the lie,
| and a sizeable portion of them would likely not be convinced in
| deliberation. It's also subject to nullification, e.g. "I know
| it's a lie, but it 'owns' the people I don't like"
| kelnos wrote:
| I've been saying this for years. It would be great to make
| advertising illegal.
|
| Advertising is just psychological manipulation. Any argument that
| there's "good" advertising that respects the target and is merely
| informative... well, maybe there is, but it's overshadowed by the
| other 99.9% of the garbage.
|
| Implementing this feels impossible, though. There would be
| disagreement as to what constitutes an ad. I disagree with the
| author that advertising isn't an exercise of free speech; I think
| that would be a huge roadblock in any country that enshrines free
| speech rights.
|
| But man, that would be great.
| ndr wrote:
| Almost every single time speech is limited someone finds a way to
| weaponize that limitation.
|
| In most jurisdictions there are, at times weaponized,
| limitations, and that's the tradeoff those jurisdiction landed
| on.
|
| I don't see how this proposed limitation could produce acceptable
| weaponizations.
|
| Just think for a second how outlandish these would sound with
| such limitation in place:
|
| - The ban on "persuasive content" is used to shut down political
| dissent labeled as "unwanted influence."
|
| - Independent journalists are silenced when their reporting is
| categorized as "promotional advertising."
|
| - Fundraising for humanitarian causes is outlawed as
| "solicitation advertising."
|
| - Religious discussions are prohibited as "advertising spiritual
| beliefs" or "donation to the organized religion."
|
| - Medical awareness campaigns are shut down as "advertising
| health concerns."
|
| - Environmental activism is criminalized as "advertising eco-
| agendas."
|
| There would be just no end of these.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| However fully unregulated speech also leads to issues like
| insults or forms of propaganda which encourages violence.
| History is full of cases where violent speech was enabler of
| physical violence. From school bullies to violence of the
| German Third Reich where speech was an enabler.
|
| Thus as always in society finding the right approach and right
| way of regulating isn't easy.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| There's a strong tendency to have a bias towards the status quo
| because we're afraid of things being worse. And that bias can
| make us afraid of even trying to change things for the better.
|
| All of the problems you listed can be prevented from becoming
| endemic by having clear definitions in the law and generally
| reasonable judges. But if our judges are generally
| unreasonable, we are screwed either way. So what's the downside
| to setting up a clear law against advertising?
| taberiand wrote:
| Right, but they are also weaponising the lack of limitations -
| advertising is out of control and damaging society. Damned if
| you do, damned if you don't?
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Author would love this song:
|
| https://genius.com/Minutemen-shit-from-an-old-notebook-lyric...
| gameman144 wrote:
| This feels very similar in my mind to blanket concepts like
| "let's ban lobbying". There are certainly specific modes or
| practices in lobbying that are damaging to society, but lobbying
| _itself_ (specifically, informing lawmakers about your specific
| perspective and desires) is a valid and desirable function.
|
| Likewise, advertising on its own at its core is useful: there
| might be something that adds value to your life that someone else
| is trying to provide and the only missing link is that you don't
| _know_ about it.
|
| In both cases, it seems totally fine to have strict guardrails
| about what kinds of practices we deem not okay (e.g. banning
| advertising to children, or banning physical ads larger than some
| size or in some locations), but the extreme take of the article
| felt like it intentionally left no room for nuance.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Why should we be open to nuance when we're being actively
| manipulated? Cease manipulating me and I will hear them out on
| the nuances, provided the advertisers can articulate it.
| gameman144 wrote:
| Someone telling you about a product is not manipulating you.
| Tracking or certain ad practices _might_ be manipulative, and
| it 's fine to push back against or ban that manipulation, but
| that is not at all inherent to advertising.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Feeding people lines about what "they need" or what their
| neighbors might be doing is manipulative. All advertising
| _attempts_ to be manipulative, IMO.
|
| But, I'll play along for a moment: If trying to convince
| people they _need_ something that oftentimes they simply
| don't isn't manipulation, then what is it? It isn't simply
| _informative_ because it's attempting to change one's mind.
| walleeee wrote:
| > lobbying itself (specifically, informing lawmakers about your
| specific perspective and desires) is a valid and desirable
| function.
|
| If it were a truly demotic activity you would have a point. But
| as it is, lobbying (in the US at least) is almost exclusively
| by/for large/moneyed interests, and the part of it which isn't
| is considerably less effective than that which is.
| SebastianKra wrote:
| > Likewise, advertising on its own at its core is useful: there
| might be something that adds value to your life that someone
| else is trying to provide and the only missing link is that you
| don't know about it.
|
| Journalists exist.
|
| The best way to learn about new products is through
| influencers/reviewers/experts in their field. I'd even say its
| superior, which is why advertising companies ~sponsor~ bribe
| influencers to promote their products. Companies can also
| promote a product by sending it to reviewers.
|
| So ads are not the only way to inform consumers, and the
| benefits IMO don't outweigh the cost.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Anyone who has found out about a useful product through
| advertising that you wouldn't have know about otherwise,
| purchased it, and been pleased with your purchase, raise your
| hand.
|
| Anyone?
|
| This whole "advertising is useful" thing sounds like the
| spherical cow of marketing to me. It might make sense in
| abstract but it doesn't reflect reality.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Advertising is a broad thing, which may include:
|
| - Job offers
|
| - Jobseeking
|
| - Dating
|
| - Public service announcements
|
| - Word-of-mouth
|
| - Sponsoring
|
| - Political campaigns
|
| - Fundraisers
|
| - Endorsements
|
| - Recommendations
|
| And many others
|
| If you ban all forms of advertising, society will grind to a
| halt, even before considering free speech. How can a business be
| successful if no one knows that it exists? Advertising connects
| people who need something to people who provide it. It absolutely
| essential to society and in a sense, it predates humans, if we
| consider mating as a form of advertising, like peacocks using
| their tails as some kind of a biological billboard.
|
| I understand what the author means, he is annoyed by ad breaks,
| banners, and tracking, we all are, and he would like to see less
| of them, we all do, except whoever makes money over these banners
| that is.
|
| The author suggests banning paid-for advertisement. But how far
| will it go? For example, you want to print flyers to promote your
| business. Is it illegal for the print shop to print your flyers,
| as they are making money on advertising. Classified ads will
| become illegal too, forget about craigslist and the likes.
|
| It kinds of remind me of some "abolitionist" laws on prostitution
| that some countries have. Prostitution is legal, based on the
| idea that people own their bodies and people have the right to
| have sex, but everything surrounding prostitution is not,
| including advertising and pimping. The definition for pimping can
| go far, for example renting a room to a prostitute can be
| considered pimping. The idea is essentially to make prostitution
| illegal without writing it explicitly. A blanket ban on
| advertising will do that, but for all businesses.
|
| As always, for every complex problem there is a solution which is
| clear, simple and wrong.
| nojs wrote:
| Funny that it literally begins with "Follow @index@simone.org via
| your Fediverse account (like Mastodon, Pixelfed, Flipboard,
| Wordpress, Writefreely, Threads, or BlueSky.)"
