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”.
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.
"We'd like to pay/invest in you tremendous amounts of money to make X more efficient": yes, absolutely we know what X is and we understand scaling it is immensely valuable and fundamentally changes everything.
"We'd like to regulate X, making it safer, and therefore harder or even impossible to do": that's ridiculous, you could always do X, what even is X anyway, don't tread on me, yadda yadda.
It's so transparent to me now, and I've passed this curse onto you.
Nothing else in law works this way. No definition is ironclad. This is what legislators, agencies, and courts are for. We all know this.
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.
> It's impossible. How do you even define advertising?
Seems you're insistent on letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. This is precisely why judges exist. It would not be difficult to define Ads well enough to cover 99% of current advertising. Sure there will be gray areas. Advertisers will adapt. But it would make it profoundly more expensive, difficult and risky.
I'm not sure I understand a concrete economic argument other than "anything which makes it harder for businesses to be wildly profitable off minimal value hurts the economy". But that only really holds of you define the economy by things like GDP, which really just capture how wildly profitable companies are and have almost no bearing on quality of life for the people; in other words, the argument is circular.
>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?
No ads in TV programming. No product placement in movies. No billboards. No subway or bus station advertising posters. No paid recommending of specific products. No promotional material for products - nothing with fictional elements. No web ads. No sponsored links. No social media ads. No paid reviews.
(you could still do some of those covertly, with "under the table" money, but then if you caught you get fined or go to jail)
No tracking consuming preferences of any kind, not even if you have an online store. Just a database of past purchases on your own store - and using them for profiling via ML should be illegal too.
If people want to find out about a product, they can see it on your company's website (seeking it directly), or get a leaflet from you. In either case no dramatized / finctional / aspirational images or video should be shown.
>And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
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.
> you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
I don't see how you reached this conclusion, unless you think advertising/propaganda yields bet positive outcomes more than net negative, which seems contentious.
Here's one way it could be false: the wisdom of the crowds only really works when groups of people independently reach their own conclusions, because people who don't understand an issue are randomly distributed around the correct answer and so they all cancel each other out, leaving only the people who do understand an issue to cluster around the correct decision.
Propaganda/advertising works directly against this, thus undercutting the usefulness of the wisdom of crowds.
I think the article mentions banning “sold advertising”, which seems like a fair way to go about it. You can still advertise your own stuff, but you cannot pay a marketplace to do it for you any more. Advertising would by necessity become a lot more local.
There's two kinds of advertising: your local mom and pop running a labor day sale in the local paper, and megacorps spending billions of dollars advertising soda and roblock lootcrates or whatever to kids, or plastering every square inch of public and private space with maximally attention-seeking posters and billboards.
It’s impossible to live in a world without murder, and murder is difficult to precisely define and identify, and yet neither of those are good reasons to oppose making murder illegal.
Don’t let perfect become the enemy of good. I spent 5+ years living in Hawaii, where just billboards are illegal. I can’t quantify the effect but qualitatively, it’s something I dearly miss in the concrete hell of Southern California.
Almost everyone can tell when they’re being advertised to. And almost everyone can tell when they advertise. Effectiveness of such bans would depend on enforcement, the definition is clear enough.
You nailed it man. My first response even to the headline let alone the article was to reflect on the first line spoken by my professor in my first marketing class: "Marketing is about educating the consumer." Advertising is just one way we attempt to do that, and taken to an extreme, I have no idea how you could ever make it stop. The article is clearly focused on one part of advertising, but even then, someone will always build a better mousetrap.
If advertising "skirts through the loopholes", fine - at least we'll recognise it as underground (like darknet now). The liberal version, I don't even understand how you got there so won't comment. That was wild.
And you seem to ignore the issue the OP mentions about not being able to unilaterally disarm.
It's easy if you try. But you won't try ... what a shame.
You don't define "advertising". You look for things that advertisers do and see if they can be made illegal or unprofitable.
Formula 1 cars used to have displays for tobacco products. At one point, the law in Europe started saying "you can not do that", so tobacco advertisements disappeared.
Even if the authoritarianism to enforce it weren't by itself undesirable, banning advertising creates a situation where incumbents (known names) have a significant advantage over new entrants to a market.
It's worth analyzing why a society wants that and who benefits from it.
> 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.
This is just the perfect solution fallacy.
Nobody in this conversation thinks there's a set of laws that would work perfectly to prevent all advertising. That doesn't mean it can't be a hell of a lot better than it is. Playing whack-a-mole with loopholes and making careful regulations to avoid inhibiting human rights is still a huge improvement over letting corporations trample human rights at will.
> 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.
I've been on the advertising, is an evil parasite around useful transactions bandwagon for a while and thought this was really hard to define properly.
So far my best take is around that what's good is being discoverable instead of something that you run into. This allows people to do what they want, without the evil side of unconsciously or in-competitively driving them to your business/deals.
This is a classic case of perfect being the enemy of good.
We don't need to 1984 listen to every conversation for any hints at product endorsement. We can start with obvious things - for example, prohibiting a company from spending money on marketing. Banning ads on the air, whatever.
There's levels to this. There's really evil slot machine marketing. You know, try to get people addicted to your social media and use that addiction as a way to generate profit. And then there's not so bad marketing. Like my friend telling me he likes his new pair of pants.
There is no reason it has to be so immoral, annoying, and evil. There could be a whole gamified system where people who choose to voluntarily participate can find things they want to buy from people eager to sell
I don't know about 'advertising', but Bahai don't allow campaigning when running for leadership position. I would imagine it would be some where along line of that. It encourage action speakers louder than words.
With all the modern techniques (used by neurosciences) in the modern advertising is pretty all entrainment and brain washing at this point any way. So no harm in making all that illegal. I'm pretty ok with a world with no advertising, and just function by word of mouth and network of trust.
What is your evidence that there is any economic advantage at all to have unregulated advertising?
I'm fairly sure advertising is regulated in all sovereign states. And I am also quite certain that the jurisdictions in which gambling advertisement is illegal fare better economically than those in which it is illegal. It only makes sense: gambling is not productive, the less of it you have the better your population spend their money on productive things, the more advertising you have the more people spend on gambling (otherwise what is the point of advertising?), if you forbid gamling advertising there will be less gambling advertising (if not, what is your complaint even?).
Nothing about this statement of yours makes sense.
For the same reason weights and measures legislation is of course impossible.
This is why every time you go to the shops you have to carry your own standard weights and balance scale! The idea that society could regulate the weight and volume of every product in every shop is simply preposterous!
"It's impossible. How do you even define advertising?"
"How do you define it?" is an oft-repeated and weak argument against regulation used by online commenters who likely are defending a self-interest in maintaining tha status quo behaviour of so-called "tech" companies.
Online advertising services are obviously capable of being defined as these are bought by advertisers and sold by so-called "tech" companies every day. These so-called "tech" companies define "products" and "services", offered for "free", all the time. The commercial purpose is facilitation of online advertising. This can be regulated.
Before the internet was opened to the public, commercial use was prohibited. Today, HN commenters would no doubt try to suggest that defining what is and is not "commercial use" would be "impossible". But it's too late. It was already done.
The uncomfortable truth for so-called "tech" companies is that _any_ regulation that affects the ability to collect data, conduct surveillance and assist the injection of advertising into people's "user experience" could have a significant impact on their "business model". Hence they try to argue _any_ regulation is unworkable. All-or-nothing. Perfect, 100% solution or nothing at all.
But regulation does not have to define _all_ advertising. It may only define advertising that meets certain criteria. All-or-nothing thinking is nonsensical in this context. By analogy, when so-called "tech" companies propose alleged "solutions" for privacy issues, do they propose one solution that offers total, complete "privacy". How do we even define "privacy". What they propose is usually some incremental improvement.
It is possible to limit online advertising through rules and regulations. Of course this is a unacceptable proposition for so-called "tech" companies. Their only viable "business model" depends on usurping the bandwidth of internet subscribers for surreptitious, unwanted data collection, real-time surveillance and online advertising.
> It's impossible. How do you even define advertising? If you define it conservatively, then advertising will skirt through the loopholes.
It's quite easy though. Just remove incentives to advertise. Remote the possibility of profit. Will it destroy the economy? Of course, but the advertising will cease.
I grew up in a communist country. There was some advertising (in TV, radio, magazines; very little outdoor), but since all the profits went to the state anyway, there was no real competition, and also often shortages, the advertising was not really serious. It didn't influence people a lot. It was harmless.
Of course there was a lot of communist propaganda in the media, in the schools and workplaces, outdoor banners etc., and that is advertising too. But also this was already at the stage when nobody took it seriously anymore.
hey why try to do anything ever, people will just find a way around it and it will be worse than if we did nothing. lets make murder legal, fewer people will get killed i guess
We cant define the beginning and end of human life/consciousness, and we've regulated it for thousands of years. That it is hard to define does not make it impossible to control
>> 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?
Yet, in some countries advertising for tobacco or alcohol is banned, if it's possible to ban these advertising for these product why would it be impossible to ban every advertising.
> And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
Uh? You can advertise in these other nation but they also won't be able to advertise in your country, so I don't understand your point.
There was almost no advertising in my country when I was 7. I live in Poland and till 1989 it was communist puppet state of USSR (not through our choice, obviously, so the moment we could - we noped out of it).
There was no point advertising because there was no competition, all the companies were nationalized and no matter how well or badly they did - their employees earned the same. If you persuaded people to buy your washing powder instead of the other available washing powder - that just means the queues for your washing powder will be longer.
There was A LOT of communist and anti western propaganda tho. But no advertising is perfectly possible.
Eh, even if you exclude any potential side effects like that I don't see it being workable. I believe advertising as done today is _mostly_ a zero sum game, but without any advertising at all, it's going to be _really_ hard to find out about stuff!
> 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.
Agree with this entirely. In fact, I would go as far as saying if advertising was illegal, then expressing opinions would be illegal. Everything is an advertisement.
That parallel between propaganda and advertising is why I have a pathological hatred of advertising, I block it in all forms possible, to the extent that if I can’t block it I won’t use the product.
I simply hate been manipulated.
So much so that I forget what the modern tech landscape is like for the average user til I use one of their devices.
We’ve (collectively we for techies) helped create a dystopia.
Blocking the advertising itself only shields you from the advertising, it still lets these services set up the underlying surveillance/advertising system that harms society (and you) in the long run.
Of course it's not always possible, but it would be ideal to use services that don't have advertisements for anybody.
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?"
> 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 are no drawbacks to making advertising illegal as long as the laws are written conservatively. Point out one. Notably "it won't actually prevent all advertising" isn't a downside--preventing, say, 80% of advertising is a heck of an improvement.
And FFS let's skip past the childish "how will people find out about products???" nonsense. You're an adult, use your brain. Consumer Reports exists, and in the absence of advertising that sort of content would flourish.
> The uncomfortable truth: most of us in tech understand that today's advertising systems are fundamentally parasitic.
Which was obvious at every step of the journey. Google was, is, and always will be an advertising platform. Advertising was, is, and always will be the manipulation of human emotions and desires for the purpose of corporate profit. This is not a good thing! How did you ever justify this to yourself?
I’ve had recruiters push the poker machine jobs, the ad jobs, the high frequency trader jobs… You get to look at the business before taking the job; work for better people. No shade on anyone who’s there because they just need a job, but if you have a choice, pick something better.
> 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.
We would no longer be tricked into buying a bunch of crap that doesn't make us happy.
But because GDP is what it is, we will have a recession. Quite a big one, because a lot of the economy is reliant on selling people stuff they could do without. Perhaps people would be happier once things settle down, but we have locked ourselves into measuring things that are easy to measure, and so we're all going to think it was a failed experiment.
> Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising.
While we're at radical thought experiments combine that with "what if any entity worth over 100 million (insert arbitrary limit here, perhaps what if it was based on an multiple of average employee salary) was disallowed".
And, in fact, if the maximum company size were limited, and thus the marketplace wasn't a swimming pool full of whales, but instead full of a much larger number of a broader mix of smaller fish, what would advertising look like then?
For example, large categories of industry would have to change hugely into cooperative non-owning groups of smaller companies. Would they still have the same advertising dominance, or would the churn within the groups break things up?
I'd rather cap salaries than company sizes. The logistics of certain industries may naturally require more manpower than others and put them at a disadvantage.
But someone earning $10m a year while their workers are on food stamps is unacceptable. Having a dynamic limit of total comp would mean they either take less money and put it into the company, or raise the wages of those employees.
I like the direction but some things are difficult to imagine happening at all without extremely large companies.
I have wondered before about restricting a company’s diversity. Effectively giving a time limit after a company over a certain size develops a new line of business by which it must be spun off into a new company. Say 12 or 18 months.
For example, Apple would have been allowed to develop and launch Apple Music but it would have been forced to spin it off.
The rule would need to be carefully crafted, and would need regulators to be active in enforcement as it would require interpretation to be applied (similar to how anti-trust works today, perhaps).
It's better to limit companies by number of employees, not worth. That way, you break up the economy into modular components that humans can more easily understand (and whose outputs can be used by other companies). Also, it pushes for more efficiency. And it lowers barriers to entry.
> 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.
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?
If they are paid and the consumer didn’t ask to see it, either because it’s inserted into the web page / video stream / whatever they are actually trying to consume, OR because because the whole thing has a paid bias or ulterior motive.
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.
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 café 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.
This his how I look at it. If a lesser computing device's vulnerabilities were exploited to alter its intended behaviour, especially for financial gain, it would be considered hacking and criminal penalties would apply. Why that applies to a mobile phone, and not to a far more critical computing device (the human brain) is the question.
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.
A lot of winners today are those that get away with greyzone illegal practices. The same would happen in a "ads are illegal" world. People would pay for word of mouth, or even pay influential people to casually talk about it, but it'd be off the books etc.
If you followed this line of reasoning consistently you'd advocate for no additional regulations to ever be imposed by government and all existing regulations to be walked back. That is, to most of us, patently absurd. The answer to your objection is to enforce the laws that we have, not to never make new ones.
People still steal, but we aren't contemplating to just abolish the laws that prohibits theft.
A new law is proposed and people may break it in the future. Is that a reason not to implement that law, because that seems to be the - in my view crazy - insinuation.
I wonder a bit if this point of view is an 'age' thing, which is to say if you're under 40 it rings true, if you're over 40 it sounds silly kind of thing. I don't know that it is, it just feels that way a bit to me.
What if we outlawed surveillance capital instead? "Ad tech" is about exploiting information about individuals and their actions, what if that part of it was illegal because collecting or providing such information about individuals was illegal? (like go to jail illegal, not pay a fine illegal).
By making that illegal, collecting it would not be profitable (and it would put the entity collecting it at risk of legal repercussions). "Loyalty cards", "coupons", "special offers just for you", all gone in an instant. You could still advertise in places like on the subway, or on a billboard, but it would be illegal to collect any information about who saw your ad.
If you're over 50, you probably read a newspaper. And in reading the newspaper might have looked at the weekly ad for the various supermarkets in your neighborhood. That never bothered you because you weren't being "watched". The ad was made "just for you" and it didn't include specials on only the things you like to eat. When read a magazine you saw ads in it for people who like to read about the magazine's subject matter. Magazines would periodically do 'demographic' surveys but you could make that illegal too.
Generally if you're under 40 you've probably grown up with the Internet and have always had things tracking you. You learned early on to be anonymous and separate your persona in one group for the one in another. That people have relentlessly worked to make it impossible to be anonymous angers you to your core and their "reason" was to target you with ads. By maybe that it was "ads" was a side effect? That is probably the most effective way to extract value out of surveillance data but there are others (like extortion and blackmail).
I resonate strongly with the urge to slay the "Advertising Monster" but what I really want to slay is how easily and without consequence people can violate my privacy. I don't believe that if you made advertising illegal but left open the allowance to surveil folks, the surveillance dealers would find another way to extract value out of that data. No, I believe choking off the "data spigot" would not only take away the 'scourge' of targeted advertising, it would have other benefits as well.
I’m over 40 and I think banning advertising is perfectly reasonable and should be done. I have been certain of this since at least my 20s, and since before the emergence of the current fully formed hellscape.
I have long thought advertising is the new smoking. One day we will look back and be amazed that we allowed public mental health and the wellbeing of our civilisation to be so attacked for profit.
I also manage to fairly easily live a life in which I see remarkably little advertising.
* I use a suite of ad/tracking blockers
* I don’t use apps that force ads on me
* I watch very little TV, and never watch broadcast TV
* I live in the UK which has relatively little outside advertising, and I mostly get around by walking/cycling (thus avoiding ads on public transport)
* etc…
It astounds me when I speak to friends and travel just how pervasive advertising is for some people, and particularly in some places.