|
| Or is that just helpfully letting us know of something related
| that we might want ;)
| gcp123 wrote:
| As someone who's worked in marketing for 15 years - across big
| agencies in New York and running growth for startups - there's an
| uncomfortable truth to this piece. The industry has quietly
| become something darker than when I joined.
|
| Modern advertising doesn't just sell products, it sells our own
| attention back to us at a premium. What started as "connecting
| products to people who need them" has warped into engineering
| digital environments that hack our baseline neurological
| responses.
|
| The most disturbing part is that most people inside the machine
| know it. I've sat in rooms where we've explicitly designed
| systems to maximize "time on site" by exploiting cognitive
| vulnerabilities. The language we use internally is more clinical
| than predatory, which makes it easy to avoid moral questions.
|
| What's wild is how this piece frames advertising as a relatively
| recent phenomenon. It's right - for 99% of human history, we made
| purchasing decisions based on community knowledge and direct
| information, not carefully engineered psychological triggers that
| follow us around.
|
| Sure, banning all advertising sounds extreme, but it's worth
| asking: what would we actually lose? Product information would
| still exist. Reviews would still exist. Word-of-mouth would still
| exist. We'd just lose the sophisticated machinery designed to
| bypass our rational decision-making.
|
| The "free speech" counter-argument has always struck me as
| disingenuous. Nobody believes they have a constitutional right to
| interrupt your dinner with a telemarketing call.
| jayd16 wrote:
| The issue isn't that advertising is speech. The problem is it's
| easy to label speech as something else.
| grishka wrote:
| You can already block 99% of ads on devices you own. I haven't
| seen an internet ad in ages. I forget that websites have them.
|
| That said, I don't think it's appropriate to outlaw _all_
| advertising. It should still be allowed in places where you 'd be
| open to it anyway: in stores and other places where you spend
| money anyway, and in specialized publications that exist for
| people who intentionally want to be advertised to.
|
| However, for when you're buying something, upselling (any
| questions by the seller that may result in you buying something
| you didn't intend to buy originally) should be illegal. It feels
| very insulting to me.
| gcp123 wrote:
| I can't stop thinking about this article. I spent a long time in
| ad tech before switching to broader systems engineering. The
| author captures something I've struggled to articulate to friends
| and family about why I left the industry.
|
| The part that really struck me was framing advertising and
| propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with
| different masters. Having built targeting systems myself, this
| rings painfully true. The mechanical difference between getting
| someone to buy sneakers versus vote for a candidate is
| surprisingly small.
|
| What's frustrating is how the tech community keeps treating the
| symptoms while ignoring the disease. We debate content moderation
| policies and algorithmic transparency, but rarely question the
| underlying attention marketplace that makes manipulation
| profitable in the first place.
|
| The uncomfortable truth: most of us in tech understand that
| today's advertising systems are fundamentally parasitic. We've
| built something that converts human attention into money with
| increasingly terrifying efficiency, but we're all trapped in a
| prisoner's dilemma where nobody can unilaterally disarm.
|
| Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world
| without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would
| still happen. Information would still flow. We'd just be freed
| from the increasingly sophisticated machinery designed to
| override our decision-making.
|
| Is this proposal radical? Absolutely. But sometimes the Overton
| window needs a sledgehammer.
|
| P.S. If you are curious about the relationship between Sigmund
| Freud, propaganda, and the origins of the ad industry, check out
| the documentary "Century of the Self".
| LunaSea wrote:
| > Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a
| world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce
| would still happen.
|
| But newspapers, TV and Youtube would die out.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Very little of _value_ would be lost.
| immibis wrote:
| Is that such a bad thing? Are they really providing that much
| value?
|
| The remaining YouTube channels would be concentrated around
| the ones that are of higher quality, rather than easy slop
| produced to push ads. Nobody would try to clone someone
| else's channel for money. They would only be produced by
| people who were passionate about that topic. There would be
| fewer channels by passionate people, but the percentage would
| be much higher, so it's not necessarily a worse situation
| overall.
|
| TV has always cost money - you pay for satellite or cable,
| and the free-to-air programming available to you is overtly
| subsidized by your government - they shouldn't need to
| double-dip by showing ads.
|
| We used to pay for newspaper subscriptions too. A lot of
| newspapers are trying to go back to that, but it's a market
| for lemons. Maybe if advertising was banned, we'd each
| subscribe to one or two online newspapers and discover which
| ones are decent and which ones are crap. Remember, it's
| harder to make someone who was paying $0.00 pay $0.01, than
| to make someone who was paying $10 pay $20. Would the market
| be more efficient at price discovery if there was no $0.00 at
| all?
| worik wrote:
| > Maybe if advertising was banned, we'd each subscribe to
| one or two online newspapers and discover which ones are
| decent and which ones are crap.
|
| I keep hoping that decent aggregators will emerge - or I
| will find the ones that exist.
|
| I am happy to pay for news, but I cannot afford to pay for
| all the ones I want, and I cannot afford the time to read
| all I want. I would like to pay good aggregators....
| vitus wrote:
| > The remaining YouTube channels would be concentrated
| around the ones that are of higher quality, rather than
| easy slop produced to push ads. Nobody would try to clone
| someone else's channel for money. They would only be
| produced by people who were passionate about that topic.
| There would be fewer channels by passionate people, but the
| percentage would be much higher, so it's not necessarily a
| worse situation overall.
|
| I have some questions about your vision.
|
| - How many content creators would no longer be able to make
| passion videos as their full-time job because they're no
| longer getting revenue-sharing from YouTube?
|
| - Okay, some content creators also have Patreon etc. What's
| the incentive to post these videos publicly for free, as
| opposed to hoarding them behind their Patreon paywall?
|
| - What's the incentive for YouTube to continue existing as
| a free-to-watch service? Or even at all? Take away the ad
| money, and I can't imagine that the remaining subscription
| revenue comes anywhere close to paying for the
| infrastructure.
| azemetre wrote:
| Who says we have to keep using YouTube for this vision?
| There's no reason why the government can't nationalize
| these services if they are so vital for a variety of
| commerce.
|
| Or at the very least regulate it as a utility and allow
| users the ability to bring in their own advertising.
| vitus wrote:
| I'm not saying that we have to keep using YouTube for
| this vision, but GP stated that there would be fewer
| YouTube channels (but not none!). In that scenario, what
| incentives are there to provide a video-sharing platform
| that is a net negative to operate?
|
| I don't think that nationalizing such a service makes
| much sense either. What motivation does a government have
| to operate a service for global benefit (as opposed to
| just its citizens)? Surely we shouldn't want a US
| YouTube, a French YouTube, a Japanese YouTube, etc.
|
| > Or at the very least regulate it as a utility and allow
| users the ability to bring in their own advertising.
|
| Doesn't that run counter to the premise of banning
| advertising in the first place?
| pseufaux wrote:
| TV and YouTube would definitely suffer. Not sure if that's an
| issue or benefit. But I'm not sure newspapers or journalism
| would be so bad. My expectation would be that people would
| still need/want information from somewhere might begin paying
| to get it.
| LunaSea wrote:
| They already have this choice and don't pick it.
| dcow wrote:
| Choosing "free" in free vs paid is not the same as
| choosing "none" in none vs paid.
| jajko wrote:
| Yeah, some loss, a very visible one. But what we are losing
| now is much bigger, albeit much harder to point finger on and
| quantify. Some inner quality and strength that probably
| doesnt even have a name.
|
| Most people never even thought about ads that way.
|
| For my own little part - firefox and ublock origin since it
| exists, on phone too. To the point of almost physically
| allergic to ads, aby ads, they cause a lasting disgust with
| given brand. I detest being manipulated, and this is not even
| hidden, a very crude and primitive way.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > I detest being manipulated
|
| It's even worse when you can't even be detested because you
| don't realize it is happening.
| chronogram wrote:
| News would still exist and would not be competing with
| engagement driven news because there's no engagement=ad
| views. I wager it would be very helpful to news.
|
| TV would absolutely still exist, given that people pay for it
| and there is a big industry around ad-free streaming services
| already.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Almost no online newspaper survives from subscriptions.
|
| Non public broadcasters are rarely if ever and free.
| Meaning that their business model requires this as revenue
| to survive.
| azemetre wrote:
| If there is such a small ability for the average person
| to make SMB viable without massive subsidies by
| advertisers maybe it's time to argue that there should be
| more public investment and grants given to independent
| journalists that meet a certain criteria.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Government paid press? How long before someone realizes
| they better write inline with current government views.
| Who would a Trump government hire/fire who would a Biden
| government hire/fire.. independent of what?
| wild_egg wrote:
| Many countries have this in various forms and it works
| out fine. Generally illegal to interfere with the press
| and a good way to lose the next election
| thelaxiankey wrote:
| i'd say the success of substack flies directly in the
| face of your claim
| wat10000 wrote:
| They have to compete with ad-funded competition. This
| doesn't tell us about the viability of this approach in a
| world where the ad-funded model isn't viable.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| For news, I feel it's another can of worm altogether.
|
| Right now we've already having oligarchs owning news groups
| and very few independent publications. But getting rid of
| other revenue sources won't help that situation, we'd get
| more Washington Post or New York Times than Buffalo's Fire.
|
| It's a lot easier IMHO to have an independent newsroom if
| the business side can advertise for toilet paper and dating
| sites than if it needs to convince Jeff Bezos of its value
| to him.
|
| And investigation journalism costs a lot while not getting
| valued by many, there's no way we get a set of paid-only-
| by-viewers papers from all relevant spectrums covering most
| of the news happening every day.
| inopinatus wrote:
| only the shit ones
| cauch wrote:
| Advertisement get the source money from the viewers, it does
| not create any money in itself. So, if advertisement is
| banned, people will have more money, and this money can be
| used to finance what they want to consume.
|
| This is something that I still struggle to wrap my head
| around: if a company is paying X$ for advertisement, it means
| that people subjected to this advertisement will give Y$ to
| this company that they would not have paid otherwise, Y
| higher than X, otherwise there is no reason for this company
| to pay for advertisement. Yet everyone is saying "yeah,
| advertisement, I don't care, I just ignore it". Surely it
| cannot be true.
| parkaboy wrote:
| Even if it seems like everyone is saying this, it's just
| statistically not true / in the aggregate, at least in the
| context of direct online ads. Otherwise the direct ad
| industry would be totally dead (ad performance is measured
| to death by companies).
|
| Conversion (getting someone to purchase) at scale with ads
| is not so simple as person sees ad, clicks, and buys. There
| are many steps along the funnel and sometimes ads can be
| used in concert with other channels (influencer content,
| sponsored news articles, etc). Within direct ads you
| typically have multiple steps depending on how cold or warm
| (e.g. have they seen or interacted with your content
| previously) the lead is when viewing the ad and you tailor
| the ad content accordingly to try to keep pushing the
| person down the funnel.
|
| Generally if you know your customer persona well and have
| good so-called product-market-fit, then (1) you will be
| able to build a funnel that works at scale. So then (2) the
| question is does the cost to convert a customer / CAC fit
| within the profit margin, which is much more difficult to
| unpack.
|
| However, it's worth keeping in mind that digital ad costs
| are essentially invented by the ad platform. There is a
| market-type of force. If digital ads become less effective
| and the CAC goes too high across an industry/sector, the
| platform may be forced to reduce the cost to deliver ads if
| the channel just doesn't make enough financial sense for
| enough businesses.
|
| All this is to say, the system does/can work. Tends to work
| better for large established companies or startups with
| lots of funding. In general, not a suggested approach as a
| first channel for a small startup/small business. Building
| up effective funnels is incredibly expensive and takes a
| lot of time in my depressing personal experience.
| cauch wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| Would you say that it indeed means that if ads are
| banned, the money to support news, tv, youtube, ... will
| still be there? I would think that in fact, there would
| be even more money for news, tv, youtube, ... as the ad
| company will not take their cut of the money.
|
| Edit: Now that I'm thinking about it, ad may also work in
| directing expenses that would have been done anyway. For
| example, if I have 10 companies A, B, C, D, ... all
| selling the same kind of product, then it is possible
| that 1000 persons that want that kind of product will all
| spend 100PS, shared between the 10 companies. So, company
| A will receive 10000PS. But if company A does some
| advertisement for a cost of 5000PS, maybe people will
| still spend the same amount, but for their brand in
| majority, so the 1000 persons will still spend the same
| 100PS, but company A will receive 20000PS because some
| people will buy A instead of B, C, D, ...
| jzb wrote:
| "This is something that I still struggle to wrap my head
| around: if a company is paying X$ for advertisement, it
| means that people subjected to this advertisement will give
| Y$ to this company that they would not have paid otherwise"
|
| You seem to be assuming that, in the absence of
| advertising, the company will sell as much as it did before
| -- just with lower overhead costs -- rather than
| advertising driving more sales and possibly _lowering_
| costs because the company has more customers. For some
| items / things this may be true-ish. I'm going to buy
| paper towels because I need paper towels, and advertising
| has little influence on that -- except, maybe, which brand
| I buy. But I'm going to spill things, and my cats are going
| to keep barfing on the floor from time to time, so I'm
| going to need paper towels regardless. And I'm not going to
| buy a bunch of extra ones just because the ads are so good.
|
| Don't get me started on soda advertising and such because
| the amount of money those companies spend on ads is mind-
| boggling and I don't think it moves the needle very much
| when it comes to Coke vs. Pepsi...
|
| But, would I go see a movie without ads to promote it?
| Would I buy that t-shirt with a funny design if I didn't
| see it on a web site? Sign up for a SaaS offering if I
| don't see an ad for it somewhere?
|
| If a SaaS lands 20% more customers because ads (and other
| forms of marketing) that's not necessarily going to mean I
| pay more for the SaaS because ads. It may very well mean
| that the prices stay lower because many of their costs are
| fixed and if they have 20% more paying customers, they can
| charge less to be competitive. If a publication has more
| subscribers because it advertises, it may not have to raise
| rates to stay / be profitable.
|
| In some cases you may be correct -- landing customers via
| ads equals X% of my costs, so my prices reflect that. But
| it's not necessarily true.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Parent's point about ad being close to propaganda is key:
| people getting advertised at are often not the ones with
| the money.