The US, for example, is insane. I can see how some people used to living in such an environment may think it’s not possible or reasonable to get rid of advertising, and for sure there will be edge cases and evasion, but my experience is that it really wouldn’t be so hard to dramatically reduce the amount people are exposed to.
Advertising is virtually impossible to stop, but more than that, is not inherently evil. Most countries include laws on how you can advertise. For example, you can't lie and make a claim that your product can't live up to, you can't use certain words or phrases, and you have to have disclaimers in some situations.
In the mid-90s when Yahoo was a young company, they had a simple advertising model. The ad would be placed next to the section of the site relevant to the category. If you were searching for watches, a watch ad would be next to it. The advertiser would know how many times the ad was served and how many times it was clicked on.
They didn't have deep demographic data like they do today.
The surveillance capitalism model is the predatory model. Advertisement is only one part of that industry.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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?
What I'd really like to see is a study on how much advertising drives consumerism and thereby eventually climate change / pollution. Maybe this could start some discussion.
I got the thing for you : a governmental report that showed that advertising as it exists today and ecological transition are not aligned.
Pardon my french, though.
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)?
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.
Neither convincing them nor compelling them through law would work. I’m surprised the author can’t see that as an ad person himself. The incentives are too strong; if you outlaw them, they’ll just be circumnavigated in more nefarious ways.
In tech specifically: is it the same mechanism? I mean, does commercial advertising and political propaganda flow through the same channel?
I would love your input as someone on the inside. My understanding, broadly, is that when there’s commercial advertising, it goes through a different channel; there’s an auction, the ad is marked, CTR is tracked etc. whereas I think the political polarization and the use of propaganda on social media happens much less explicitly: it’s “mixed in”with the non-ad content that’s posted, and therefore much harder to detect or remove.
I’m also curious how you might handle influencers. Those, like propaganda operations, are an attempt to influence people’s behavior but “from inside” the ad/non-ad boundary.
And then, I’m convinced, a lot of our politics today is simply an emergent phenomenon of the algorithmic feed. That there is no master, corporate or political, that lead to this condition. It simply happened as a result of “for you.” (I think this is changing, as the powerful are discovering how powerful the algorithm is at influencing their subjects).
I think I agree with you broadly. The total sublimation of human relationships and interactions into “the machine” has a whole host of really bad side-effects. Jacking into cyberspace causes the shakes, at a society wide level and certainly at an individual level as well.
> The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters.
The main difference between advertising and propaganda is that advertising usually is obvious and loud, and in many countries is required to be declared: people need to know they're watching an ad. You have specific placements for ads that are clearly defined: tv breaks, outdoors, even banners. It's true that there are active efforts to blurr those lines, but still.
The problem of propaganda is that it's mainly being done covertly, no one is saying they're speaking on behalf of someone or of an ideology.
> Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. Information would still flow.
While this concept sounds good, it doesn't seem to work in the real world. For example, could shops have billboards on their property? What about businesses that didn't have prime locations? How would people know they existed? How would small businesses compete with big retailers?
One of the things the internet brought, for better and worse, was to lower the barrier of entry—you wouldn't need to be a massive brand that could afford to have its product placed on TV Shows or even to have sales teams selling door to door.
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.
> Probation only moves the activities underground.
That implies that people want ads and they're going to be consuming underground ads from their ad dealers. Which actually already impinges on advertising because advertising doesn't want to be secret, advertising wants to be as visible or popular as possible. Advertising is inherently easier to regulate because of this.
Google and Facebook sure, you could even make the argument that their non-adtech businesses would be collateral damage, but Amazon and Microsoft have substantial non-advertising related businesses. I'm curious why you lumped them in?
"Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. Information would still flow."
I remember a world without advertising on the internet. Products still existed. Commerce still happened. Information still flowed. At first I got access to the internet through universities. Later I paid subscription fees for internet access. Nothing I accessed on the www required a paid subscription.
Bandwidth sucked. CPUs were less powerful, RAM and storage were in short supply. All that has changged.
But I still pay for internet access, much more than I did in the early days. And, remarkably, I see people asking internet users to "subscribe" to websites, in addition to paying internet subscriber fees. This does not stop these websites from also conducting data collection, surveillance and targeted advertsing.
Internet advertising is not like other advertising. People try to argue it makes stuff "free". Stuff that was already free to begin with.
I too spent far too many years in the adtech industry before realising that what I thought I was doing (helping fund cool things on the web) was not what I was actually doing (destroying the web as I knew it.) Having left it behind in the early 10s it's got way worse than I ever imagined, there's effectively no regulation at all now, and certainly no way of knowing where the ads stop and the content begins. Having sat in ad industry self regulation meetings myself I know the author is completely right, they will never do anything about any of the many many problems, so what else is there to do than ban it, nothing else is going to work with the system that currently exists.
> The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters.
Advertising is just a name for a delivery mechanism for propaganda. Its not a difference of master, as is clear in the political realm where when we focus on a particular commercial delivery vehicle we talk about "campaign advertisements" but the content is still "political propaganda".
> 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.
No, the mechanisms would just get even more sophisticated, to work around whatever (inherently, and unavoidably, arbitrary) lines were drawn against "advertising" while permitting the flow of information and opinions about products.
> No, the mechanisms would just get even more sophisticated, to work around whatever (inherently, and unavoidably, arbitrary) lines were drawn against "advertising" while permitting the flow of information and opinions about products.
Probably, but it would make advertising much more costly thus less appealing and reduce its market size. Just like for any other prohibited activity.
> The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters.
A big reason for that is influence from Edward Bernays:
"Edward Louis Bernays was an American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". While credited with advancing the profession of public relations, his techniques have been criticized for manipulating public opinion, often in ways that undermined individual autonomy and democratic values."
Bernays' mother, Anna, was Sigmund Freud's sister. There seemed to be a talent in that family in understanding the human psyche, and how to utilize that understanding.
>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.
We still get a choice about where we work, and we could choose not to put glorified ad companies on a pedestal.
I explicitly refused project related to mobile location data crunching few years ago. I told it loudly to my manager then, I was already thinking I'm too arogant. But it was outlr market, it worked out we've found other project.
Now I would probably bend my neck and accept it. It's just not everyone has choice.
That line about the mechanical difference between selling sneakers and selling a political ideology being minimal - yep. Once you've seen how the sausage gets made in ad tech, it's hard to unsee it. It really is the same machine, just tuned for different outcomes.
> What's frustrating is how the tech community keeps treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease.
If you think deeper, to first principles, it’s clear that disease is capitalism. I am not advocating socialism/communism, but isn’t it strange that capitalism was never reviewed or updated according to new science about anthropology, sociology, and economics? In 100 years, about 100 countries tried it, and not one country can report a harmonious society. It’s always with inequality and suffering.
Every science has new advancements and discoveries, every single one except political sociology. Why is more advanced and modern political economic system never seriously discussed? On what assumption is capitalism still being implemented? It was never working yet still it is referred as something like “word of god” that cannot be argued with.
If this was a situation in an IT company and methodology company uses constant change, it ends in disaster. After about one such cycle, management will be looking into changing processes and choosing something else instead of Agile or Waterfall or whatever is used.
For about 30-40 years now, we produce enough to feed and house everyone. Henry Ford introduced a five-day work week, which should be down to one workday by now. But instead, we got “bullshit jobs,” which are about 50% of employment in unnecessary made-up jobs to keep people occupied (marketing, finance).
And still in the AI age, a person who is born now is brainwashed into capitalism and has to find an occupation, study, and work till retirement.
Capitalism does not accept you for who you are. It only accepts you if you have some kind of occupation that brings value.
> capitalism was never reviewed or updated according to new science
about anthropology, sociology, and economics?
If taking a human-science view, then one interesting take on
capitalism is that it isn't a thing at all. It's the absence of a
thing. It's a positive freedom. There can be no "science" of
capitalism.
It allows the direction of excess human psychological energy. It is
the absence of regulation of anti-social criminal behaviours, by
creating an allowable "grey area" between moral and wicked behaviours
- what so many business people like to call "amoral". But that same
energy is innovative, creative - the destruction of what is old and
weak is part of any finite-sized system. The need to destroy, dominate
and exploit is strong in a significant percent of the population. Any
decent study of criminology is continuous with "business".
William James, in The Moral Equivalent of War [0] suggested that we
coped with this in the past by having every few generations of males
kill each other in wars - and of course implied that it's mainly a
gendered issue. During frontier times, as the European settlers
conquered America and other lands, there was ample "space" for
exploitation as that energy was directed against "nature" (and the
indigenous folks who were considered part of "nature" as opposed to
"civilisation"). Now we've run out of space. The only target left for
that energy is each other.
Social-"ism" etc are projects to try controlling that nature by
reducing "individualism" (and insecurity-based consumerism is an
obvious first target). It's major fault is that the anti-social
criminals tend be want to be the ones doing the controlling - just
wearing the mask of civility and preaching the primacy of "the group".
If we cannot change human nature we must find a new outlet for that
energy. Space exploration as a new frontier always looked good, but in
reality it's something we are unlikely to achieve before
self-destructing the technological civilisation needed to support it.
That leaves little else but a kind of cultural revolution. The
pharmaceutically catalysed version of that in the 1960s is worth
studying to see where and why it went wrong. See Huxley.
Any realistic systematic change would need to address this "problem"
of the individual ego, creating some new focus that is the "moral
equivalent" of war.
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.
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?
I feel that the lumping together of advertising and propaganda in the article is very apt. That's why I find it somewhat sinister. You should be allowed to try to change minds. If anything should be outlawed, it's the massive tracking effort involved.
Let's talk about the modern world then. You want to get away from the grind of working for someone else and sustain yourself on your own.
Perhaps you could turn into a subsistence farmer making every home product you own on your own or in a small commune, or perhaps you and a group of employees could buy your existing employer.
But the other more realistic method is that you would start your own business so you no longer have to work for someone else.
19% of all American adults are starting or run a business. It's a very common way to make a living.
IMO the idea of removing advertising entirely would essentially entrench the status quo even further. People would only know brands like Coca-Cola, Tide, and Apple, the brands they knew about the day the ads shut off. There would be no chance for other companies to enter markets because they would have no realistic way of spreading the word about their alternatives, not even for small local businesses.
The proposal is not just radical, it's downright moronic if you've ever been in the shoes of owning your own company.
> IMO the idea of removing advertising entirely would essentially entrench the status quo even further.
This doesn’t seem correct to me.
Products would still be searchable, but the wealthiest companies could no longer pay for placement or pay to have their brand name repeated endlessly so it’s on the tip of your tongue but you don’t know why.
People would still talk in their communities and share recommendations.
Reviews (unpaid) would still be a thing.
Markets (real and virtual) where you can compare competing products and make a decision wouldn’t go away.
But I think part of the article's point is less about banning all forms of spreading the word and more about dismantling the surveillance-driven, hyper-targeted ad economy that's become the default.
But the way you frame the problem suggests it's not tech people's responsibility at all. It's a much bigger issue of governance that society as a whole must decide. Has there been any society on earth that has made the decision to ban advertising?
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.
>> We'd just be freed from the increasingly sophisticated machinery designed to override our decision-making.
That isn't all advertising. That is the modern algorithm-dependent systems that curate ads for individual viewers. In the good old days of print ads, ads targeted at say the readership of a particular magazine, we did not suffer from the downward spiral. There is no reason websites cannot have static ads. Many do. The issue is not advertising per se.
> 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.
Indeed. Marketing is essentially capitalist propaganda. It promotes capitalism and consumerism in an implicit way, and doesn't even mention it.
It's vaguely of like the statement "X is the way to serve god best". I'm saying that god exists without actually making that statement; it's implicit. If statements of this style were ubiquitous, they work as propaganda in a way far stronger that just repeating "god exists".
I actually kind of enjoy advertising -- most ads are shit, but some are very clever. Low budget ones make me laugh, or admire the (complete lack of) execution. I like to see the graphic design trends, the typography, the strange brand collaborations and IP tie-ins, the vogue cycles of looks, feels, musical choices, the trends that get beaten to death with a hammer. It's all very interesting, not to mention the glut of weird products, insane sales pitches, the general grift on display. Simply fascinating shit.
Intellectually I know most people wouldn't mind living in a world without Slap Chop and those old Quizno's ads and Kylie Jenner solving racism with a Pepsi and Arnold riding a pennyfarthing inside of a Japanese energy drink bottle, but IMO that stuff really brings color to our often-monochrome human existence.
An advertisement ban is also an interesting idea from the theory of free markets perspective.
Consumer needs are met by the most efficient producers, products compete for consumers on the market. That makes a ton of sense. But ad spending inverts this relationship. Consumer needs are no longer an external condition for the market but become subject to producer intervention.
This creates a source of misalignment between incentives for producers and the public good.
I think outlawing ads would go a long way towards fixing capitalism.
> The uncomfortable truth: most of us in tech understand that today's advertising systems are fundamentally parasitic.
While my opinion on ad tech has been negative for years, over the past couple of years I've come to realise how much this business model depends on outright crime to survive.
If you have YouTube ads on any device, you probably noticed (at least in my country) that a large fraction of ads are for either extremely low quality products (such as shitty mobile games, apps of dubious value that probably exist mostly to gobble up your data, or just shady IRL products), or outright scams of various kinds.
In one case I saw an obvious scam ad that impersonated a famous person in my country. I reported it to YouTube, and got back an email a while later that said that the ad did not break any of their rules and my report was dismissed.
Some weeks later I read a news article that reported that that exact scam had scammed some old people out of large amounts of money.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been, but I was genuinely surprised that my report had been dismissed. While I already thought YouTube is to blame in serving users scam ads, I had naively assumed that YouTube doesn't want to serve scam ads, it's just hard and expensive to filter them out systematically.
But no, they want to serve scam ads. Even when they get pointed out they refuse to remove them. A dollar paid by a scammer is just as good as a dollar paid by someone trying to advertise a real product. And they're not liable for the scam, so why would they care?
But surely that's too simplistic. Even a complete sociopath would understand that having your website/app overrun by scam ads will tarnish its reputation over time, or invite more aggressive regulation. So these long-term risks don't seem to be worth it. Unless, of course, scams are a very significant fraction of ad revenue.
So this is my hypothesis: scams ads provide a very significant fraction of advertising revenue on at least YouTube, and possibly most social media, perhaps to the point where the business model would not be viable without them.
This idea isn't uncommon because it's beyond the Overton window, it's uncommon because it is silly and unworkable.
* Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally.
In fact, the author touts as a benefit that you'd stop populists being able to talk to their audience. This is destroying the village of liberal democracy in order to save it!
* Absolutely zero thought has been given to how to police the boundaries. Giving a paid speech? Free gifts for influencers? Rewards for signing up a friend?
* Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy. Advertising fulfils an important social role. Yes, I know it can be annoying/intrusive/creepy. "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
* Banning billboards or other public advertising? Fine. Not new. Done all over the place for commonsensical reasons.
* Any article that talks about "blurry, “out-of-focus fascism”—that sense of discomfort that you feel but can't quite point out" is itself blurry and out-of focus, not to say absurd and hyperbolic. Calling a mild sense of psychological discomfort "fascism" is just embarrassing.
> * Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally.
Some limits exist on advertising exist in most countries. Do they respect free speech?
> * Absolutely zero thought has been given to how to police the boundaries. Giving a paid speech? Free gifts for influencers? Rewards for signing up a friend?
Absolutely zero thought is never given on policing boundaries on anything. That's not how the legal system operates. All laws are approximations at best and grey areas get decided by courts on a case-by-case basis.
> * Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy. Advertising fulfils an important social role. Yes, I know it can be annoying/intrusive/creepy. "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
In my country, advertising alcohol is forbidden. Somehow I still manage to find interesting new beers to try year after year
> In my country, advertising alcohol is forbidden. Somehow I still manage to find interesting new beers to try year after year
This is interesting. Alcohol companies a well known to bypass this prohibition by all possible means (product placement, influencers,...) and yet I find real benefits in it. It would possibly be similar if advertising was forbidden for everything
Any existing policy inevitably has a gray area, no matter how elaborate it is. That's okay if the author didn't cover corner cases in a short essay.
> You don't just magically know what to buy.
Knowing what you need is not magic. I don't remember much advertising lately that would tell me how a good can satisfy my existing needs. Mostly, they are trying to make me feel I need something I didn't need before
Hardly a corner case. It's such an obvious question that the failure to cover it means the author isn't serious.
Knowing what you need is not magic, but knowing which products might satisfy it is not automatic. Advertising targeting, which people quite reasonably find intrusive, exists because advertisers desperately want to find people who may potentially want to buy their product.
It really isn’t. The comment argues that the proposed solution is unworkable and would have adverse consequences, not that it would only partially work.
> Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally.
Corporations don't have rights. Corporations don't have the right to free speech.
Yes, I'm aware of the SCOTUS opinion on this issue--I'm saying SCOTUS is wrong on this.
And no, granting corporations personhood isn't a viable approximation. We're discussing a case in this thread where granting corporations a right is drastically different from granting individuals rights.
> Absolutely zero thought has been given to how to police the boundaries. Giving a paid speech? Free gifts for influencers? Rewards for signing up a friend?
Your criticism is basically that OP didn't draft a full detailed legislation in a blog post. That's not how ideas get proposed on the internet and you know that.
> Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy. Advertising fulfils an important social role. Yes, I know it can be annoying/intrusive/creepy. "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
I agree that people don't magically know what to buy, but ads make that problem worse, not better. Ads cannot inform, because they don't come from an unbiased source and even in the rare cases where they tell the truth, they're leaving out important facts intentionally. You're basically saying, "People don't know what the truth is, so we need to let liars lie to them." The solution to lack of knowledge is truth, not lies.
In the absence of advertising, independent third party reviews such as those provided by Consumer Reports would actually fill the need for consumer information.
We don’t have to do it all at once. Focus on what ad platforms like Google’s offers. Ad banners, ads on videos, etc.
Start by banning target advertisements - now ad platforms can’t use information about the user to decide which ad to show.
Next, ban forced advertisement - people cannot be forced to watch 10 seconds of an ad, or to have the ad be persistent on a page. All ads can be easily dismissed.
Then, force ad platforms to respect a user setting that says they don’t want to see ads. Just a new browser standard that communicates the user preference, or a toggle that can be changed in apps.
That alone should get rid of most problematic ads, but we’d still have sponsors and affiliate links. For those, we can start by increasing the requirements for disclaimers or identification. e.g. sponsored content has to be strictly separated from non-sponsored content. Get rid of “segways” and affiliate links close to the actual content.
If advertisers find loopholes or ways around these measures, we just close the holes with new regulation.
> Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy.
A-Are you Don Draper by any chance?
Seriously, though: you don't need marketing. What you need while searching for what product to buy is a technical specification of the product by which you can determine if the product suits your needs.
I keep thinking about this, and the only conclusion I can come to is that businesses would still need to be able to advertise their own products in places that they own.
For example, what if I want to buy a guitar?
I'm shopping online. First, I need to pick a company to purchase my guitar from. How do I choose? Any sort of aggregated comparison of places to purchase from can be considered advertising, so they are all banned (otherwise, astroturfing would be only form of advertising). Do search engines also count as advertising? Okay, so I've found a site. How do I know I'm getting a good deal? (although this is a whole different argument about us worried about getting a good deal because maybe we over-consume, it's still a consideration).
Now, on that site, is this company allowed to advertise different brands that they carry to me? By definition of advertising, no - the whole purpose of showing me products is to make me purchase, which is the definition. So then do we reach a true communist state where there is only one option to purchase? If so, can I still not see it because it's considered advertising? Okay, fine, I need to be able to see at least one guitar, we can concede that point.
Or maybe instead I go to the store to purchase a guitar. Firstly, how do I find the store? If they are not allowed to advertise, must I organically drive past their store? Are there rules on business signs that disallow specifying the type of store, because that could be construed as advertising products? Or is that limited to a certain brand - the goal is to allow all competition equally, so it just says "guitar store"? We've already agreed (probably) that this store can't 'advertise' itself elsewhere, so the only way I will know about it is through (illegal) word-of-mouth, which is still technically advertising. Or maybe it's only illegal for businesses to advertise? Or for people who are earning money from the act? How is that defined?
Okay, anyway, I've made it to the store. When I walk in, I'm met with the same dilemma in example one - the store isn't allowed to hang up products, because that incentivizes me to purchase. Maybe I need to just say "hey, show me a guitar so I can try it" and they must present me with a randomly selected guitar to avoid bias. We continue this until I find one that resonates with me. They can tell me the price of each, but not a sale price, as that falls under unfair advertising law to incentivize me to purchase a specific brand, so brands aren't allowed to run sales anymore. I have no idea if I'm getting what I want - sure, it sounds great and feels great and I enjoy it, but maybe I could have gotten that from a less expensive guitar, or maybe I didn't realize that I wanted a different size guitar.
By this point, economies of scale have collapsed because every purchase must be organic and therefore every national retailer has been dissolved - and most likely the largest manufacturers have discovered the best way to exploit this situation, so the largest now have natural monopolies and the rest have died off because they couldn't compete and were selling direct to consumer, not stocked in stores. Speaking of which, how do stores even work? How do grocery stores work? Every grocery store is built from the ground up on advertising. The same logic applies here. Two choices on a shelf must be in identical nondescript boxes with absolutely no calls to action or differentiators listed. Therefore, the smaller companies go out of business, or maybe the companies with the largest or smallest packages. In fact, just the size of an item can be used to intuit value, so now prices must be fixed to size, and sales & coupons are outlawed.
---
All this to say, marketing in some form has existed since time immemorial. Finding value in choices is human nature.
The only way something like this could happen ("Advertising is illegal") would be a monumental wide-scale, best-effort, not-perfect set of judgement calls, which would require drastic overreach by a governing body - which would be exploited by finding weak links in the system and exchanging something they value to look the other way for a certain seller - which is exactly what got us to where we are.
One of the main reasons that we always arrive right back where we started is because the people with (less empathy, win-at-all-costs, better-than-thou, etc.) mentalities are willing and able to exploit the other group, the group that wants (peace, fairness, equity, teamwork), because the second set of values means enabling those around you, and the first set of values means taking advantage of that.
The only way I ever see healthy systems working is in relatively small groups of people where there can be shared accountability and swift action taken towards selfish behaviors, as defined as a community. Unless there is near-total buy-in, a system cannot thrive with the assurance of fairness, teamwork, equity.
Is the right to pay others for speech necessary for free speech to exist? If so it is already non-existent. No functioning democracy allows judges or politicians to sell their speech to the highest bidder for example.
The difference is that advertising is extremely broad while bribing a judge or politician is extremely narrow (not to speak of conflicting with their professional remit)
It's relatively easy and sensible to ban very specific forms of paying for influence. But a ban on publishing your opinion in someone else's publication is extremely broad and obviously in violation of free speech. Free speech isn't defined as standing on a corner yelling at people.
I also think it's counterproductive. All influence seeking (both commercial and political) would be forced to move from overt advertising to covert infiltration of our communication.
> "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
It's worse than that in that it's just plainly wrong. I learn about useful products via advertising all the time -- so often, in fact, that I'm sort of bewildered that anybody could claim otherwise. We must be experiencing the world quite differently.
> In fact, the author touts as a benefit that you'd stop populists being able to talk to their audience. This is destroying the village of liberal democracy in order to save it!
the irony is the author is using propaganda to spread populist ideas
You are defining marketing as manipulative. In fact, marketing is just "bringing a product to market". For example, it includes having booths at a trade show. The line between objective information and "puff" is impossible to draw. I googled "strollers" and got:
Joolz strollers with ergonomic design, manoeuvrability, compactness, and storage space. compare and choose your favourite Joolz pushchair model.
Who would maintain such information repositories and what would the incentive be to take that on? (As they no longer could be supported by ad revenue.)
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 rosé 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?
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.
> 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
> 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.
> The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That's advertising.
So that would exclude:
- listing your house, or car in the classifieds
- buying a sign for your business (ad discussed in other posts)
- buying a garage sale sign
- buying a for sale sign, or flyers for your house for sale
- paying a realtor to sell your house
- paying a reporter or professional reviewer to write a review. Even if they are paid by a newspaper/magazine/consumer report site, money exchanged hands for something that promotes a product.
- distributing a catalog
- paying a cloud provider or VPS provider or website hosting service to host a website that promotes your product
Also, what exactly constitutes a "product"? Does a service count? If not, that is a pretty big loophole. What about a job position? Or someone looking for employment?
And finally, advertisement in some form is kind of important for making customers aware your product exists. Word of mouth isn't very effective if you don't have any customers to begin with. I would expect removing all advertising to have a chilling effect on innovation and new businesses.
To be clear, I think the current advertising environment is terrible, and unhealthy, and needs to be fixed. But I think that removing all advertisement would have some negative ramifications, especially if the definition of an ad is too simplistic.
> 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.
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?
> Someone I know mentioning a product because they want to recommend it to me? Not advertising.
Except that it is, and it's why social media is so important for marketeers; the best kind of advertising is word-to-mouth, so generating discourse about products is big business.
Anyway, without strict legislation and tight controls on social media / chat / RL, how would you know whether they would be getting paid or not?
It's a legal and / or philosophical conundrum, not to mention even more of a legal whack-a-mole than it already is.
> is money being exchanged in order to promote a product?
So if I paint my store front's sign myself, I'm good, but if I pay a signwriter to paint it, it's illegal?
I guess I better become "friends" with a signwriter, so that they don't mind making a sign or two for me "for free". And so that I don't mind giving them a widget or two from my store sometime in the future.
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 rosé 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 rosé, 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? Because a discussion entirely based on "I know it when I see it" vibes is completely worthless; everyone's vibes are different.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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."
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.'
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.
>What about a waiter asking you "would you like to try a rosé with that dish? It pairs very well together. Is that "advertising" that would need to be outlawed?
Were they paid by a vintner to say that?
>What about giving out free samples? Is that advertising, and thus should be illegal?
To and by whom? From Nvidia to a GPU reviewer: Yes; from a chocolate shop to a patron: No.
>What about putting a sign up on your business that says the business name? Is that advertising?
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.
Yet we have laws against fraud, rape, and so on. Where do you draw the line for those? There are some crystal clear cases, and there are unclear cases where you could argue forever.
So it is for advertising. You don't need to draw a clear line for every case before you can make a law.
I like how it turned out with email advertising, actually: spam is defined to be whatever people put into their spam folder.
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.
>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.
Not all countries have the same free speech protections as America. I can easily imagine a country that simply has a bureaucracy whose approval is required to publish TV programming, or one that bans banner ads in social media, billboards, restricts shop signs in various ways, requires all packaging in the store to be black and white, etc. Advertising doesn’t have to ve banned outright. It could be killed by a thousand specific rules targeting the most obnoxious forms, provided there wasn’t a constitutional issue in the country implementing these measures.
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.
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".
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.
One man's propaganda is another man's truth-to-power.
There are dangerous consequences to handing the government the authority to ban public communication (even about mouthwash brands) without very careful scrutiny.
Imagine if you couldn't advertise energy alternatives because oil and gas came first and, with advertising banned, we can't even talk about the relative merits of installing solar vs. buying coal-made grid electricity. The status quo will maintain until the planet cooks.
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.
> This begs the question: how could you reliably distinguish advertising from other forms of free speech?
That's a great question, but let's not lose sight of the fact that failing to legislate on this is 0% reliable. If we even are able to identify and ban 25% of advertising, that level of reliability is a massive improvement over doing nothing. Don't fall for the perfect solution fallacy.
The reality is that some really basic, careful definitions of advertising would identify a huge percentage of advertising, without catching any cases that aren't advertising.
As a starting point, if a corporation pays a person or corporation to display their corporation's name, product, or logo on a physical property, broadcast, or publication when they aren't directly selling your product, that's advertising. Maybe you can think of some cases where that catches some stuff it shouldn't, and I'm open to revising it.
> 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 think this sort of handwringing is pretty silly. I don't care about either of those--I do care about "free samples" in the sense of auto-renewing free trials, but that's because the intent is to trick people into forgetting to cancel, not because it's advertising.
Draw the line very conservatively, making a very clear definition of advertising that we can agree on illegal, and go from there as we see the effects (i.e. what loopholes people start to use). Regulation is an iterative process--start small and build.
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.
Vaccine ads are a great example, in that large parts of the population consider them as fake propaganda. Trump supporters were up in arms against Biden/Dems for promoting vaccines during COVID. With your logic RFK Jr would be very happy!
There is no line, to fully and strictly ban advertising we basically have to abandon democracy and capitalism. Advertising and capitalism a so tightly related that you can't have one without the other.
You want no ads? Cool, let's familiarize yourself with North Korea.
People might want to rather opt for ethical ad standards and regulations, something fundamental like... GDPR.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I feel naive saying this, but a certain percentage of the ads on YouTube seem to contravene what would be legal of they were shown on television - in Australia at least.
It feels like standover tactics, showing the worst of the worst unless you pay up.
I should also at least admit that recently,Like the last 12 months, those greasy-type ads are less common, having been replaced with more television-style ads, although they last longer. Still an improvement overall though.
Serious question: Why don't you pay for YouTube premium?
Isn't it hypocritical to want YouTube to offer you its content for free? If the content is valuable to you, you should be willing to pay for it. If not, just stop watching YouTube.
> 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?
I don't think it's exclusive to advertising. Humans in general desire stability (myself being no exception), and anything that disrupts a system they've become accustomed to can very quickly become perceived as a threat.
My theory is that the people who fight against changing the status quo are just fundamentally opposed to change itself, not necessarily supporting the system as it currently stands. They know the ins and outs of the current system, and changing it means they have to dump knowledge and re-learn things - which they're fiercely opposed to doing. The enemy you know, over the enemy you don't, in a manner of speaking.
Those of us who can visualize futures starkly different than a continuance of the present day are a threat to those people who demand indefinite complacency and an unchanging world. Unfortunately for them, the universe is chaos and change is inevitable - so finding your own stability amidst the chaos is a skill more people need, such that necessary change might be embraced.
>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.
I lost a lot of faith in the decency of others a month ago when I heard a song on my car radio, looked at the display to see the artist and title info that comes from the radio station, and was met with "Bounty the quicker picker upper." That slogan stayed up for at least a minute. Every possible channel of communication will be sold for ad space.
I've been using browser ad block for more than twenty years now. Back then it was to block flashing banners etc. I use Firefox everywhere so have it on my phone too. Due to this I haven't realised how bad it's become. I didn't even realise YouTube had ads until recently and how ridiculous they are.
I run DNS blocking at home which helps somewhat with shitty devices like Apple that don't give users any control. But my partner was looking at a local news site on her phone on the train the other day and I couldn't believe it. Literally an ad between every single paragraph plus one sticky ad at the bottom. It was like twice as much ad as content. Sickening.
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.
It's illegal here in Canberra, Australia. There's not total compliance -- people still stick an A-frame on the street, and of course real estate agents will always put something in a front lawn -- but there aren't giant billboards that you see everywhere else. It's really refreshing.
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.
Making advertising non tax deductible has the effect of making it marketing ~20% more expensive, which would lead to about 20% less marketing. But not really. It doesn't really cost YouTube anything to play an add, so YouTube ads get 20% cheaper, and you see the same amount of ads.
Also this would be hard to implement. Tax law has a hard time discriminating costs. What if all the marketing is done by an Irish subsidiary?
The author is identifying a technical problem (it’s become so cheap/easy to insert ads they’re everywhere). Technical answers? How about require that it be easy to opt out, or simply remove the ads from the content. Codify ad-blocking software.
> 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.
You don’t value the city being cleaner? I live here and the city looks absolutely so much better. For one it has a lot less visual pollution and you can drive with less distractions… That alone justifies everything else for me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
In the same sentence, you give a possible solution and the reason why it wouldn't work.
Ban ads and companies are going to pay more and more for sponsored content to the point you can't differentiate what is legit from what is not.
There are a very few areas where there are good reviewers. Sadly most "reviewers" just repeat marketing materials, read stats from the box, and talk about themselves.
No I don’t think so. I would genuinely guess that 97% of the ads I see are irrelevant garbage or, more commonly, bids by products I know to raise awareness to increase the probability of their sale. I discover the vast majority of what I care about through word of mouth and I suspect I’d be fine without ads. There are so many negative externalities that it’s actually ridiculous.
Just give the responsibility for policing it to the tax authorities. The lobbyist might be able to hide the money but the recipient has to spend it or it is worthless so it will be detectable and the transactions punishable.
Also, that we won't be able to make it perfect is not an argument against trying to improve.
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.
It is useful in specialist domains. If you love fashion then fashion magazine ads are worth studying, because you read them with a critical eye. If you're into any sort of nerd hobby (model trains, synthesizers, board games...) then the specialist magazines/video channels/forums for that hobby are interesting, again because you have a critical eye. Sure, there are ads that target the newbie with 'the first and last ______ you'll ever need!' but as you get more experienced in the hobby you quickly learn to distinguish which manufacturers are selling the dream vs offering their product. This remains true even on forums for particular vendors that have a cult following. Likewise for many professional trade news outlets.
But it only works where you have specialized focus and experienced/informed consumers that are able to separate the sizzle from the steak. For example, doctors and other medical professionals are generally well qualified to assess the claims of pharmaceutical advertising, consumers are not - even though I am comfortable reading the fine print in such ads and even reading papers about clinical trials, I still rate my evaluative ability as mediocre compared to a professional.