|
| For newspapers for instance, Exxon or Shell could be paying
| a lot more to have their brand painted in favorable light
| than the amount the newspaper readership could afford to
| pay in aggregate.
|
| The same way Coca Cola's budget for advertising greenness
| is not matched by how many more sales they're expecting to
| make from these ads in any specific medium, but how much
| the company's bottling policy has to lose if public opinion
| changed too much. That's basically lobbying money.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I don't know. I would GLADLY pay for ad-free youtube if the
| price were set at what they'd otherwise make on ads for me.
| In which case, that'd be about $3.50/month.
|
| Instead they want to price-gouge me for 5x that so... no
| thanks. I'll just use my ad blocker.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I would gladly pay for ad-free youtube if they weren't
| double dipping by tracking me (which is now more valuable
| because you have my cc#)
| jzb wrote:
| "But newspapers, TV and Youtube would die out."
|
| The missing part of this sentence is "as they exist now".
| There are other models that exist that could support
| broadcast and publications. There are other models yet to be
| explored or that have floundered because they've been snuffed
| out or avoided because the easiest (for certain values of
| "easy") path to dollars, right now, is advertising.
|
| It is a pipe dream, of course -- and the author of the piece
| doesn't really do the hard work of following through on not
| just how difficult it would be to make advertising illegal,
| but the ramificaitons. While an ad-free world would be
| wonderful, that's a lot of people out of a job real quick-
| like. Deciding what constitutes an "ad" versus content
| marketing or just "hey, this thing exists" would be harder
| than it might seem at first thought.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _But newspapers, TV and Youtube would die out._
|
| Good. They're but shells of themselves, eaten through and
| bloated up by cancer of advertising. Even if they were to die
| out, the demand for the value they used to provide will
| remain strong, so these services would reappear in a better
| form.
|
| I thought people in tech/enterpreneurship circles were
| generally fans of "creative disruption"? Well, there's
| nothing more creatively disruptive than rebuilding the
| digital markets around scummy business models.
|
| (Think of all business models - many of them more honest -
| that are suppressed by advertising, because they can't
| compete with "free + ads". Want business innovation? Ban
| "free + ads" and see it happen.)
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| * "the newspapers, tv channels and YouTube content that had
| so little value to society that no one was willing to pay for
| will die out."
|
| Yes.
| nofalsescotsman wrote:
| Treating the symptoms is easier and cheaper. And let's be real,
| the money would rather treat symptoms than the cause.
| Convincing monied interests to stop advertising is not a
| realistic thing. This would have to be done through legislation
| and force. And I agree it should be done.
| Terr_ wrote:
| It is a tricky and uncomfortable truth that human minds are
| hackable.
|
| On the flip side, we've had many thousands of years of
| adversarial training, so it's not as if protections don't exist
| --at least for a very classical modes of attack.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| The reality of "mind control" of those perpetually exposed to
| media has been a popular topic throughout the last half
| century at least.
|
| Humans don't have those protections. Although, ego deludes
| oneself to believe they do. Ask anyone if they are
| susceptible to advertising. Maybe 1 in 5 have the humility
| and awareness to state the truth.
| timewizard wrote:
| It's a pattern recognition machine dominated by reward
| feedback mechanisms.
|
| It's not hackable so much as it lacks resistance to
| environmental noise.
| relaxing wrote:
| Thousands of years of adversarial training is what made us
| controllable -- stick with the group, and we'll defend
| ourselves against the enemy.
| autoexec wrote:
| There are manipulation techniques we really can't protect
| ourselves against. It's like the optical illusions where even
| when you're fully aware what the trick is, you know the
| horizontal lines on the cafe wall are actually straight, you
| still see it incorrectly. Awareness of our weaknesses isn't
| enough to correct them.
|
| Even when we can use that awareness to notice the times that
| we're being manipulated and try to remind ourselves to reject
| the idea that was forced into our brain surveillance
| capitalism means that advertisers can use the data they have
| to hit us when they know we're most susceptible and our
| defenses will be less effective. They can engineer our
| experiences and environments to make us more susceptible and
| our defenses are less effective. They're spending massive
| amounts of time and money year after year on refining their
| techniques to be more and more effective in general, and more
| effective against you individually. I wouldn't put much faith
| in our ability to immunize ourselves against advertising.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| > framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same
| mechanism...
|
| You'll likely be pleased to hear they use the word "propaganda"
| for advertising in Portuguese, at least in Brazil.
| nico wrote:
| Same in Spanish. Propaganda and publicidad are
| interchangeable
|
| Which makes it actually really hard to talk about political
| propaganda
| exe34 wrote:
| I find it hard to imagine. I hate advertising as much as the
| next guy - I intentionally try to associate negative thoughts
| with any adverts that interrupt a video I'm watching (I nearly
| ordered hellofresh after getting a voucher, but they've
| interrupted my YouTube experience too many times in the past).
|
| But how do you separate advertising from product
| recommendations? Would it only apply if the person doing the
| recommending is getting paid for it?
| sharemywin wrote:
| does youtube exist without advertisers?
| exe34 wrote:
| peer to peer, yes.
| mathgeek wrote:
| > I nearly ordered hellofresh after getting a voucher, but
| they've interrupted my YouTube experience too many times in
| the past
|
| I totally relate to the "I'm OK with certain types of
| advertising" angle here.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| It's been tried, in sci fi. The result is Influencers.
| Benjammer wrote:
| If the influencer is actually giving good advice because it's
| illegal to pay them to promote a product, is that such a bad
| thing? What sci fi are you talking about?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| 1. this is not new. radio, print, theater... every thing was
| monetizing attention to great success.
|
| 2. all advertising venues (radio, web, print, outdoors) all
| make boatloads of money during political campaigns AND
| government "awareness" campaigns (which are all disguised
| political campaigns with tax money). most radios stations yet
| around, live exclusively of this revenue.
|
| so, the system was built on the two premises you wrongly
| consider side effects or unintended consequences. making it
| illegal is the only alternative. everything else is just
| ignoring the real cause: it was for exactly that.
| kragen wrote:
| It's not a well-enough-thought-out proposal to call "radical";
| it assumes that making advertising illegal would make
| advertising go away and that there would be no drawbacks to
| this. Even if we all agree that it's bad for people to say
| things they're paid to say instead of what they really believe,
| there are many possible approaches to writing specific laws to
| diminish that practice. Those approaches represent different
| tradeoffs. You can't say anything nontrivial about the whole
| broad set of possible policy proposals.
|
| To me it sounds a lot like "What if we made drugs illegal?"
| cogman10 wrote:
| > it assumes that making advertising illegal would make
| advertising go away
|
| It would? I don't understand why you and others see this as a
| hard law to craft or enforce (probably not constitutional in
| the US).
|
| The very nature of advertising is it's meant to be seen by as
| many people as possible. That makes enforcement fairly easy.
| We already have laws on the books where paid
| advertising/sponsorship must be clear to the viewer. That's
| why google search results and others are peppered with "this
| is an ad".
|
| > To me it sounds a lot like "What if we made drugs illegal?"
|
| Except drugs/alcohol can be consumed in secret and are highly
| sought after. The dynamic is completely different. Nobody
| really wants to see ads and there's enough "that's illegal"
| people that'd really nerf the ability of ads to get away with
| it.