Mass market advertising for general consumers is generally cancer, imho.
Many people, otherwise advertising wouldn’t work at all and the industry wouldn’t exist. Even if you hear it via some other source, they may have heard of it via some form of advertising.
I'd be happy to give an example I gave below: rake hands.
I hate the step after raking where you have to use the rake and one hand to carry the leaves to the bin. There was an ad for "rake hands" where you just hold a small hand-formed rake in each hand and scoop them both.
Twenty bucks, vastly improved yardwork experience, and I would have literally never thought to look for something like that.
Yes, happens often. Plus all the products that have been recommended by (a friend that became aware of them through)+ advertising. And all the products that only exist because of advertising.
Also: sales. I have bought things in sales that I would not have bought otherwise (because its value to me is higher than the sale price but lower than the normal price) where I was only aware of the sales from ads.
> 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.
Every time you communicate something to a politician, submit a submission on a Bill, or write a letter to the editor criticising a political policy, you are lobbying.
That you don't bother engaging and others do doesn't give them an unfair advantage.
That being said, the US system sounds like a shitshow of bribery and corruption.
Fantastic article, I particularly like the point about humanity being more or less ad-free for much of it existence. I was just thinking about absurdity of advertising yesterday. As a life-long football fan (not soccer ;)), I was always bothered by the slow creep-in of those silly, mindless pre- and post-game interviews they do with players and managers nowadays. In the two decades since this has been happening it never occurred to me why these were a thing, until yesterday. In a lead up to a minor game, of course there was an interview with one of the players. In front of one of those panels with repetitive ads for various businesses. As it happens to be the case every time for the last 20ish years. Of course! The interviewees are just providing the mindless content, while my mind absorbs the background ads! So obvious, but it never occurred to me even once. Ad industry is really a cancer on society.
I too am a NFL fan but I watch just the highlights on YT now. 60 minute game reduced to 15 mins max without all the stoppages, ads, unnecessary commentaries.
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.
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.
>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.
> If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.
This is unbelievably untrue. Consider clothing brands, large and older labels have an immense advantage over newcomers. Newcomer word of mouth will never come close to some brand that has a store in every mall across the US.
With (say) Instagram ads alone, tiny labels can spend and target very effectively to create a niche, and begin word of mouth.
Gap and Lululemon would love it if all advertising was shut off today. It would basically guarantee their position forever because of the real estate and present day distribution Schelling point.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
If nobody advertised then first mover advantage would be everything. How would a new product come to market and compete with no way of getting new users except word of mouth?
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.
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.
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.
> 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
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
In theory, I'm all for this. In practice, we have to take smaller steps towards this radical change and see how far we can actually get in real life.
In Norway, we have a total ban on advertising on certain products, like alcohol and tobacco. We also have strict laws regulating advertising towards children and political messaging on TV and radio.
There is only one problem; these laws where made before the digital age, so they have been sidelined. Political parties buy ads on Facebook and Insta like there is no tomorrow and children are constantly exposed to ads on social media. Only the ban on alcohol and tobacco is somewhat successful.
The right next move would be to ban peronalized ads (ie tracking of personal data). This is the one factor that has made the advertising industry (with Google and Meta at the top) go completely of the rails.
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.
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.
Can product recommendation sites place a funny video on their website, unrelated to products, just so readers can have a little rest while doing all this product comparison?
Can product recommendation sites _pay_ a video creator to create a funny video for their website? It's a win-win for everyone, right? Product recommendation website gets more visitors, popular creator gets money, and visitors get to see a funny video from popular creator.
If you allow ads on product recommendation websites, most entertainment websites will declare themselves "product recommendation".
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
> 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.
> 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.
Most users are not happy with addictive apps. The psychology of something you pay for is fundamentally different to something that's free. If your choices were paying for TikTok, or paying for actually good entertainment, I think a lot of people would do the latter.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It subsidizes basically all modern entertainment, from the filmmaking and sports industries (through TV Shows and sports broadcasts, respectively), to musicians and amateur filmmakers (through Spotify and Youtube).
The costs of advertising are ultimately passed down to consumers in the form of higher prices for products and services, not unlike a VAT or sales tax. Because rich people spend more money than the poor (citation needed), they end up paying a lot more of this "tax" while getting the same amount of entertainment for it.
Targeted advertising only exacerbated these dynamics. Because high-spenders are very desirable customers to have, companies can now demand more money for the ability to target them, which turns advertising from a linear to a progressive tax.
Advertising turned the internet into a sort of public commons, with no government intervention and the inevitable inefficiencies and inflexibilities that come with those. It gave us free, high-quality video and voice calls to anywhere across the world, free unlimited texting, including picture messaging and group conversations, free video hosting for everybody, regardless of scale, free music (through Youtube, Spotify and the radio), with at least some compensation to artists, free movies and TV shows (on free-to-air TV as well as through services like Pluto), excellent free educational content (e.g. 3b1b, university lecturers hosted on Youtube at no charge), as well as cheaper entertainment overall through ad-supported tiers.
I think framing things this way is important when discussing advertising regulation. Maybe we want more cheap groceries, don't care about cheaper luxury cars and don't mind less free entertainment, so maybe we should ban grocery ads and encourage more Mercedes ads. Maybe we're fine with less free entertainment if it gets us fewer alcoholics, so we ban ads for alcohol. Those are tradeoffs worth thinking about, perhaps tradeoffs worth making, but they are tradeoffs, and it is important to be conscious of that.
Even if advertisers make more money from the rich (citation needed), the poor are still disproportionately negatively effected. I would argue that it's less ethical to persuade someone with $100 to their name to spend $10 on something they don't need, than to persuade someone with $1,000,000 to spend $500 on something they don't need.
To bolster this argument, look at the things that are most advertised to the poor: alcohol, gambling, fast food, and predatory loans (including predatory auto financing).
The wealthy, meanwhile, are more likely to be targeted with ads for lifestyle goods: health foods, travel, gym memberships.
I find it ironic that there's a big "Follow @index@simone.org via your Fediverse account (like...)" over this article that I can't seem to close and covers up part of the article.
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.
The thing that really irks me is celebrity endorsements.
Tell me, do you think Roger Federer really appreciates that watch he's selling you? Does he really use that coffee machine that he sells, and thinks it's the best one?
We know what his motivation is, he is not your friend who bought a watch and a coffee machine, used them, and recommended them to you. He gets paid by the producers of the stuff he endorses.
Plainly, advertisers have discovered a loophole in the human psyche, and are exploiting it. We evolved to take in recommendations from people we know, and billboards/TV/etc are close enough to the real thing to trigger _something_ in us that doesn't just work when it's a non-celebrity whose face we don't know. The effect is big enough that celebrities get paid a gigantic amount of money to pretend they are someone you trust and recommend some product they never even thought about until they got given the deal.
I think we should tax that kind of thing. I'm not restricting his free speech. Roger is free to stand in front of the opera in Zürich and tell random strangers that they should buy the coffee machine. But if you put it in mass media, there should be a gigantic tax.
People will hate me for saying this, but when people want to ban advertising they fail to realize how much utility they actually get from advertising when it is done in a straightforward, ethical way. At the core, advertising and advertisements are a way to inform potential customers of a product or service that they might like. A few points for consideration:
1. You probably only know about half the things you like, enjoy, and use because of advertising. Did you see a trailer for a movie on YouTube you wanted to watch? That is an ad for a movie. Did you get a demo disc for a new band at a party or club in the 90s? That is an ad. Did you see the concert lineup poster? Ad. No one complains when advertising is done well and provides utility.
2. Ads subsidize things you enjoy. Browsers, search engines, television, your tv, most websites, are all subsidized through advertising. You can say would prefer to just pay full price for it and avoid the ads, but most people clearly would not like to when given the option.
3. What even is an ad? What is the line? Are store signs an ad? Are movie trailers? Defining what an ad is and isn’t is messy and a bit silly.
4. The alternative may be worse. What happens when traditional ads stop working? Businesses still need to get their message out, so what do they do? They hire YouTubers to play talk positively about their product, they wine and dine journalists and publications for favorable coverage, which becomes easy because without ads they are hurting for revenue. If ads were banned this would get worse.
It is nice to opine about a utopia without ads, and believe me, I often do, but the reality is advertising has been around for thousands of years and integral to how business and even society works.
> You can say would prefer to just pay full price for it and avoid the ads, but most people clearly would not like to when given the option.
Truth is, you pay the full price anyways, because the money earned through ads is also paid by you.
Even worse: you additionally pay the advertising industry
> Businesses still need to get their message out, so what do they do? They hire YouTubers to play talk positively about their product, they wine and dine journalists and publications for favorable coverage, which becomes easy because without ads they are hurting for revenue. If ads were banned this would get worse.
No, we wouldn't see it at all, because that's advertising.
If you are a new company starting out (suppose aluminum siding), you have to market your product or else nobody will know about it. I'm not sure what all parts of marketing are counted as advertising here, but generally in marketing you pay to get word out about your product. Wihtout that, starting a business might be tough. And then, as a consumer, there are lots of free products I have gotten my entire life by virtue of the fact that one of those companies offered to pay for it for me. If you turn that off I'm not sure how that all would work. I don't think the OP goes into too much detail.
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.
The issue is that if you ban advertising, we still get advertising, but it'll be done in a way that hides that it is an advertisement. Aka, the internet will be full of bot posts that are thinly veiled ads posing as legitimate inquiry or discussion. That's a worse off scenario. Better the enemy you know.
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.
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).
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.
ISPs, at least in the US, already offer free email hosting.. they used to offer basic web hosting too, not sure if that's still the case.
Using those is worst idea ever. ISPs are all horrible, and the only good thing is you can switch to the other one. The last thing you want is to tie your email/website, something you can't easily change, to them.
1) Advertising is profitable for companies. Which means that you as a consumer ultimately pay the advertiser more than what they paid to advertise their product to you.
2) Wikipedia is not ad-driven, and remains as useful, if not more useful than any ad-driven competitor.
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
Thought about that years back, and went to the conclusion that you can't kill advertising and political propaganda without strict rules that every big business and their owned politicians would fiercely fight against.
Also, advertising is the way they keep barely alive an economic system almost entirely based on overproduction of unnecessary goods built to not be durable; take out advertising and you'll see millions of people bankrupt; not thousands: millions. Advertising doesn't scale anymore: from a handy tool to discreetly let people two blocks away that a new barber shop just opened, has transitioned to a weapon businesses use to fit their product between a thousand others, grabbing more and more space from every free second or square millimeter, in the hope they capture the attention of someone who doesn't give a damn about them; and it can only get worse. I'm all for killing it, but be warned that if you take it out, you take out the entire business universe built around it that depends on it to be kept afloat. It'd probably need a few decades, not even years, to become reality if someone decided to start the process in a harmless way. But would first need a very different political environment to be accepted: more power to the state, less to corporations, and probably that would conflict with ideas that some propaganda, that is, advertising, stuck in the mind of so many people several decades ago, and those are quite hard to undo.
Maybe a good initial step would be to tighten up false advertising laws:
Make it illegal to make statements that are not objectively true. E.g. you can't say that your product is "the best", you can only say specifically how it is better.
Put restrictions on advertising an idealized version of a product and then selling a lesser version. E.g. the difference between what fast food ads show versus what you get. I'm sure it would be difficult to completely fix that since it's so subjective, but we could probably get incremental improvements.
I consider it false advertising to not tell me the drawbacks of your product compared to your competitors. I shouldn't have to look up every competitor to find your car is the only one without a steering wheel, even if it has heated seats.
Ads don't even bother with that anymore. Theye pure id- make something memorable so you associate something with thinking about their product. "All happy families go to Disney" style.
These are often lies too but its the subtext not the text
I suspect this proposal wouldn’t be met well. Ignore the pachyderm in the shared living space (all the lovely money people make from advertising), but defining “what’s an ad” gets sticky.
For example, highly relevant PSAs and warnings could be considered “ads.” They can be every bit as obnoxious as “penis pill” ads, but they convey information that may be of life and death importance.
The placards outside professional offices are ads; possibly the oldest form of advertising.
In-store signage are ads, and can cost sellers a lot of money.
You could argue that “shelf-stackers,” and “endcap displays” employed by supermarkets, are a form of advertising.
Sales people rely on personal relationships, and get quite skilled at making every conversation they have, into a sales pitch (which can get annoying).
Promotion is a very complex system, and often goes far beyond simple signage. For many businesses, it’s a matter of life and death.
People that run businesses probably can’t live without them, and are willing to pay a pretty penny for ads.
One thing that might be relevant, are “ad books,” like the old-fashioned Yellow Pages, “pennysaver” papers, or the “brand books,” used by designers. These are ads, but gathered into a place where they are expected, and actively sought out.
In the last century, we often called variants of these, “catalogs.”
Silly idea. Some advertising is bad. Some is really bad. Other advertising is useful. I wouldn't know about half the gigs or exhibitions I go to and enjoy if it weren't for the advertisements throughout the city. There are many small local businesses I wouldn't know about (to my detriment) if it weren't for advertising. The internet as we know it never would have been built if it weren't for advertising.
But there is a certain kind of advertising that is detrimental. My first thought is Amazon 'sponsored' products. Allowing companies to pay money to put inferior products at the top of search results is bad for society. Same goes for Google sponsored search results. Sponsored content in general is terrible. People that have gained your trust selling you things and not actually telling you they are being paid to do so. There are many many digital ads that would not be allowed IRL because they would be stopped for false advertising by regulators.
Like most things in life these days, the problem is not the thing itself. The problem is the Wild West that is the internet where there is minimal regulation allowing people to lie, cheat and get away with it.
What if we built a strong culture around actively avoiding advertising? What if we educated the general public about adverse effects of time after time giving up your attention, without getting anything in return besides a short lived dophamine kick? What if we showed how it's only in those moments of paying attention a person has a chance to exercise agency over their own life, and spending that scarce resource on doomscrolling is a catastrophic-group-mind-suicide, sadistically prolonged over the lifetime of an entire generation? That the illusion of community in the comments is just that, an illusion that dispels the moment the user clicks the dreaded "logout" button spitting them back into a gray heroine-withdrawal-like reality, isolated from their peers, all means of human connection monopolized by the attention sharecropping farms? That every moment a jingle on the radio captures your mind it's distracting you from something necessarily more important? That we are all in effect trapped in that externally-perpetuated procrastination loop, with all the neon-lit arrows pointing us further and further away from what truly matters -- our very lives?
Stay away from the algorithmic feeds, instead get to know your authors and choose them explicitly. Stay away from the personalized ads, pay for content you care about, block what can be blocked, avoid the rest. Learn active banner blindness: catch your attention drifting and look away. Uninstall reels, tiktok, youtube, sanitize your life from short term attention grabbers. Turn off that TV. Mute your car radio. Practice focus: take a book and set a timer. Lock yourself up in a room with a hobby project. Meditate. Set up a ritual with a friend or family, as long as you still got any. Make smalltalk to strangers. Get to know your neighbors. Plan that getaway. Choose your life!
While laudable, this seems significantly harder to implement than banning advertising. Not that either are particularly feasible policies but this one seems harder.
Let's start with banning the sharing/selling of customer data, tracking data, or anything else that can be aggregated to form some idea of a targetable resource.
That would shed some initial societal parasites. See what's left, and then go after the next biggest / grossest topic in the space.
I could get behind that particular brandishing of chainsaw.
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.
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.
The internet is so full of authoritarians wanting to outlaw everything thinking that will work and not even thinking about supply and demand, definition of what is actually ilegtal and enforcement of that.
It's hilarious. For a forum where people pretend to be smart it's absolutely missing critical thinking.
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.
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.
I'm so happy to read this, I've been thinking about this question for a while now, and I think it would help a lot:
Big companies where revenues are based on marketing would collapse, the market fragments (which is good), smaller companies are created instead, better diversity of local products and services. Better wealth distribution. More money for the government, hopefully better public services.
With less flashy products and services, people have a better purchasing power, even considering they'll have to pay for services they use, like reviews.
Review companies would need strict controls to be put in place against corruption.
It would probably also change a lot of nonsensical landscapes (ex: sports)
If ads just vanished, that would be great, but making it illegal ought to do more harm than good. For one, a lot of ad money would be routed to shills, which are far more pernicious and have already infested otherwise great platforms like Reddit. Everything would turn to crap and no adblocker would help you. An ad ban would make every influencer profile instantly worthless, unless they decide to shill, which they're probably already doing anyway.
Also big tech would be incentivized to sell even more user data, as their business would still mostly exist, either via subscriptions, or through the now even more profitable user data market with more expensive targeted shilling.