|
| There's not going to be ad speakeasies.
| 34679 wrote:
| I thought drug laws were a fine example, but let's look at
| another. It's illegal to bribe politicians. Does that mean
| there is no grift in Washington?
| cogman10 wrote:
| That has less to do with it being hard to craft bribery
| laws and more to do with the fact that the current
| bribery laws are entirely ineffectual. It's absolutely
| something that could be fixed, but certainly not
| something almost any politician would want to fix.
|
| I will grant that companies would lobby hard against an
| anti-advertising bill (which means it'll likely never
| pass). That doesn't mean you couldn't make one that's
| pretty effective.
|
| But, again, the nature of advertising makes it quite easy
| to outlaw. Unlike bribery, where a congress person can
| shove gold bars into their suit jackets in secret,
| advertising has to be seen by a lot of people to be
| effective. Making it something that has to be done in
| secret will immediately make it harder to do. The best
| you'll likely see is preferential placement of goods in
| stores or maybe some branding in a TV show.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| You argument sounds a bit like "crime exists despite laws
| against them also existing, therefore we should not have
| such laws".
|
| What you seem to be missing is that, in the end, it's all
| about risks vs. potential gains.
|
| As it stands, advertising is relatively cheap and the
| only risk is to lose all the money spent on it.
|
| Once it's made illegal, that formula changes massively
| since now there's a much bigger risk in the form of
| whatever the law determines - fines, perhaps losing a
| professional license or the right to work on a certain
| field, or to found and/or direct a company, perhaps even
| jail time!
|
| You're right, it will probably still exist in some ways
| in some contexts. I bet it wouldn't be nearly as
| pervasive as it is today though, and that's a win. And if
| it's not enough, up the stakes.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| > imagine a world without advertising
|
| I can't because a world with magic and world peace is more
| realistic and believable.
|
| It's impossible. How do you even define advertising? If you
| define it conservatively, then advertising will skirt through
| the loopholes. If you define it liberally, then you have an
| unfair, authoritarian system that will definitely be
| selectively enforced against political enemies.
|
| And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will
| give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-
| term sovereignty.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > If you define it conservatively, then advertising will
| skirt through the loopholes.
|
| This would result in a better world still, without the
| authoritarian system you describe. No need to get it perfect
| the first try, just start small.
|
| For an example of this in action, drive through any of the US
| states that do not allow billboards.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| Many complex problems can become easier if we can accept
| that the solutions can be malleable and designed to adapt.
| We just don't really apply that to laws for the most part.
| chgs wrote:
| I don't know if it's America or tech people but online
| discourse of legal systems from American tech people
| seems to treat laws as code, something to interpret as
| written rather than the meaning. Loopholes are celebrated
| as being clever and are impossible to patch. This is
| quite alien to most of the world.
| jononor wrote:
| One would never reach zero. And it would be challenging both
| to define and police laws against advertising. But to get to
| a world with drastically less advertisements than today seems
| doable.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So we want the government to decide what is advertising and
| propaganda? Is telling people about the wrongs of
| government propaganda? Is going door to door about have you
| made Jesus the head of your life propaganda?
| jychang wrote:
| Yeah? The government defines what is murder, defines what
| is tax evasion, and defines tons of other stuff already?
| Some states already have laws against billboards?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| How would you like the government deciding some cause
| they didn't agree with is advertising?
|
| If you live in a conservative state, what are the chances
| that they say advocacy for Planned Parenthood is
| advertising and say that advocacy for pro-life is freedom
| of religion?
|
| And how would that work over the Internet? Are you going
| to block foreign websites?
|
| I can give you a real world example. Florida requires age
| verification for porn sites. Sites not based in the US
| including the ones owned by MindGeek just ignored it.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| The point is that advertising and propaganda are
| indistinguishable. Going door-to-door to talk about Jesus
| is the same as going door-to-door to talk about vacuums,
| but neither is anything like roadside billboards or
| programmatic advertising. We can ditch the billboards and
| the programmatic advertising and get a better world, even
| if some advertisers and propagandists still go door-to-
| door. At least when it's door-to-door the
| advertiser/propagandist has to really work for it, and
| you have the option of just not opening the door.
| amelius wrote:
| > Going door-to-door to talk about Jesus
|
| I just realize that this mythical figure only exists
| because of advertising. So if advertising were illegal,
| would this be the end of religion?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So it's just "programmatic advertising" that should be
| banned and not self hosted advertising by an internal
| sales team?
| cogman10 wrote:
| > that will give other nations an economic advantage and
| jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
|
| What? How? Advertising isn't a good or service. About the
| only way I could see it economically being damaging is if you
| subscribe to the "broken windows" theory of economics.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Advertising tells me what goods and services are available,
| and at what prices. This is a service.
| cogman10 wrote:
| So does a search engine and 3rd party reviewers.
|
| Further, any store will be pretty highly incentivized to
| provide a quick list of goods or services offered and
| likely the prices (most already do this).
|
| I don't need the same ad repeated 20 times to know that
| Ford sells cars and trucks.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| So did phone books and catalogues. Ensuring why dispersal
| of information about services and prices does not require
| advertising.
| chgs wrote:
| So I can choose to opt into this service?
| jongjong wrote:
| Advertising is unsolicited content which attempts to trigger
| or nudge a behaviour.
|
| There should be a limit on the quantity of advertising.
| Limited to like 100 people a day on average. We already have
| anti-spam laws.
|
| There would still be advertising but it would be from people
| from your own communities instead of big corporations.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Advertising is unsolicited content which attempts to
| trigger or nudge a behaviour.
|
| So I'm listening to the radio, and one minute I'm hearing
| someone on NPR (or an equivalent public broadcaster)
| explaining how to make my back healthier; the next minute
| there's someone trying to convince me that some product
| will make my back healthier.
|
| Which one is advertising and which one is not?
| viraptor wrote:
| > explaining HOW TO make my back healthier
|
| > that SOME PRODUCT will make my back healthier.
|
| Is it really that tricky?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It is. The advice from the expert includes
| recommendations to buy a type of product, perhaps without
| a brand name.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| What you can do relatively easily is to control the _physical
| format_ of advertising. For example, consider how rare
| "billboards" are outside of the USA. Or towns in various
| places that prohibit signage that is not in the same plane as
| the edge of the building (i.e. no sticky-outy signs).
|
| Or for that matter, consider Berlin, which has banned all
| non-cultural advertising on public transportation. Yes,
| there's some edge cases that are tricky, but overall the
| situation doesn't seem too fraught.
| cavisne wrote:
| Billboards being rare outside of the US seems quite
| incorrect. The developing world is full of billboards, and
| places in Europe like Milan have some wild Samsung
| billboards.
| michaelhoney wrote:
| If you can't imagine it, try a bit harder. We can build a
| better world, but it takes effort.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Probation only moves the activities underground. Not focusing
| on ad tech specifically but removing all advertising would mean
| finding other ways to get your message out which is
| advertising. The only way to stop it is to stop communication
| in form and function.
|
| Limiting certain types of advertising or changing tax codes to
| not allow dedicating expensive could shape it in a way that
| meshes with society.