I have thought about whether banning advertising would be a good idea prior to stumbling onto this article. I'm not saying there would be no downsides, but I think there would be a TON of benefits as well.
Consider that advertising is mostly (not 100%) a zero-sum game. It's not zero sum when it helps to inform people of products and services that would make their life better, that they would willingly have sought out and purchased if not for their lack of knowledge that the product existed.
However, there are lots of extremely common situations where advertising is just a net drain on society:
* when it encourages people to buy things they don't need, exploiting our monkey brains' desire for the seratonin that accompanies buying stuff.
* when everyone already knows what's out there in the market, and it's just massive empires fighting for market share, like coke and pepsi, or various car companies, trying to keep their products in people's minds. They're just playing tug-of-war and very little changes.
* again like with soda, or cigarettes, or vapes, or fast food and junk food, where the products being advertised are actually worse for your health than the default alternative (drinking tap water, not smoking, cooking food at home). Perhaps people enjoy these things, but there is a hedonic treadmill effect where you quickly get used to them and are no better off than if you just avoided them.
* when advertising makes public spaces less pleasant to be in. And when it's distracting to drivers, increasing the chances of an accident.
* when advertising makes websites hard to use
* when the advertising industry vacuums up tons of talented people with the attraction of the money they would make, who might otherwise have gone into careers that are more beneficial to the rest of society
I don't doubt that shills and astroturfing would still exist or possibly get worse if you did nothing about it -- but you could ban that too. You wouldn't catch everyone, but the threat of punishment would make it much less likely for people to be willing to participate in that sort of stuff.
I do think that we would need a replacement for the small, actual valuable thing that advertising provides, which is providing information. I think it would be great to allow sorts of "ad indexes" or "product indexes" which are websites specifically dedicated to aggregating information about all the products available in a given market. Maybe search engines are already good enough for this purpose. Honestly, when I want to learn about what's out there because I'm getting into a new hobby or something, I just do the google-reddit trick like searching for "reddit good value electronic piano" and reading about what other people like.
Likewise for politics, it would be fantastic if every election had a website where candidates could submit their policy platform and potentially a video or two (though I like the idea of JUST text for this) where you can read about them. It's hard enough to find out about candidates for local elections already.
So I'm very much in favor of trashing the whole thing. I think it's a case where advertising benefits those who do it (and in very rare cases, consumers) but mostly just has massive negative externalities. Classic case for either banning it, or putting a steep tax. Usually I'd prefer the latter (as in the case of carbon taxes), but I think taxing ads would be very complicated and the tax rate would probably instantly make most ads vanish anyway, so I think a ban makes more sense.
I definitely agree with ads being bad in principle. But banning shills is an even worse idea than banning ads, because you absolutely, under no circumstance, can correctly identify those. Any "replacement for the small, actual valuable thing that advertising provides, which is providing information", is bound to become infested in ways you cannot control. Escalate this idea further to solve the issues you created and you would end up banning speech or trade.
> It's such a wild idea that I've never heard it in the public discourse.
IIRC there is a Dilbert comic strip about that.
> Clickbait [...] would become worthless overnight
Advertisement is not the only incentive. E.g., the Veritasium YouTube channel's host explicitly switched to clickbait, explaining it by his intent to reach a wider audience. Another example is clickbait submission titles on HN, not all of which are for the sake of advertisement (unless you count HN submissions in general as advertisements themselves, of course).
> When I say advertising, I also mean propaganda. Propaganda is advertising for the state
Not necessarily for the state, the usual definition includes furthering of ideas in general. In more oppressive regimes, propaganda of certain ideas is actually banned, as it used to be in even more places ("heresy" and suchlike). Combined with selective enforcement, it is as good as banning all propaganda. It may be a particularly bad example of such a ban, but still an illustration of the dangers around it.
I think a better path towards the world without (or almost without) commercial advertising is not via coercion, but as kaponkotrok mentioned in another comment, via education and public discussion (which may also be called "propaganda"), shifting social norms to make such advertisement less acceptable. People can make advertisements unprofitable if they will choose to: not just by ignoring them (including setting ad blockers), but also by intentionally preferring products not connected to unpleasant and shady tactics, including those beyond advertisement: slave labor and other human rights violations, unsustainable energy sources, global warming, animal cruelty, monopolies, proprietary or bloated software and hardware are some of the common examples. Social norms and such enforcement seem to be less brittle than laws are, and harder to turn into an oppression mechanism.
Although, since I brought up monopolies and other issues, perhaps state agencies may also usefully assist with restriction of advertisement, as they do with those. Social norms and laws are not mutually exclusive, after all.
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 (à 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'd argue that people look forward to the Super Bowl ads specifically because they're clever/funny, and not at all because they're ads. You could replace them with non-advertising skits and they would have the same draw.
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.
It is an interesting thought. What could be new business models for sites that currently rely on third party advertising? It seems big publishers are increasingly moving to first party advertising. But that seems difficult for small publishers.
While advertising messages may not be themselves particularly important for free speech and can be even detrimental to it, e.g., propaganda, sites themselves disseminate speech and are often third-party ad-financed. What could be a good business model for them (other than direct payments)?
Unfortunately, the next question becomes “is consumer reports considered an ad” etc.
It becomes a question of what truly is an ad?
That said I appreciate this sort of thought; it would even be nice for it to be implemented, but whether it could be enforced is another question. At that point it then becomes a question of who you allow to advertise.
For a long time, hedge funds were not allowed to
solicit investments publicly under rule 502c of reg D.
I could see grounds to restrict things further; I’m sick of restless leg syndrome drug treatment ads…
I really dislike the impulse to ban things we don't like.
Of course, a ban on advertising will never happen, because it's very useful to some people. I'm more concerned with the general pattern of thinking that goes:
1. I greatly dislike thing and think thing is bad.
2. Thing should therefore be illegal.
We should be less eager to use the power of law to mold the world to our preferences. It should be a solemn undertaking to use the law! It's an instrument of coercive power and should really be held in reserve as much as possible. Otherwise, we're all just petty tyrants sniping one another for minor transgressions.
There are many things that are very bad that nonetheless must be legal in a free society! I realize this is a uniquely American right, but I nonetheless believe "hate speech" must remain legal. It is bad, yes. I do not like it. I really wish it didn't happen. However, it is markedly less bad than entrusting some byzantine bureaucracy or benevolent dictator to adjudicate the meaning of hate speech. I greatly prefer a world with hate speech to one in which we apply legal authority to eliminate hate speech.
Some years ago, at the height of the Augmented Reality bubble, I had a hackathon idea about smart sunglasses that would replace any detected poster and billboard with information of your choosing - your favorite art, personal photos, notifications about upcoming alarms.
I am no longer into hackathons, but I would pay good money for such a product. Bonus points if it is styled like Nada's glasses from They Live.
```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.
It's always the same story. I'm mad trump or some "right leaning" party won so this is what we can do to prevent that by being authoritarian "to fight fascism" and "the greater good".
It's not an honest what if because it finds no downsides or tradeoffs nor does it try to define what exactly would be ilegal.
Then you'll be thoroughly disappointed by US media. It's also not just about misstated facts, but facts they don't state at all when it is convenient for them.
I also say this without a hint of irony: I don't trust two shits on either side of the aisle.
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.
It's interesting, I have been saying a much less intelligible version of this from observing my children.
They have been exposed to services without advertising, and as soon as they see an ad... "Another commercial!!!".
A part of me hopes their entire generation can develop a disdain for advertising based on the negatives they can see in their parents.
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.
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?
There's no such thing as a clear law, hence the need for judges. Too many people in this thread have never taken a contract law course if they think you can just "write good laws".
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.
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?
Find a major metropolitan newspaper from 1990. Print would be best, so that you can feel the heft. Now compare it to the same newspaper (if it exists) today. Print advertising did not become illegal, just uneconomical. Now consider what happens to the entities that now run on advertising. Do they survive?
Economist here. My biggest issue is with the “news” industry.
Companies provide what the customer wants. And, as the adage goes, if you’re not paying, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
Advertisement-funded “news” isn’t meant to enrich the reader/viewer — it is meant to attract the reader/viewer.
I think that perverted incentive has always existed with it, but the internet ad technology has really killed the information content. And now we’re have society-scale problems with misinformed citizens.
I don’t think industry will solve the problem. If a company allowed users to opt out and pay, their richest customers would do that and those were the ones most valuable to advertise to. So, offering an opt-out probably loses them money (and increases costs).
I think the news industry should be advertising free. I’d have to think on if it should also have govt funding, but that often gets co-opted.
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.
I think he missed one of the use cases for advertising: providing “free” services to people in the “third world”. I come from west Africa, majority of people can’t afford to pay for Facebook, YouTube, whatsapp etc even though these are their main means of communications. Even if they could afford it (“just a few cents is nothing” to us on here - to these people that’s how much they make in a day), they don’t use traditional banking services and certainly not access to credit and debit cards to make payments. I hate ads too, for all the reasons mentioned in the article. But I don’t see a feasible way to make these services available for the 1 billion plus people I’m describing. Open to ideas.
In France, I had watched a video on the subject more than 10 years ago, and since then I have been in favor of banning all forms of advertising, including and especially IRL in the streets. I've been using an adblocker on each of my devices ever since I saw that video, and I no longer see any ads (I use ReVanced etc. for X, YouTube, etc.), except unfortunately in real life since there are still ads in the streets, but at least from an activist standpoint, the online advertising industry should take a hit.
If any French speakers are interested, I believe it was this YouTube channel (which is very interesting anyway for discussions about fascism, advertising, manipulation, etc.): https://youtube.com/@hacking-social
I don't have to imagine it at least on the internet - I've been blocking all ads on all my devices very successfully since 1999. In fact now I can't stand having to look at or use anyone else's computer or smartphone (usually when they ask for free tech support).
IMO advertising itself is ok, if not targeted by profiling user. I'm reading about bikes and I'm offered a bike or helmet? Fine by me.
Problem starts, when I'm scrolling $socialWebsite and I see ton of biking ads, because some Orwellian ad network is tracking me through time & space.
Then content starts to serve as means to push ads into my eyes whenever I dare to open them. If content is crap - doesn't matter - if I switch to other source ad will follow.
What's worse - many people were brainwashed into believing that's normal. I remember guy from Chrome team, who published draft for web attestation. He was convinced he's doing good thing because brands have "right" to be sure they're getting real eyeballs and he was just making this process "better" for the users.
One of the things that bothers me most about advertising is that we sell attention to the highest bidder. It happened before online ads too but online ad networks 'perfected' the bidding process. And I say this as someone who's made much of my wealth indirectly off of such ad networks.
It means the expensive product/service gets your attention, coz it can afford a higher bid, instead of the one that's better for you. It also sets a high floor on prices.
To some extent the bidding process was needed when there was inherent scarcity of inventory to place information (e.g. billboards or the 1 local radio station), but there's no scarcity online. Why can't we just have a web where product/service info is listed, and people can seek that info through some search engine?
For me personally advertising doesn't work. I've never bought or done anything because of an advert. If all ads stopped tomorrow nothing would change for me. Advertising clearly works out it wouldn't be such a big industry, I just don't get it though.
This novella is a masterpiece and needs rediscovery.
> The protagonist (P. Burke) is a lonely, severely depressed teenager. After a failed suicide attempt, an international telecommunication company offers her a new job -- to become a remote operator of a public celebrity. She is given a new persona "Delphi", and her new job is to buy products publicly to advertise them.
The protagonist is basically a Youtuber/Instagram influencer/TikTok streamer today.
Here's another thought: I just wish more businesses had some class. Maybe your logo and product doesn't need to be smeared across every inch of physical and digital real estate. I realize the article is focused on digital advertising, but for example, am I really inclined to buy life insurance from the guy whose face is on the back of the shopping cart? NIL has ruined college sports and at its heart it's about being able to slap a logo on the back of a college kid. Prudent to say, gee, maybe there are more tasteful ways to get the message out to the world about our produce or service would be a nice thing.
You can ban specific forms of advertising. But the general form is too vague, too easy to hide.
Movies set in our world, for example, should be allowed to show real cars, real phones, etc. But that is nigh impossible to prevent from becoming a fight for getting your product placed. And lots of similar places.
It might be possible to outlaw ads targeted more narrowly than a bit of content (i.e. advertisers have to choose, ahead of publication, what content to put their ads next to.)
Combining this with banning some of the more direct advertising might work. Though perhaps a world where advertising is purely done through product placement is also horribly distopian.
As ads are getting crammed into more and more aspects of our lives both online and offline, what I find particularly creepy is there's been a push by advertisers and tech companies to normalize these practices to upcoming generations. It seems like we're getting pushed towards the status quo of Futurama where we'll have ads broadcast into our dreams... As is the case with idiocracy, that wasn't an instruction manaul. I can only hope we can push the Overton window back to a place where limitatons on advertising can at least be considered.
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.
The global economy would fracture, is what would happen. A good chunk of the top performing stocks would disappear, affecting banking, retirement, housing, just everything. Most of the communication channels people use today would disappear. The online tools even non-ad-businesses use to function would stop, so those businesses would grind to a halt. News would disappear. Products would stop getting made. (US) Politicians would freak the hell out because now they don't know how to get elected. It would be a categorical economic and social disaster.
I think about this a lot. Consider the difference between the tidy signage of Tokyo versus the pell-mell streetfronts of Hong Hong. Societies should be able to choose how businesses impinge the public space.
Where I live this is hyper local. Some municipalities are extremely strict on ads (to the point of fining _churches_ over signage on their property) and some are overrun with billboards and ads on every corner and bench.
I don't think this is as much as a "societies choose" as "some societies have no choice." The municipality I'm in now struggles with property tax revenues and has to stoop to what I'd call predatory revenue streams (gambling, ads, etc) to make up the difference. And it creates a feedback loop.
The sadest part is that we the consumers pay for having things constantly popping up infront of our eyes.
There should be a ”NoAds”-label on products that have chosen to not levy the ad-tax on us consumers.
For so many comments in this thread saying that it’s impossible to make all advertising illegal, we can certainly start with making personalised advertising illegal with all its invasive practices.
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.
> 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.
As someone who grew up in the state of Vermont, where billboards have been outlawed since the 60’s, this feels do-able. It is also such a high leverage change that I’m going to keep thinking about this.
I have seen it suggested before, but not for a long time. Things have become even worse since then. What I saw suggested was to ban all forms of marketing, not just advertising. The argument was that it exists purely to mislead consumers rather than inform consumers which is vitally important for a free market to function. So that means standardised plain box packaging, for example. Companies like Apple would have to display the features that matter, like battery life, rather than hide behind clever marketing.
There's much discussion about what constitutes advertising in the comments, with some dismissing this question as either solved or not crucial. Note however that seriously banning advertising requires a clear definition of it.
My 2 cents: Ban payed advertising online, including banner ads, search ads, and pre-roll / inter-roll ads (e.g. youtube and instagram).
This is a clearly defined market and probably causes a plurality of the negative impact of adverts (especially when connected with the incentive to algorithmically addict users to show them more ads).
I'm against advertising that presents a simplistic, beautiful world — in other words, manipulative advertising. Which is basically all advertising currently. Nevertheless, there must be ways for producers to communicate the existence of their product and its advantages to the consumers. Comparable to how programmers put links to their projects here. How do you inform potential car buyers that you have built a car that consumes one liter less gasoline and travels 25 km/h faster, if you are not allowed to advertise?
Does anyone with a brain think ads inform? I'm not sure they ever did. The real issue here is that there's never going to be political will for this. Advertising and propaganda are the same yes. Lobbying is closely related. Banning anything for the good of the people or society is anathema to the current crop of politicians. Even if that wasn't the case, anyone putting this forward as a policy would find themselves running against an extremely well funded opponent with the backing of a lot of the media.
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.
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.
I think we could actually start the path to this by making unethical advertising illegal. Here's kind of what I'm thinking: no forced advertising. All ads that steal time away from you (like forcing people to watch ads before accessing something) would be illegal. The reasoning being that you're essentially stealing an infinitely valuable resource: people's time. It's unethical for ad agencies to steal such a valuable resource for such a meager reason.
A lot of niche things I want cease to exist in this advertising-free world. If the interest isn't mainstream enough to get a word-of-mouth recommendation then it can't survive. The services we use to find these things, Google, Etsy, Fan sites, none of them exist without advertising. I'm sure you can think of something that was never explicitly advertised to you, that you wanted, that you wouldn't be able to find anymore if this came to pass.
I would love if we could just make unavoidable advertising illegal. What I mean by unavoidable are things like billboards, bus stop ads, ads on the plane preceding the safety demonstration, ads in a train station, etc.
I’m very fine with ads on private spaces. In a guitar magazine, a few ads for new music equipment actually makes the product better and is a win for everyone.