|
| Trying to rein in the abuses you saw in the adtech world starts
| with Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft being dissolved.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Propaganda does not need advertising to disseminate itself,
| particularly not in 2025. There are multiple channels. Limiting
| one--advertising--just moves the flow to other channels.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same
| mechanism - just with different masters.
|
| They're not the same mechanism, they're the same thing.
| Propaganda is advertising one doesn't approve of, and
| advertising is propaganda that one does approve of. The fine-
| slicing is the result of people who want to make money doing
| propaganda attempting to justify themselves.
|
| > Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a
| world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce
| would still happen. Information would still flow.
|
| Through what mechanism? Wishes?
|
| I'm getting annoyed with people who made a bunch of money in
| advertising talking about banning advertising (or in general
| people who made a bunch of money in X trying to create careers
| as X-bashing pundits or gurus.) Advertising has a purpose; it's
| how I find out what products and services are available, and at
| what cost. People working in advertising who don't realize that
| have clearly never given the only honest aspect of their
| occupation a moment's thought. They thought the job was to
| distract people while robbing them. From that perspective, I
| can understand why they now think that they themselves should
| have been banned.
|
| If you want to ban advertising, you have to replace
| advertising. We have a highway system, there's no reason why we
| can't have a state _products and services that are available_
| system, or in the same vein a matchmaking system between
| employees and employers. We don 't, though. Banning advertising
| without one would be like banning Human Resources departments
| without any other hiring process.
|
| What we should do is regulate advertising, since is is
| commercial speech and we can, but we don't do that either.
| Talking about banning advertising when we can't even ban direct
| to customer drug advertisements (which can be easily done, as
| it was done, by creating standards for the information that has
| to be included with a drug advertisement, and the format that
| it has to be done in.) We can't even get the basics; _banning
| advertising_ , in addition to being a bad idea, is a pipe
| dream.
| njarboe wrote:
| One bright spot is that I find it much easier to avoid ads in
| my media than in say the 1990's. There is usually a higher paid
| tier with no ads. Youtube, X, HBO, etc and ad blockers on the
| web. I'm off of Google search with Kagi. I mostly use services
| that I pay for an much prefer that model.
|
| But everything going to LLMs will make it harder to see/know
| about the ads. Google search was great when it first came out
| and then SEO happened. How long before you (NSA, CCP, big corp)
| can pay OpenAI to seed its training data set (if this is not
| already happening)?
| amelius wrote:
| For starters we could have a referendum about ads, and if x% of
| people vote against, then at least x% of the year should be ad-
| free.
| johndhi wrote:
| Kind of love this idea...
| zxcvbnm6789 wrote:
| I think this needs to be fixed at a different level. Companies
| (at least in the US), are supposed to be growing.
|
| "You're Either Growing Or You're Dying."
|
| Banning or limiting advertising will be hard until that type of
| thinking changes.
| solcloud wrote:
| That would be huge, also really good original scenario idea for a
| future sci-fi film
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Funnily enough, this comes via HN which is a beacon of non-
| advertizing. Would like to hear the admins tales of the various
| commercial approaches they've had over the years.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Is there any concrete evidence that anything bad has ever
| happened as a result of advertising? I don't like rap music, but
| I think it would obviously stupid of me to claim that it's
| harmful because I dislike the aesthetics.
|
| What is the steel man for "advertising bad"? Articles like this
| always take for granted that advertising is harmful, whereas on
| the contrary I'm starting from a position where advertising is
| one of the greatest things that has ever happened, enriching us
| and making our lives far more vibrant and diverse. PS I have
| never worked on ads and rarely use them for my products, they are
| just obviously economically beneficial for everyone.
| 888666 wrote:
| I agree. Many things we benefit from are free or significantly
| reduced in price due to the profitability of advertising. I
| would not want to live in a world where I'd have to find
| everything through word of mouth and not get to try free
| versions of services.
| y42 wrote:
| it's not really about advertising, but it's effects.
| advertising per se is not bad, basically it's just some kind of
| product information. that's all. but it's coming with some
| negative effects that are bad. SEO and Affiliate are one of the
| best examples to that. the thing is that advertising is
| connected to revenue/profit. which is the root cause of all
| little problems up the stream.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| I definitely agree, and I think we should focus on mitigating
| the actual bad things while either recognizing or considering
| that the ads themselves are actually good. It's definitely
| possible to improve the situation and trying to give up and
| destroy everything will not help (I don't agree that profit
| motive is bad though, it's incredible and beautiful as an
| aligning force for humanity)
| curiousObject wrote:
| > _Is there any concrete evidence that anything bad has ever
| happened as a result of advertising? ... What is the steel man
| for "advertising bad"?_
|
| Electoral politics[0], alcohol, tobacco[1], drugs, gambling,
| unbridled consumerism ... for example
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
|
| [1] https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/throwback-thursday-
| wh...
| mgraczyk wrote:
| The Reichstag fire has absolutely nothing to do with
| advertising, and imagining that it does completely ignores
| and trivializes the entire history of pre-Nazi Germany
| V8Falcon wrote:
| If you'll humor me leaning into the steel man and addressing
| advertising-as-practiced i.e. ad-tech rather than advertising
| in the abstract sense:
|
| Data collection is the big harm right now. Advertising
| companies have enormous databases on ~any individual's
| interests, political opinions, gender identity, and much more.
|
| The immediate harm of all this data collection is that, while
| Google has good security practices, the average webshop or
| advertising middleman does not, and so data leaks are frequent.
| Stalkers and harassment groups as well scammers and other
| fraudsters already use such leaked data. This particular harm
| is in the here and now.
|
| The big looming threat is: What happens when a government
| decides to tap into these databases. (Y'know. Like they do in
| China.)
|
| Because right now, should a government ever want to, it can
| just call up Google, Facebook, whomever else, and ask: "Give us
| a list of everyone who meets these criteria".
|
| This completely trivializes any kind of large scale oppression
| of the people. Pre-compiled lists of almost every political
| dissenter, with verticals across almost every topic imaginable.
|
| It's no hypothetical either. During WWII, the Nazis seized
| civil registry records in order identify and kill people as
| part of the holocaust. There's no reason why any future
| authoritarian government won't do the same to the big ad-tech
| databases.
|
| ---
|
| For something in a lighter mood: The one general problem about
| advertising is that it's an industry prone to quite a lot of
| fraud. There's an inherent information asymmetry in that
| advertising agencies have a near-monopoly on not only the
| performance data, but also how it's gathered.
|
| How many impressions did a video get? Only Facebook knows.
| What's an impression? Only Facebook knows. And why would they
| ever be honest about those two things to you, the advertising
| buyer?
| mgraczyk wrote:
| My counter argument to things like this:
|
| As you pointed out, very simple registries are already more
| than sufficient for government oppression. Detailed data that
| Facebook collects, like which brand of dog food you prefer,
| is neither necessary or even helpful for government
| oppression. The ads data is not even 1% as useful to them as
| things like telephone records, which the telephone companies
| will happily send as required by law
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| Advertising is not a modern phenomenon, business owners would
| shout and have town heralds advertise through them. Everyone
| being literate is a modern thing and people need to learn how to
| modulate themselves. You don't have to buy things cause something
| is on sale. A business owner is absolutely entitled to shout if
| their underwear is 20% off and you're entitled to ignore them.
| c0wb0yc0d3r wrote:
| I've thought about a world where ads are illegal several times.
| I think a better compromise might be all ads must silent and
| static, no movement. In my mind this includes ad carousels.
| That would mean that there would regulation in place stating
| that a digital billboard can't switch ads more than once per
| day or something.
| freetime2 wrote:
| The biggest TV event of the year in the US is the Super Bowl, and
| a big part of the event that people look forward to is
| advertising. Ad spots during the Super Bowl are famously
| expensive (like millions of dollars for a 30 second ad), and
| advertisers try really hard to make funny or memorable ads. There
| are lots people who don't care about football and watch just to
| see the ads.
|
| The best ads and brands are an iconic part of our culture -
| something cherished and celebrated by many. I think this is worth
| keeping in mind at least when talking about banning
| advertisements.
| owleyey3o wrote:
| I think Bill Hicks had something to say about this once:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY
| oulipo wrote:
| Hmmm many cities in France have toyed with this idea for a long
| time, so it's already not that wild, and clearly in the public
| discourse in Europe
| martin-t wrote:
| This has been on my mind ever since I realized 2 things:
|
| - the difference between zero-sum and positive-sum games
|
| - that large parts of society are engaged in zero- (or even
| negative-) sum games 1) some through choice or 2) because they
| are forced to, to be able to compete with group 1)
|
| Advertising, manipulation, misinformation, disinformation, and
| lying are all related phenomena with negative effects on both
| individuals and society.
|
| Just like Wales is the first place to propose punishing lying, at
| least from some positions of power, I am looking forward to
| whatever country becoming the first to make advertising illegal,
| at least in some forms and scales.
| hurtuvac78 wrote:
| I think this is an excellent discussion to have.
|
| Say we implement this, a natural consequence would be mega-
| corporations providing every service possible. My Yamaha bike
| displays a message to promote a Yamaha music keyboard, then
| expanding to a new Yamaha bookstore or grocery chain.
|
| No money exchanged out of the first-party Yamaha holding.
|
| We would need to improve the proposal to prevent that too.
| sneak wrote:
| I hate intrusive, obnoxious, aggressive advertising - but using
| media to increase awareness of one's products and services is a
| net good to society in a lot of cases.
|
| I'm as anti-advertising as they come and this is too far. There
| needs to be a more reasoned approach. Banning tv ads, or
| billboards, or online advertising, or certain practices - fine. A
| blanket ad ban would do far more harm than good.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Google was initially incredibly useful because it ranked pages
| created by people who were largely not motivated by advertising
| using an algorithm that didn't allow you to pay for placement.
| Now both the content and the algorithm have been heavily co-opted
| and so people are turning to 'AI' half technological wonder and
| half merely just returning to unbiased relevance based responses
| to user queries. At least until that too starts to replace
| relevance with paid advertising in its responses and the cycle
| will start anew.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about advertising. Small businesses
| definitely need advertising to at least compete with the bigger
| guys, but online platforms such as Google and Facebook are simply
| landlords in the electronics age. Microsoft too, with its
| "monopoly" of desktop OS and how it tries to force ads down our
| throats.
|
| I feel it's impossible to get rid of those Ads platforms such as
| Google or Microsoft. Businesses need them. If you ask me, I'd
| say, government should levy a heavy tax on Ads , so basically
| like gas stations, they are only allowed say 10% of profit
| margin, and they must cap their ads somehow. Ads is basically a
| public service, and every public service, if not run by the
| State, should only allow a very small margin of profit, like
| public transit and such.
| worik wrote:
| Read the bio of the author. It includes this:
|
| > I spend my time as a creative marketing strategist and
| technologist, growing public companies and startups.
|
| Sounds like they may know what they are talking about....
| hypertexthero wrote:
| One way to do it in social media:
|
| https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/04/05/The-CoSoc...
| almosthere wrote:
| Why? Are people going to your house and measuring your feet and
| asking if you want to buy sneakers?
| ryao wrote:
| Advertising medicine, medical services and legal services used to
| be illegal because it is unethical. Then the US Supreme Court
| ruled it had to be legal. This is just stating history. Interpret
| it as you will.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| If you want to take an incremental step towards this start here:
| make it illegal to buy or sell user data.
| an_aparallel wrote:
| As long as capitalism is the current zietgeist, nothing wrt
| advertising changes.
|
| In Australia, liquor ads were banned on sports jerseys and
| stadiums, tv (i think) and so on. But now we have this ridiculous
| Orwellian environment where literally every jersey is plastered
| with an online betting platform, online and tv advertising for
| these same (addictive) platforms. Each ad is suffixed with a tiny
| disclaimer that "gambling destroys lives/gamble responsibly".
| Fucking please....
|
| I used to work in advertising. One thing is clear, the biggest
| advertisers have insane amounts of money to throw around. It
| doesnt have to be effective, all it has to do is repeat itself,
| everywhere at all times.
|
| Advertising is very closely linked to oversupply of products we
| dont need. Governments are to be very clear not in existence to
| safeguard the public from anything. If they were, the law would
| penalise large producers for planned obscelesence, poor quality
| products designed to break, which in turn requires incessant
| advertising to keep the machine moving.
| fsniper wrote:
| Perhaps another approach could be a seperate or a subset internet
| where advertising is punished by banishment. Routing and Dns
| records to be deleted on proof of advertisement.
|
| Sure it's a very hard to implement and most probably easy to
| abuse idea.
|
| However is it impossible? Food for thought.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| But why? The whole premise seems wrong.
|
| > The financial incentives to create addictive digital content
| would instantly disappear
|
| No they wouldn't.. the business model would change. Facebook
| sells ads to businesses and entertainment to consumers. People
| still want to be entertained.
|
| What about the positive effects from advertising? Many products
| which I never knew existed have gone on to improve my life.
|
| To kill addictive digital content (especially those targeted at
| young people), just go after them directly. I agree the world
| will be a better place once we don't spend 10-16 years old
| online. But the advertising argument doesn't make any sense to
| me.
| al_borland wrote:
| I would be OK with the death of using user data to hyper target
| ads to people. I think they can be targeted enough based on
| context, such as a fishing blog having ads for fishing stuff.
| Modern advertising by the likes of Google and Facebook has too
| much information, to the point where it can manipulate and
| target people directly, as they can do with their algorithmic
| feeds as well.
| agnishom wrote:
| [Slavery is immoral] is a corollary of the principle that [human
| autonomy is sacred]. It is not very farfetched to have the moral
| principle that [human attention is sacred]. If we take this
| principle seriously, a large number of manipulative dark patterns
| would be considered wildly unethical.
| ddxv wrote:
| Ads power the free internet. I prefer them to paywalls and silod
| information.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Nice idea but so utterly unenforceable. If you want to look at
| challenges around regulating advertising, the ASA in the UK is an
| interesting case, as when being set up in the 60s, they foresaw
| many of the difficulties and structured themselves to minimise
| them. If you're overly specific, people look for loopholes, so
| they focused on the spirit and they also went with a strong
| element of self-regulation whilst still having teeth where
| necessary. Even so, in the modern world, the internet spanning
| jurisdictions makes it all very hard to deal with.