I understand that this distinction has a gray area, but we could start with the black and white cases (Vermont has tried)
> I am convinced that outlawing advertising is the best thing we can do for our world now. More than gun control. More than tackling climate change.
i would rather live in a world of public transportation, with less children and vegan oriented (climate change == enviroment) without people with guns and only at the hands of an effective police; 100x times than an ad. free world...
wrote this at my Android without a single ad. notification, via Firefox along ublock. been a while i watch an ad.
That's an issue I have with this article. We can avoid advertisements, it really isn't that difficult. It can be inconvenient but that's better than slowly eroding your sense of normalcy.
Taking the “organic certification” approach, there could be a “ad-free certification” for products and companies. This could be a first step towards an ad-free world.
Such and interesting thought provoking situation. So much money circulates and thrives off the idea of advertising. The concept of YouTube would cease to exist. Some products would never even get off the ground without some level of advertising.
What constitutes advertising vs marketing?
Does product placement count as advertising or marketing?
Does opening up a pop shop count as advertising or marketing?
So much to this, ultimately we do need to regulate advertisements. But I am not sure we can survive without them.
I love the general idea, but banning all forms of paid advertising seems a step to far. That encompass a lot, and enforcing it would be near impossible. There's also clear areas where it could have a negative impact, like for public transport that relies on providing ad placement.
I don't see a problem with criminalizing big ad companies, ad markets, and ad middlemen. I think that would solve a good chunk of the issue.
What goes into your sense organs is just as meaningful, and capable of causing unwanted and lasting change or trauma, than what somebody does to your physical body. Intellectual force is no less force than physical force is.
Harassment is just a mild precursor to outright force. Advertising is just a mild precursor to intellectual force. Advertising is to indoctrination as physical harassment is to physical force.
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.
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.
Do you always answer the door for Jehovah's Witnesses, alternative gas companies, or posters? Usually, people put "No soliciting" signs on their doors and in their yard. They get irritated, if not irate, when these people ring the doorbell. How is advertising any different? Would you invite these people into your home to watch TV with you, eat dinner or drive around town?
I agree with this article but wish it had more facts and figures backing it up rather than vibes and adjectives.. bad faith actors may be malnourished by lack of ad money to prop up their sensationalism, but there are still platforms like patreon or substack(not advocating to destroy these platforms). Without solid evidence I can’t make the logical leap that advertising alone causes this.
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.
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.
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.
Where do we draw the line at what counts as an advertisement? I just bought a cassette tape that I learned about from a Facebook post. What do we call that post if not an advertisement? And if that was illegal, how exactly would I have found out the tape? Word of mouth? I don't think there is anyone in a 100 mile radius who listens to the same kind of music as me.
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.
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.
There's some fascinating research by Rachel Griffith which shows that advertising can be significantly welfare reducing for not only customers, but also for companies themselves (they just overall make lower money taken together); it is just another dimension of competition, like pricing/positioning, and adding a meaningful dimension is costly.
I think a better thing to do would be to outlaw algorithmic feeds where monetization is via advertising. If subscription based that is fine. The incentive for sub based monetization is to keep you long enough to continue subscribing. For ads it is to keep you on as long as possible which trends towards divisive / fear / anger inducing content.
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.
This sounds like someone who was born intoo an era of internet advertising. As opposed to someone who has been expoosed to adevrtising over many forms of media, the internet being only a recent addition.
The early internet had no advertising. Commercial use of the computer network against the rules.
The web-based companies comprising "Big Tech", while they dominate today's internet by acting as allegedly "necessary" intermediaries and conducting surveillance, appear to have no viable business model to stay "big" in this scenario: where the computer network does not allow advertising, let alone commercial use.
Thus, the question "What if we banned all advertising" sounds extreme, unrealistic, the product of myopia, all-or-nothing thinking. Advertising will always be "legal". But historically man has regulated where it can be disseminated/placed.
A more interesting question might be "What if we had a computer network where advertising was prohibited or limited". About 35 years ago we did. Then the rules against commercial use were removed. Now people are complaining. People who never used the network in the time before advertising was allowed.
Imagine what it would be like to have a computer network without advertising using the computer and networking technology we have today.
Maybe this network could be built on top of the internet, as an overlay.
Make no mistake, there will always be computer internetworks that allow advertising. But the first ones didn't. And there could be ones in the future that don't.
I'm kind of shocked how rare it is to see someone say this out loud. We've normalized advertising to such a ridiculous degree that even questioning it feels like heresy. But yeah, imagine how different the internet (and society) would be if the incentive to manipulate attention just vanished overnight.
What if advertising were 100% truthful and straightforward. Like in that movie "The Invention of Lying" with the scene that shows a close up of the side of a bus with "Pepsi" on it, then as it pulls away the full advert reads "Pepsi... For when then don't have Coke".
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?
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).
It's impossible to enforce a law like this. The real solution is to create personal AI filters for each person that reads all the data for the user, filters out anything that doesn't enrich the user, and hides the rest. A general-purpose AI-enabled spam filter for your entire digital life.
[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.
I fundamentally disagree. You are basing your tenets on two overly-broad ideas that don't make for a good basis for an actionable framework. You are kinda motte-and-baileying.
First of all, I dispute that "human autonomy" is the basis for the immorality of slavery. Rather, it is the preservation of human dignity. The subtle difference being, you can cede a certain amount of your autonomy without losing any dignity such as when taking on a specialized role to function in a society (in other words, a job). Actions that violate another's autonomy has some overlap with actions that violate another's dignity but "some overlap" is all that is really there to it.
"Human attention is sacred" therefore...what? Would, for example, schools count as a violation of human attention? A good book? A perfectly fine movie with a smattering of product placement? There's no telling what the blast radius of your principle here is.
Rather than thinking of human attention as a sacred inviolable thing, it is more akin to a currency each of us can spend. We just have to facilitate wiser spending.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Obviously credit card transaction fees would be a problem,
Card transaction fees here in Norway can be extremely low if the merchant uses BankAxept, much lower than Visa, Mastercard, etc. And it even works if the network is down.
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”.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
we could start by banning digital profiling and personalized ads entirely. the remaining ads could work with a pull model, and not this endless push model it's currently in. if I am in need of a service or goods, I should initiate the intake of ads, not the other way around.
No, I need advertising to know what companies to avoid. The more annoying the ad, the more will I spend time and effort to avoid the product and boycott the business. Which is quite easy actually, since most online adverts are for obvious scams anyways.
It will give enormous power to the monopolies. Because you'll no longer be able to advertise your product, but search on marketplaces will still be legal right? That means, Amazon, Alibaba etc. will have an absolute chokehold on everyone who sells things.
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.
There is already a concept called surrogate advertising. In India, promoting alcohol products is banned, but companies advertise packaged drinking water instead. Everyone knows what it really represents, yet nothing can be done about it.
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.
I don't think I fully agree with either the premise or the solution, but the pov is at least refreshing; in a world full of people proposing the same stuff we already tried 100x times over the last 70 years and we already know it doesn't work.
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?
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.
What's really interesting about this is that it's not just about advertising, but rather several deeper issues that all intersect with it.
* the pervasive tracking of data and serving targeted ads without consent.
* the addictive algorithms engineered to keep users engaged in the feedback loop.
* the machinery being used beyond commercial purposes - influencing opinions, manufacturing consent, and sometimes being hijacked by bad actors.
Not to mention the philosophical and psychological implications. What does democracy mean when elections come down to who spent the most on Ads? What's the merit of capitalism if consumers can be brain washed?
Like most here, I have a vendetta against Ad-tech and go to great lengths to keep ads out of my life (i highly recommend opnSense - Blocking ads across the whole home network is pure bliss).
But should they be illegal?
Questions of what constitutes an ad, how to enforce such a rule, and my personal opinion aside: I don't think its inherently wrong for a company to promote their products. I do, however, believe that all of the above points - data tracking, addictive algorithms, non-commercial ads - are bad and should be illegal. Outlawing all of those practices would do a great deal to restoring balance to advertising and the web.
Not thinking big enough. Make paid-for public speech illegal. Make speech free. Eliminates advertising plus punditry. Imagine a world where no-one gets paid a kingly sum to whisper poison into the ears of millions on a daily basis.
Ironic that the article pops up a banner "Follow @index@simone.org via your Fediverse account (like Mastodon, Pixelfed, Flipboard, Wordpress, Writefreely, Threads, or BlueSky.)" ie advertising themselves.
Advertising is a zero-sum game, just as most crypto and stock market activity.
It's the basis for web2 economy just like crypto is the basis for web3 economy, though. So it's hard to make a man admit something when his livelihood depends on it.
We are all guilty, making waves, swamping the spectrum with antagonistic signals that often interfere with each other.
We have too many signals in our society. The resulting noise, the cacophony of lies, are echoed and amplified and evolve into perpetual crosstalk and distortion.
Too many signals transmitting too frequently with too much power.
We can't really outlaw advertising.
But we could limit and license spectrum, like we do with radio frequencies. We could legislate the broadcasting and publication of information, based on that extended simile: regulating 'antenna power' and the airwave spectrum... Holding any broadcaster responsible for the public welfare of their listeners.
We share the infosphere. These channels are theoretically owned by us, the aggregate public. Certainly we are all swimming in the same ocean.
We might want to agree on some boundaries, and even licensing, for broadcasters.
I believe companies would resort to paying individuals to give word of mouth or endorsements to friends and neighbors and anyone who will listen. Social media would be full of "I've just tried this and..."
so if Simone.org here paid someone to help build this website of theirs, where the posts ends with "Sign up for Kōdō Simone" and a short blurb why the blog is valuable, that would be illegal, right? Because they paid someone to create an advertisement. This post claims that "community networks" are fine but where is the line between that and a paid advertisement - if I paid someone to print my business cards vs. paid them to put the card on a board? or to put up flyers around town for my band? "advertisement" is so vague I just dont understand this proposal.
There is of course absolutely zero chance of this happening. But I didn't actually expect that amongst people rather than lobbyists/corporations the very idea would actually be considered controversial, subversive or offensive. I'd have brought popcorn if I expected this incredible display of mental gymnastics. I guess I assumed that even people who are forced into the situation where ads are their bread and butter directly or indirectly still know about the damage and think the whole thing is gross. (I've been there and done that myself..)
Now I'm thinking of the "neighborhood beautification projects" in Abbey's Monkeywrench Gang though where the guys light up the cutting torches to cut down any billboards that get too close to the Grand Canyon. The fear of course is that police might drive by, since if you think about it the activity itself is really reversing vandalism more than anything else. Apparently today you would have to worry about mobs of concerned citizens tearing you to pieces for taking away their right to be advertised to? I'm so amazed by the very idea of this I can't even get that disgusted or angry about it. What else are these people up to, how do they live and what else do they think? Like, if the best food was determined by ad budgets, do they wonder what to have for dinner ever, and what's the most gourmet cuisine in that world? Best candidate for the election is the one with the biggest ad budget? Channel surfing to get away from the annoying so called "content" that prevent you from seeing ads? I feel a bit like I've discovered alien life or something
Rather than ban ads in an absolutist sense, why not think about ads as “bads” (rather than “goods” in economic terms) and then tax them?
Let’s define a “good” as something with positive utility and value, and define a “bad” as something that imposes harm or negative externalities. If we treat advertising as a “bad” — not uniformly, but in terms of impact (manipulation, misinformation, psychological harm) — then we can apply Pigovian logic: tax it to reflect its societal cost. This wouldn’t require a blanket ban, just a rebalancing of incentives. Less intrusive or more transparent ads might be taxed less, while high-volume, misleading, or attention-hijacking ones could face heavier levies.
This shares the spirit of the original argument but trades prohibition for systemic correction — more like how we treat pollution or cigarettes. The advantage is that it avoids the free speech trap, acknowledges that not all advertising is equally harmful, and allows markets to adjust.
You don’t need a moral consensus to act — just an agreement to price the harm.
I have thought a lot about this basic idea of “incentivise goods / tax bads” over the years, and even how to do it a way that is revenue neutral to the government (via “feebates”) and advertising is one of the first places I’d try this.
Likelihood of success in the current climate: zero.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I will check that out.
In between you doing that and me thinking on it overnight, I ended up writing up my thoughts as a blog post [0], which I have submitted here to HN as well [1].
Is the "follow me" bar that moves with (and covers some of) the third paragraph and can't be dismissed intended? Either way, it struck me as a little ironic given the content of the article.
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.
Although I almost never see any ads at all online thanks to uBlock Origin on all of my devices, I agree that making it illegal would be a net benefit for society. It would be hard! But worth it.
Impossible in the United States under the constitution. To put plainly, this would be a colossal first amendment violation, abridging the freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
How would that work for physical shops, restaurants etc.? No illuminated signs allowed? No products or services visibly displayed? Everything has to be invisible in the streets?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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)
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.
> things we benefit from are free or significantly reduced in price due to the profitability of advertising.
Is this actually known to be true? And if so, to what degree and for which products, at which point does it tip into simple manipulation of the customer?
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?
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
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.
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.
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)?
Interesting but the issue is that you can't just ban advertising because it has many aspects.
20% discount or tv ads are a form of advertising, easy to spot. What about sponsored content ?
It's already trickier to detect, and even then there are sponsored content where someone is paid to showcase, review or straight up lie about a product quality.
If I make a great job with a customer and I tell him, make everyone you know aware how great I am. That's also a form of advertising.
Just being myself is advertising for myself, if I'm good at something, I can take part in a talent tv show and purposely avetise my skills to tv viewer.
This is poorly thought out. What this would incentivize is first party content networks. Instead of fox selling ads it would be the colgate channel for example
In the US advertising is considered a business expense. So we equate it with investing in infrastructure or research, both of which reasonably would be subtracted from your revenue to determine your tax burden.
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.
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"
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.
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?
as good as it may sound, but this will never happen.
People will never pay for everything, majority don't even buy PC games, they use pirated one's. This is how humans are designed, and this is what which keeps the market afloats.
Don't ban advertising but also don't treat commercial advertising as pure free speech.
For instance, for false claims, make it easier to drag a corporation into court and get legal remedies commensurate with the damage or potential damage caused by their dishonesty.
Right now the bias is towards unfettered, dishonest and psychologically manipulative commercial "free speech" with no guardrails the average person can enforce.
So, saying "we think this is the best detergent ever" is fine. It's clearly an opinion. But false or generally misleading claims, especially those that cover-up the potential dangers of the product, could lead to punitive damages sufficient to be a deterrent.
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.
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?
I hate advertising because it’s nonconsensual, subconscious manipulation. When I see an ad for product X, I’m more likely to buy it in the store than product Y because there’s artificially increased familiarity for it in my brain. If the purpose of advertising was to inform, you’d never see an ad for Coca Cola, since everybody on the planet knows about it already. The %0.01 of advertising that informs me of a product that I might actually purchase can die overnight, and I’d not notice a difference, because I use adblockers and when I need something, I search for it on the internet, Google, Amazon, and the like. When I need reviews I turn to Reddit and HN.
If advertising is a zero-sum game between companies competing for your eyeball-minutes, allocating double digits of their income to marketing departments, it’s a net drain on the economy. If it’s a positive-sum game for companies and you are purchasing more goods than you otherwise would because of the ads you see, it means you are purchasing stuff you don’t need, and it means advertising is a way to funnel your money to companies through nonconsensual means, i.e theft. In reality it’s a slightly positive sum game for companies.
Advertising is cancerous in the sense that if there was no advertising, nobody needs to advertise, but if somebody is advertising and you are not, then you’ll lose market share and die, so you advertise too and hence it spreads. It is parasitic in the sense that vast amounts of collective resources of society is spent on this redirecting-money-from-company-A-to-company-B scheme with no positive value generated.
Political advertising undermines democracy. Ads have a huge influence on the outcome of modern elections. You need billionaires backing you to fund your campaign, and guess what? Those billionaires will have some special requests when you take the seat. Fair elections and leaders caring for the people are only possible in a world without political advertising.
All arguments in favor of advertising are circular, they presume the current economy/society where everything is heavily dependent on advertising and then point out “Look, but X wouldn’t work without advertising!” In reality a world without advertising would look much different, and my hunch is it would be wealthier and with less inequality, too.
Nice. Advertisements is one of the first things I studied seriously, when still in high school almost thirty years ago. I remember arriving at the very same conclusion, even though Big (AD) Tech had yet to arrive. Any hypothetical rational and enlightened society in the future - think Star Trek - would of course not have any advertisement. It just doesn't make sense. It is a compromise, an evolutionary transition, like fascism, human sacrifices or settling conflicts with a duel of pistols.