| dave333 wrote:
| Why not just ban FALSE or MISLEADING advertising like Europe
| does? Apparently there is no difficulty in determining what is
| false there although I can see it might be a problem in the US
| currently.
| dd_xplore wrote:
| We'd back in Soviet Russ
| jongjong wrote:
| It's a solid idea, and could even fall under 'anti-spam laws'
| with some additional clauses. There should be a daily or monthly
| limit on the max number of people that a person or entity can
| contact or send unsolicited content to... Maybe like 100 people
| per day on average. That's more than enough for anyone to make a
| living as a sales person.
|
| Big tech has been mass-spamming us with unsolicited content for
| decades and driving monopolization, centralizing opportunities
| towards those who can talk the talk and away from those who can
| walk the walk. So we've been getting lower value for our money
| and also losing jobs/opportunities which has made it harder to
| earn money.
|
| It's crazy that big tech is allowed to spam hundreds of millions
| of people with unsolicited content but if any individual did it
| on the same scale, they'd be in jail.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| How are you going to define advertising? Does the proposal
| include making it illegal to tell friends how happy you are with
| $PRODUCT from $COMPANY - which made a truly good product and had
| good customer support, and deserves to have the word spread?
|
| Is it advertising if you say it in conversation? What about on
| your blog?
| bradleyy wrote:
| The buried lede:
|
| ```Populists exploit ad marketplaces, using them to bypass
| traditional media gatekeepers```
|
| I want to believe that the author is hopelessly naive, and not a
| more nefarious actor. These traditional media gatekeepers are not
| by any means friendly to democracy; they're literal tools of the
| state, and actively work against the interests of the populace. I
| say this without a hint of irony: I trust social media more.
| airstrike wrote:
| Citation needed. I'll take a free media which is held
| accountable for not misstating basic facts over social media
| any day of the week.
| throw5425 wrote:
| Counterpoint: ads are non-issue.
|
| I've been on the internet for over 25 years and there wasn't a
| time in which ads were more than a mild annoyance. Sure, a
| 5-second ad before watching a video, or a porn ad in The Pirate
| Bay, or an ad in a news site - I could do without them. But it's
| a nothingburger, and I'm grateful for those ads, as many of the
| sites I use would not exist without them. For anyone who's really
| bothered by them, there are ad blockers.
|
| Furthermore, user data and tracking is a huge bogeyman, and it's
| extremely overblown. I'm yet to see any evidence of anyone having
| any _relevant_ data about me AT ALL. With any luck they can
| profile me in that I use certain sites, or that I 'm a male in my
| 30s and I live in X country. Generic shit at best. Relevant read:
| https://archive.is/kTkom
|
| If anything, so-called targeted ads have been failing on me
| because I'm never suggested producs or services I'd actually buy.
|
| So, what's the issue here? For all the issues we currently have,
| ADS are the worse? No.
|
| What I think is:
|
| a) This is an elitist in-group "luxury belief". It's like saying
| I hate ads signals a sort of superiority, as if you're part of
| people in the know, and ads are for normies or NPCs. That's for
| inferior people, I'm above that.
|
| b) This is a problem for people in the autist spectrum, in which
| those who say they hate ads are overrepresented.
|
| But I think there's a darker undercurrent since this view has
| been lobbyied and astroturfed to oblivion:
|
| c) This is a propaganda effort to distract you from more
| nefarious things, or to encourage them. Such as normalizing
| banning and prohibiting things. Normalizing strict state-enforced
| regulation of the internet.
| wruza wrote:
| I actually think that pre-internet ads were okay. Even the tv
| ones, before the era of obnoxious marketing came (but not
| really). I read a bunch of journals my and my friends's parents
| have ordered and it was even cool to see ads that weren't
| targeted. I remember looking at pages with watches, suits,
| condoms, beauty lines, hair shampoos, etc. It was sort of natural
| and wasn't as stupid and repulsive as modern internet ads. The
| ads were consistent with the auditory of the issue, so if you're
| reading it, chances are you're interested. And the best part was,
| when you put it down, it doesn't follow you.
|
| So I think more about making internet ads illegal, just to wash
| out all the spying filth from it. Alphabet, meta, parts of
| amazon, etc. They are natural cancer and prone to propaganda
| attacks because it's the same thing.
|
| As per entertainment, people will find the way. Kids these days
| may not know, but nothing has as much energy as a bored teen/20+
| ager. We formed physically local groups based on interests and
| had life that wasn't 99% passive peering into the screen.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm amazed that people can both see how the current
| administration is twisting laws and are even thinking that it is
| a good thing to give the government more control over speech.
| troyvit wrote:
| Regarding ads as free speech:
|
| > Bullshit. No one is entitled to yell at you "GET 20% OFF THIS
| UNDERWEAR YOU GLANCED AT YESTERDAY" with a dopamine megaphone in
| your bedroom. And to track 90% of your life to know when and how
| to say it. That's not free speech, that's harassment.
|
| The same argument could be applied to the homeless people I see
| on most corners these days with cardboard signs designed to pull
| my heart strings. It's a different brain chemical, but it's
| actually real and it affects my re-uptake inhibitors a lot more.
| Should we ban them? Or just their signs?
|
| Here are a few of the many defenses against advertising that are
| all free:
|
| - Ad blockers for browsers
|
| - Kill your television
|
| - Listen to and support public media (unless those sponsorship
| messages count as ads which is a valid argument)
|
| If literally everybody applied just those three things,
| advertising would die a natural death without having to ban
| anything.
|
| <rant>
|
| I'm a bit of a free speech zealot, and so I'll pull the slippery
| slope fallacy and just ask: after ads, what do we ban next?
| Sponsorship messages like public radio uses? Product placement in
| movies? Would we be allowed to have _any_ real products in movies
| or would everybody drink Slurm instead of Coke and drive around
| in Edisons instead of Teslas? Are movie previews allowed? What
| about product reviews where the product is given to the reviewer
| for free? What about Simone's presence on The Late Show with
| Stephen Colbert years ago? That was entertainment, but it also
| clearly advertised her YouTube channel. Is that allowed?
|
| </rant>
|
| We humans are one of the few animals that have within us multiple
| ways to kill ourselves. While that's mostly thanks to our awesome
| thumbs, our speech is another powerful tool. We're also one of
| the few animals that can, with much work, transcend our
| weaknesses and be more than the goop that makes us up. Finding
| out whether we do is the whole reason I'm sticking around.
| klntsky wrote:
| > The financial incentives to create addictive digital content
| would instantly disappear
|
| It's naive to think so. The obvious argument against that is that
| the behavior of the consumer, not the producer, is what
| constitutes the problem
| voidmain wrote:
| A start might be to enforce, or perhaps strengthen, laws against
| _false_ advertising. I think most advertising is dishonest
| outright or at least by implication or omission. If everyone in
| the chain of custody of commercial speech was held liable if the
| speech was misleading, the world would look rather different.
| Compare the tone of a company 's ads to the tone of its SEC
| filings.
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