If we - as in humanity - are still there in 500 to 1000 years, advertisement may be taught in a history class as one of the barbaric practices of the 21th century. Maybe some scholars will be able to relate it to world hunger, climate change and genocide with a mathematical precision that we are not yet capable of. That is a timeline I love to think about.
Of course, slaving away in the asteroid mines for Bezos inc., looking at hyper sexualized ads for a trip to Mars is equally likely.
From a forum with technical people (that build stuff) I would have hoped to see more ideas that would propose replacing advertising with something better (sorry, if I missed any replies, but did not see that).
Advertising can be useful (to find out about stuff) but very disingenuous (because people can lie). What I would very much like is to be able to assess the trustworthiness and similarity of people advertising me stuff. If someone likes same things as me and I never find him to "lie" (whatever my personal interpretation of that is) I should give him more trust. If someone picks things that I am not interested in and I think he favors stuff (because he is paid, for example) I should give him less trust. Then when I look for a product/video/restaurant I should see things recommended by people I trust more.
I know this kind of happens with "stars", "vloggers" and so on but lacking a system where you track it, means that it is easier to get complex to separate who is just "fun" and you watch but you know he lies and who is also "trustworthy" and you know you can also take his recommendations into account.
But that's just one idea, maybe there are others out there...
I'm not against this idea, but I feel like it can be really hard to execute in practice. Especially considering that many of the parties involved don't mind being maliciously compliant.
The really tough part is classifying "what counts as an ad". Of course the ones shown by Facebook and Google are ads, but let's look at some not-so-straightforward examples:
1. The community centre in my neighbourhood has a wall with lots of ads from local groups. Language practice groups (which are free), language lessons (paid), narcotics anonymous, painting classes, and a lot of other services provided by individuals or small groups. Some of them non-profit, some of them are the main source of income for those providing the service. I deliberately approached this wall looking for those ads, and we need them for this kind of groups to survive.
2. A supermarket places a large banner near the entrance with this week's offers. The products on offer are expiring soon. There's an interest in selling the goods so they are consumed and don't go bad. The interest isn't only on the supermarket's behalf: as a society, we want to minimise the amount of food that goes to waste.
3. How do we buy and sell houses if there are no ads for "houses on sale". I am aware that there are economic models where individuals don't need to buy and sell houses, but switching to such a model seems way beyond the scope of the proposal. Is an ad stuck to the window still allowed?
4. iOS shows "suggestions" in the order of "sign up for cloud storage to store my data because your phone is full". I consider this an ad. Can we write legislation which would catalogue this as an ad without false positives?
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.
The article is suggesting that they'd rather not have ads than not have guns? Because ads are tools of manipulation? WTF do they think guns are for?!
Let's face it, it is incredibly simple to entirely avoid ads everywhere online. Vivaldi or Brave will block all ads (Brave even does it in YouTube) so just install those in 2 taps and you're set.
Many online communities and first party sites are free because they are paid for/motivated by ad income though
Sure there are many sites that don't have ads and are done truly as a passion project by the owner(s) but many rely on the income to pay for bandwidth and hosting etc, or even staff costs. Would Reddit et al exist without any source of income?
People say "I'd pay to use foo without ads!" Yet when those options are available, and when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is, turns out that actually most people don't want to pay to access foo without ads (think YouTube, think Facebook etc that have ad free tiers that hardly anyone pays for). People just block the ads and keep using it for free and so the site gets neither ad revenue nor subscription revenue.
"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."
Feels similar to a point in a larger rant about bloated page sizes:
"I think we need to ban third-party tracking, and third party ad targeting.
Ads would become dumb again, and be served from the website they appear on.
Accepted practice today is for ad space to be auctioned at page load time. The actual ads (along with all their javascript surveillance infrastructure) are pulled in by the browser after the content elements are in place.
In terms of user experience, this is like a salesman arriving at a party after it has already started, demanding that the music be turned off, and setting up their little Tupperware table stand to harass your guests. It ruins the vibe."
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.
I hate ads. I hate them everywhere I see them, but if you want to start a business, and you can’t advertise, how do you possibly stand a chance against entrenched incumbents? Banning advertisements is regulatory capture taken to an extreme.
There can still be product catalogues, people will still shop in person or on online resellers. You can still start off with a limited time discount so people can try your product. None of these need advertisement, they are organic ways of getting the word out there.
Not going to happen. There is no higher calling than advertising and marketing. Most of us here have probably worked on something that is at least adjacent to or in support of that noblest deed of influencing others to spend money.
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 ;)
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.
>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.
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.
Only to authoritarians who think banning things is the solution to everything.
This is the typical "common sense Genius notion" that hasn't been thought out one bit.
This person doesn't care for democracy. They are zealots and ignore the fact that:
- marketing is communication to achieve a goal (reaching a potential customer about the value of a service) and is a legal way for companies to compete. If they can't do marketing legally they'll do it illegally and/or compete with violence.
- discoverability is necessary and if you didn't have any means to discover stuff it would be insane or worse, absolutely dictated by this "democracy lover" who wants to have total control for "the greater good".
I don't like ads one bit and absolutely welcome regulation (which is hard because whether you outlaw something or not, the money will be there, see alcohol and prohibition) but this is just so self congratulating and obtuse that it's hard to take it seriously.
All the talk about propaganda or fascism and laughing at the concept of free speech tells me this is yet again, one of these "my blue party lost the elections and I blame propaganda and ads" and that they haven't even given it a second thought beyond "I get clicks" because they don't explain how they propose making sure communication doesn't hide advertising in it. Articles like hers advertise her blog, posting it here is advertising. Making any sort of argument about X being better is an advertisement for X.
It's like people want to play scenarios in their head and refuse to think about economics and game theory because the reality is they want to shape the world politically to their will. Authoritanism hidden with "good feels".
No thank you. You're far more dangerousn than ads.
Hell yes. Advertising is legitimate interest but it has become completely degenerate with social networks and the attention economy.
It is the root cause of many modern issues and _something_ definitely needs to be done about it. It even erodes capitalism itself by making consumers the product, which has been known for a while but the generalization seems non-obvious - that this happens every time when to the producer-consumer relationship is introduced a third party that changes the financials incentives of producers.
I probably wouldn't go as far as making advertising completely illegal but I'd like to see it regulated and probably limited to spaces specifically made to be "advertising hubs" both online and in the physical world.
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.
A lot of discussion here about where boundaries would be with free speech, how this would be implemented, specific details. But, as with any policy, this is not a binary "do it or don't". This is a dial that can be turned in a more libertarian or a more regulatory direction. (In fact, even this is simplistic: it's many hundreds of conceptually correlated dials.)
The interesting question is whether we're happy with where the dial is right now, which direction we want to push it, and how fast --- and the underlying meaning of the article is that maybe we should be pushing it in the regulatory direction very fast indeed.
For me it's the pointlessness of it all, and the fact that advertisements even when "targeted" are just sprayed out of a firehose at me.
So many apps I use are supported by 30-60s ads for some stupid fucking mobile game that I immediately know I don't want to install, I have no intention to interact with the ad and yet I'm forced to sit through it for 30s, only to hit the X on it and have it open the Play Store anyway?!?!
And video ads in general, if I know that I'm not interested right away, why am I forced to sit through 30-60s of it?
I mean I can look away from a fucking billboard...but this stuff. A great first step would be to make ads that forcibly hold attention like that illegal.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
>If someone mentions it to someone else, that alone should be grounds to shutter your company.
I don't agree. It should depend on whether such a mention leads to promotion of the product. We are not barbarians to limit freedom of speech.
After any mention of a product by its user, a court should be held to decide whether this mention was advertising. Because even though the user received a benefit from purchasing the product from the company (otherwise he would not have bought it and would not have become a user), advertising also implies promotion, so the court must first determine whether this mention was made in such a way that it could potentially induce the purchase of the product by other people, and only then close the company.
And it doesn't even have to be a mention. Advertising is really mean, like a couple of days ago my girlfriend ate a pudding right in front of me. And it was the last pudding, and she ate it so well that I wanted one too. And you'll never guess what I bought at the store today! Yes, that same pudding. Unfortunately, we are vulnerable to advertising even when we are fully aware of its destructive nature.
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.
Isn't this article advertisement by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?
(edit: I have actually been thinking in similar terms as the article, but I do think the article is optimistic and utopian, as if a good intuition would be enough to prevent the very same forces from exploring the reform
Filtering visitors by fingerprint of the browser (cloud flare and palemoon) won't stop bots, but creates a market for more sophisticated bots)
A lot of people have suggested that the idea is in opposition to free speech. The title can be misleading here. The article doesn't talk about banning 'advertising' - it specifically says "Any form of paid and/or third-party advertising would become illegal. Full stop."
People can still advertise themselves using different channels.
With so much fake news and data, a lot of content has started to seem like white noise. Maybe this is a direction worth exploring for us as a society.
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.
Honestly, I’d have no issue with banning advertising. Truth in advertising laws don’t seem to have any effect at all, and spaced repetition combined with targeting is pretty much the most vile thing I’ve ever seen.
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.
The funny thing is so much of the advertising industry seems like embezzlement or fraud. So much of the time money is being pumped into this industry unnecessarily, things like Coke could not pay and suffer no loss in profit. It seems like some nonsense to keep money within first world nations or something. Just money going to a gamble which doesn't stand up to basic scrutiny as reasonable.
Making advertising illegal is probably not going to pass first amendment muster in the US
(though god knows how much longer we'll have meaningful constitutional rights at all)
but at one point there were laws against blatant misrepresentation, lying, and deception.
Any such laws still on the books have long since ceased to be meaningfully enforced.
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.
No. There would be some guy on the street goading you to enter a restaurant by offering you free chicken, and once you did enter, they would start pressuring you into ordering other things while overpaying for that bucket of low quality chicken that may or may not be a health hazard. There would be a threat of violence and you would not be allowed to leave before paying.
> 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.
I watch crowd here since 2011, and asking cowards not to downvote will probably have opposite effect :)
if you disagree with the tribe, you will be punished by the tribe. Some of the tribe can down vote you and so they will use this terrible power to silence anyone who might shake tribes life view :)
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
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
Growing up around Seattle, I had never seen any billboard ads on the freeway. I had no idea it was heavily regulated in Washington State! I wish other states would ban them.
This sort of thinking is exactly why Big Tech shifted from being left Democratic in Obama's time to being center-right Republican in Trump 2024 election.
Demonizing ads comparing it to Heroin and tools of authoritarian regime is a MASSIVE hipérbole. Go to look at heroin addicts. Go to look at people that click on a personalized ad with cookies that knows they want to buy a new fridge. They are very far apart.
It's like claiming the electricity company holds you slave. Go look at what slavery was.
The simple truth is that Big Tech is incredibly powerful because they earned it. They made incredible technology that helped humanity moving forward. Yes there is a great power imbalance now. Yes it would be better if that power was less concentrated. But it also wrong to demonize Big Tech, to paint them as evil Machiavelli's dealing drugs. What we need is a new generation of Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple. Yes Steve Jobs in order to build Apple in his own time painted IBM as evil, but it was done in an ad (paradoxically) and it wasn't the whole government passing laws against IBM just to reduce it's power. I'm European and GDPR in Europe was in my opinion a very bad move. I don't think third party cookies are that bad. And people that think that they are bad they usually don't know how they work. Companies shouldn't directly export your plaintext data to others. Third part cookies didn't do that.
So stop painting ads like heroine. Once you destroy Google you will have destroyed also the income that allowed Google to give us free (g)mail, free maps, chromium and then node, Android and a ton of other products I'm not remembering right now.
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.
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.
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).
> 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?
> 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.
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.
The problem with all this is that consumerism seems to drive economic power.
Particularly good advertisement in society is a cultural trait that makes it consume way more than it needs, driving individuals into debt, but that means way more business activity to capture that and then redirect all that human effort into actual power.
Butan has no advertisements and people consider themselves quite happy, but the second China or India decide they want something from it, there is nothing it can actually do.
Kinda like in the novel “the dispossessed” from Le Guin - the anarchist planet ultimately lives at the mercy of the capitalist one, and if policy changes (for example - Trump) then you are … no more.
So while I agree that ads are an unnecessary tax that should be banned, I can imagine a society that does could end up at the mercy of a society that doesn’t, given a generation or two.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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 ?
This is totally bullshit. In USSR ALL enterprises was own by government, private property prohibited and many rich people killed or jailed, even churches transformed to form of museums, so advertisement become unnecessary and nearly disappeared.
This was extremely ineffective society - because in such system people don't have any real motivation to grow and to become better.
And this leads to society of fools - when in 1990s borders opened, many scammers from all the world, made fortunes on fooling people, who just used to sterile environment without even weak manipulation, so totally defenseless for really serious scam.
Unfortunately such environment now, after 30 post-soviet years have extremely problems with economy.
Imagine, we in Ukraine have thousands engineers unemployed, or working for less than general laborer.
You may wonder, how this could happen. Answer - information inequality - engineer or any other professional know at least few times more than ordinary people (or from other specialty).
Why information inequality is so important - because even in USSR, where govt tried to make totally controlled "planning" economy, have about million products on market, so to optimize production need to solve system of equations 1Mx1M size, which is even now semi-possible.
In free market environment, complex of mechanisms "invisible hand of market", advertisement+entrepreneurs as intermediators+mechanisms of reputation, making market semi-optimal, so in real world have about 30% resources spend ineffective.
But when soviet govt claimed to make 100% effectiveness, in reality, was about 300% ineffective spending, and that's why USSR fail - just because was ineffective. This have many causes - first I already said - people was not motivated to grow anything; from lack of motivation appeared technical weakness - unmotivated people don't invent new things and not eager to adopt abroad technologies (because this also need lot of hard work); tech weakness leads to lack of modern computing infrastructure, so when USSR government dreamed about modern computers, could have only outdated hardware, steal from West (or got via grey-black schemes which is just other name of steal).
And after USSR fail, several directors of huge soviet enterprises, used scam schemes to become private owners of these enterprises, and now they brake reforms, to save their fortunes and power.
And for small business need more than 10 years to gather so much resources and reputation, to become enough powerful to run reforms. So many exUSSR countries stuck in between totalitarian and democracy (in reality I see slow motion, but seen next fact in many cases impossible to say, if it is positive or negative, or just nothing significant), and nobody could predict, how many years will spent in this extremely slow motion (or I prefer to name it hang in the air).
So, if we made advertising illegal, huge enterprises will got huge advantage over small business, and will disappear concurrency, so richest people will become rich forever and poorest people will become poor forever.
And must admit, I sometimes don't like advertisement, but it is required by market, so we need to invent some other measures to make advertisement more ethical.
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.
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.
> 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.
"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.
You know what is an example of propaganda/advertising? Peta, extinction rebellion et al antics. Marching for right to bear arms. Standing outside of Tesla dealers dissuading shoppers. Militancy, activism in general. At this stage of society I too think having less of any of this is good. It's a shame there's no ad blockers for militancy. The chance to achieve consensus on this is 0, so we will be left with propaganda to try to shift public opinion towards censuring one militancy over another
You seem to have mentioned pretty much the only things that I think are worth keeping under your definition of "advertising".
(Noting that the extremities of some of those examples are already illegal)
It does highlight, however, that a shared definition of a spectrum of what "advertising" actually means, is the first step towards being able to exploit whatever rules the politicians decide upon.
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”.
> 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.
I see this dynamic in tech all the time:
"We'd like to pay/invest in you tremendous amounts of money to make X more efficient": yes, absolutely we know what X is and we understand scaling it is immensely valuable and fundamentally changes everything.
"We'd like to regulate X, making it safer, and therefore harder or even impossible to do": that's ridiculous, you could always do X, what even is X anyway, don't tread on me, yadda yadda.
It's so transparent to me now, and I've passed this curse onto you.
Nothing else in law works this way. No definition is ironclad. This is what legislators, agencies, and courts are for. We all know this.
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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.
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> It's impossible. How do you even define advertising?
Seems you're insistent on letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. This is precisely why judges exist. It would not be difficult to define Ads well enough to cover 99% of current advertising. Sure there will be gray areas. Advertisers will adapt. But it would make it profoundly more expensive, difficult and risky.
I'm not sure I understand a concrete economic argument other than "anything which makes it harder for businesses to be wildly profitable off minimal value hurts the economy". But that only really holds of you define the economy by things like GDP, which really just capture how wildly profitable companies are and have almost no bearing on quality of life for the people; in other words, the argument is circular.
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>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?
No ads in TV programming. No product placement in movies. No billboards. No subway or bus station advertising posters. No paid recommending of specific products. No promotional material for products - nothing with fictional elements. No web ads. No sponsored links. No social media ads. No paid reviews.
(you could still do some of those covertly, with "under the table" money, but then if you caught you get fined or go to jail)
No tracking consuming preferences of any kind, not even if you have an online store. Just a database of past purchases on your own store - and using them for profiling via ML should be illegal too.
If people want to find out about a product, they can see it on your company's website (seeking it directly), or get a leaflet from you. In either case no dramatized / finctional / aspirational images or video should be shown.
>And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
You're removing cancer.
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> 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.
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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.
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> you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
I don't see how you reached this conclusion, unless you think advertising/propaganda yields bet positive outcomes more than net negative, which seems contentious.
Here's one way it could be false: the wisdom of the crowds only really works when groups of people independently reach their own conclusions, because people who don't understand an issue are randomly distributed around the correct answer and so they all cancel each other out, leaving only the people who do understand an issue to cluster around the correct decision.
Propaganda/advertising works directly against this, thus undercutting the usefulness of the wisdom of crowds.
In Vermont, we have banned outdoor advertising (billboards) for over 50 years with no such issues.
It's hilarious that you think that advertising is actually necessary for economic prosperity. If anything, it's probably a net drain on it.
I think the article mentions banning “sold advertising”, which seems like a fair way to go about it. You can still advertise your own stuff, but you cannot pay a marketplace to do it for you any more. Advertising would by necessity become a lot more local.
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There's two kinds of advertising: your local mom and pop running a labor day sale in the local paper, and megacorps spending billions of dollars advertising soda and roblock lootcrates or whatever to kids, or plastering every square inch of public and private space with maximally attention-seeking posters and billboards.
One of these is good and one is bad.
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It’s impossible to live in a world without murder, and murder is difficult to precisely define and identify, and yet neither of those are good reasons to oppose making murder illegal.
Don’t let perfect become the enemy of good. I spent 5+ years living in Hawaii, where just billboards are illegal. I can’t quantify the effect but qualitatively, it’s something I dearly miss in the concrete hell of Southern California.
> How do you even define advertising?
Almost everyone can tell when they’re being advertised to. And almost everyone can tell when they advertise. Effectiveness of such bans would depend on enforcement, the definition is clear enough.
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>How do you even define advertising?
You nailed it man. My first response even to the headline let alone the article was to reflect on the first line spoken by my professor in my first marketing class: "Marketing is about educating the consumer." Advertising is just one way we attempt to do that, and taken to an extreme, I have no idea how you could ever make it stop. The article is clearly focused on one part of advertising, but even then, someone will always build a better mousetrap.
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Perhaps just banning algorithmic advertising would be enough?
No public facing advertising. At all.
No sponsored advertising. At all.
If advertising "skirts through the loopholes", fine - at least we'll recognise it as underground (like darknet now). The liberal version, I don't even understand how you got there so won't comment. That was wild.
And you seem to ignore the issue the OP mentions about not being able to unilaterally disarm.
It's easy if you try. But you won't try ... what a shame.
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> How do you even define advertising?
You don't define "advertising". You look for things that advertisers do and see if they can be made illegal or unprofitable.
Formula 1 cars used to have displays for tobacco products. At one point, the law in Europe started saying "you can not do that", so tobacco advertisements disappeared.
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.
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This is just the nirvana fallacy. We need to do our best.
Even if the authoritarianism to enforce it weren't by itself undesirable, banning advertising creates a situation where incumbents (known names) have a significant advantage over new entrants to a market.
It's worth analyzing why a society wants that and who benefits from it.
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> 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.
This is just the perfect solution fallacy.
Nobody in this conversation thinks there's a set of laws that would work perfectly to prevent all advertising. That doesn't mean it can't be a hell of a lot better than it is. Playing whack-a-mole with loopholes and making careful regulations to avoid inhibiting human rights is still a huge improvement over letting corporations trample human rights at will.
> 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.
I've been on the advertising, is an evil parasite around useful transactions bandwagon for a while and thought this was really hard to define properly.
So far my best take is around that what's good is being discoverable instead of something that you run into. This allows people to do what they want, without the evil side of unconsciously or in-competitively driving them to your business/deals.
This is a classic case of perfect being the enemy of good.
We don't need to 1984 listen to every conversation for any hints at product endorsement. We can start with obvious things - for example, prohibiting a company from spending money on marketing. Banning ads on the air, whatever.
There's levels to this. There's really evil slot machine marketing. You know, try to get people addicted to your social media and use that addiction as a way to generate profit. And then there's not so bad marketing. Like my friend telling me he likes his new pair of pants.
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There is no reason it has to be so immoral, annoying, and evil. There could be a whole gamified system where people who choose to voluntarily participate can find things they want to buy from people eager to sell
I don't know about 'advertising', but Bahai don't allow campaigning when running for leadership position. I would imagine it would be some where along line of that. It encourage action speakers louder than words.
With all the modern techniques (used by neurosciences) in the modern advertising is pretty all entrainment and brain washing at this point any way. So no harm in making all that illegal. I'm pretty ok with a world with no advertising, and just function by word of mouth and network of trust.
> you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
What is your evidence that there is any economic advantage at all to have unregulated advertising?
I'm fairly sure advertising is regulated in all sovereign states. And I am also quite certain that the jurisdictions in which gambling advertisement is illegal fare better economically than those in which it is illegal. It only makes sense: gambling is not productive, the less of it you have the better your population spend their money on productive things, the more advertising you have the more people spend on gambling (otherwise what is the point of advertising?), if you forbid gamling advertising there will be less gambling advertising (if not, what is your complaint even?).
Nothing about this statement of yours makes sense.
>> imagine a world without advertising
> I can't because a world with magic and world peace is more realistic and believable.
I don't know, in my country advertising tobacco products is forbidden since at least 20 years, how did they pull this magic trick?? go figure
For the same reason weights and measures legislation is of course impossible.
This is why every time you go to the shops you have to carry your own standard weights and balance scale! The idea that society could regulate the weight and volume of every product in every shop is simply preposterous!
Advertising is a nuance of action in the informational world the way combat is a nuance of action in the physical world.
We can draw the line between an aggressive blow and a firm handshake. We can distinguish that.
We will figure out how to distinguish manipulatory mindfucking from regular conversation too.
I don’t think that’s the issue. Whatever advertising is, it’s clearly been industrialized by technology in ways that
a) did not exist 100 years ago
b) can be limited in effectiveness by removing that technology
> And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
Does advertising confer an economic advantage?
"It's impossible. How do you even define advertising?"
"How do you define it?" is an oft-repeated and weak argument against regulation used by online commenters who likely are defending a self-interest in maintaining tha status quo behaviour of so-called "tech" companies.
Online advertising services are obviously capable of being defined as these are bought by advertisers and sold by so-called "tech" companies every day. These so-called "tech" companies define "products" and "services", offered for "free", all the time. The commercial purpose is facilitation of online advertising. This can be regulated.
Before the internet was opened to the public, commercial use was prohibited. Today, HN commenters would no doubt try to suggest that defining what is and is not "commercial use" would be "impossible". But it's too late. It was already done.
The uncomfortable truth for so-called "tech" companies is that _any_ regulation that affects the ability to collect data, conduct surveillance and assist the injection of advertising into people's "user experience" could have a significant impact on their "business model". Hence they try to argue _any_ regulation is unworkable. All-or-nothing. Perfect, 100% solution or nothing at all.
But regulation does not have to define _all_ advertising. It may only define advertising that meets certain criteria. All-or-nothing thinking is nonsensical in this context. By analogy, when so-called "tech" companies propose alleged "solutions" for privacy issues, do they propose one solution that offers total, complete "privacy". How do we even define "privacy". What they propose is usually some incremental improvement.
It is possible to limit online advertising through rules and regulations. Of course this is a unacceptable proposition for so-called "tech" companies. Their only viable "business model" depends on usurping the bandwidth of internet subscribers for surreptitious, unwanted data collection, real-time surveillance and online advertising.
It's impossible, that's why you still see all those cigarette advertisements everywhere.
As a fantasy it sounds nice but it immediately hits the wall of the 1st amendment.
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> It's impossible. How do you even define advertising? If you define it conservatively, then advertising will skirt through the loopholes.
It's quite easy though. Just remove incentives to advertise. Remote the possibility of profit. Will it destroy the economy? Of course, but the advertising will cease.
I grew up in a communist country. There was some advertising (in TV, radio, magazines; very little outdoor), but since all the profits went to the state anyway, there was no real competition, and also often shortages, the advertising was not really serious. It didn't influence people a lot. It was harmless.
Of course there was a lot of communist propaganda in the media, in the schools and workplaces, outdoor banners etc., and that is advertising too. But also this was already at the stage when nobody took it seriously anymore.
hey why try to do anything ever, people will just find a way around it and it will be worse than if we did nothing. lets make murder legal, fewer people will get killed i guess
>> imagine a world without advertising
> I can't because a world with magic and world peace is more realistic and believable.
What? I have world peace on my devices right now with the help of Ublock Origin.
If my county bans billboards, as the county next to me have, I will see no ads except for on paper I choose to.
We cant define the beginning and end of human life/consciousness, and we've regulated it for thousands of years. That it is hard to define does not make it impossible to control
>> 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?
Yet, in some countries advertising for tobacco or alcohol is banned, if it's possible to ban these advertising for these product why would it be impossible to ban every advertising.
> And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
Uh? You can advertise in these other nation but they also won't be able to advertise in your country, so I don't understand your point.
There was almost no advertising in my country when I was 7. I live in Poland and till 1989 it was communist puppet state of USSR (not through our choice, obviously, so the moment we could - we noped out of it).
There was no point advertising because there was no competition, all the companies were nationalized and no matter how well or badly they did - their employees earned the same. If you persuaded people to buy your washing powder instead of the other available washing powder - that just means the queues for your washing powder will be longer.
There was A LOT of communist and anti western propaganda tho. But no advertising is perfectly possible.
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Eh, even if you exclude any potential side effects like that I don't see it being workable. I believe advertising as done today is _mostly_ a zero sum game, but without any advertising at all, it's going to be _really_ hard to find out about stuff!
> 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.
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“GET 20% OFF THIS UNDERWEAR YOU GLANCED AT YESTERDAY” with a dopamine megaphone in your bedroom“
If you can’t imagine it, try a bit harder. We can build a better world, but it takes effort.
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Agree with this entirely. In fact, I would go as far as saying if advertising was illegal, then expressing opinions would be illegal. Everything is an advertisement.
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That parallel between propaganda and advertising is why I have a pathological hatred of advertising, I block it in all forms possible, to the extent that if I can’t block it I won’t use the product.
I simply hate been manipulated.
So much so that I forget what the modern tech landscape is like for the average user til I use one of their devices.
We’ve (collectively we for techies) helped create a dystopia.
100% agree.
I am happy to pay for an ad-free version of a product I want but I will never use your product if I cannot block or remove the ads.
Blocking the advertising itself only shields you from the advertising, it still lets these services set up the underlying surveillance/advertising system that harms society (and you) in the long run.
Of course it's not always possible, but it would be ideal to use services that don't have advertisements for anybody.
I am the same exact way.
When I visit my parents it's eye opening how much advertising they're bombarded with daily.
Isn't Hacker News for advertising for Y Combinator and topics which are important to Y Combinator?
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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?"
> 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.
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There are no drawbacks to making advertising illegal as long as the laws are written conservatively. Point out one. Notably "it won't actually prevent all advertising" isn't a downside--preventing, say, 80% of advertising is a heck of an improvement.
And FFS let's skip past the childish "how will people find out about products???" nonsense. You're an adult, use your brain. Consumer Reports exists, and in the absence of advertising that sort of content would flourish.
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Current administration already made a bunch of radical decisions. What's another one?
> The uncomfortable truth: most of us in tech understand that today's advertising systems are fundamentally parasitic.
Which was obvious at every step of the journey. Google was, is, and always will be an advertising platform. Advertising was, is, and always will be the manipulation of human emotions and desires for the purpose of corporate profit. This is not a good thing! How did you ever justify this to yourself?
I’ve had recruiters push the poker machine jobs, the ad jobs, the high frequency trader jobs… You get to look at the business before taking the job; work for better people. No shade on anyone who’s there because they just need a job, but if you have a choice, pick something better.
> 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.
We would no longer be tricked into buying a bunch of crap that doesn't make us happy.
But because GDP is what it is, we will have a recession. Quite a big one, because a lot of the economy is reliant on selling people stuff they could do without. Perhaps people would be happier once things settle down, but we have locked ourselves into measuring things that are easy to measure, and so we're all going to think it was a failed experiment.
> Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising.
While we're at radical thought experiments combine that with "what if any entity worth over 100 million (insert arbitrary limit here, perhaps what if it was based on an multiple of average employee salary) was disallowed".
And, in fact, if the maximum company size were limited, and thus the marketplace wasn't a swimming pool full of whales, but instead full of a much larger number of a broader mix of smaller fish, what would advertising look like then?
For example, large categories of industry would have to change hugely into cooperative non-owning groups of smaller companies. Would they still have the same advertising dominance, or would the churn within the groups break things up?
I'd rather cap salaries than company sizes. The logistics of certain industries may naturally require more manpower than others and put them at a disadvantage.
But someone earning $10m a year while their workers are on food stamps is unacceptable. Having a dynamic limit of total comp would mean they either take less money and put it into the company, or raise the wages of those employees.
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I like the direction but some things are difficult to imagine happening at all without extremely large companies.
I have wondered before about restricting a company’s diversity. Effectively giving a time limit after a company over a certain size develops a new line of business by which it must be spun off into a new company. Say 12 or 18 months.
For example, Apple would have been allowed to develop and launch Apple Music but it would have been forced to spin it off.
The rule would need to be carefully crafted, and would need regulators to be active in enforcement as it would require interpretation to be applied (similar to how anti-trust works today, perhaps).
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It's better to limit companies by number of employees, not worth. That way, you break up the economy into modular components that humans can more easily understand (and whose outputs can be used by other companies). Also, it pushes for more efficiency. And it lowers barriers to entry.
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> 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.
> Advertising has a purpose; it's how I find out what products and services are available, and at what cost.
When I am unable to avoid it (which I’m relatively successful at), it’s how I explicitly decide what to avoid. See an ad, penalise the company.
But yet I have no trouble finding and evaluating products when I actually need something.
Search engines, real and virtual marketplaces, word of mouth, reviews all exist already, and all can work without paid shenanigans.
There’s no need to replace advertising, we can just ban it.
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?
If they are paid and the consumer didn’t ask to see it, either because it’s inserted into the web page / video stream / whatever they are actually trying to consume, OR because because the whole thing has a paid bias or ulterior motive.
> 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.
does youtube exist without advertisers?
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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.
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 café 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.
This his how I look at it. If a lesser computing device's vulnerabilities were exploited to alter its intended behaviour, especially for financial gain, it would be considered hacking and criminal penalties would apply. Why that applies to a mobile phone, and not to a far more critical computing device (the human brain) is the question.
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.
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Thousands of years of adversarial training is what made us controllable — stick with the group, and we’ll defend ourselves against the enemy.
Read up on psychological warfare techniques. And these have been embraced by adtech companies and are being applied to children ...
It's a pattern recognition machine dominated by reward feedback mechanisms.
It's not hackable so much as it lacks resistance to environmental noise.
A lot of winners today are those that get away with greyzone illegal practices. The same would happen in a "ads are illegal" world. People would pay for word of mouth, or even pay influential people to casually talk about it, but it'd be off the books etc.
I live in Vermont, where billboards are illegal. It's great, there is so much less visual pollution driving anywhere.
And yes, some people do try to push it, renting space to park their hay carts that happen to have their business information on the side.
But you know what? Those cases eventually get dealt with too, and overall, the law is a complete win, even with a few people testing the line.
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If you followed this line of reasoning consistently you'd advocate for no additional regulations to ever be imposed by government and all existing regulations to be walked back. That is, to most of us, patently absurd. The answer to your objection is to enforce the laws that we have, not to never make new ones.
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People still steal, but we aren't contemplating to just abolish the laws that prohibits theft.
A new law is proposed and people may break it in the future. Is that a reason not to implement that law, because that seems to be the - in my view crazy - insinuation.
I wonder a bit if this point of view is an 'age' thing, which is to say if you're under 40 it rings true, if you're over 40 it sounds silly kind of thing. I don't know that it is, it just feels that way a bit to me.
What if we outlawed surveillance capital instead? "Ad tech" is about exploiting information about individuals and their actions, what if that part of it was illegal because collecting or providing such information about individuals was illegal? (like go to jail illegal, not pay a fine illegal).
By making that illegal, collecting it would not be profitable (and it would put the entity collecting it at risk of legal repercussions). "Loyalty cards", "coupons", "special offers just for you", all gone in an instant. You could still advertise in places like on the subway, or on a billboard, but it would be illegal to collect any information about who saw your ad.
If you're over 50, you probably read a newspaper. And in reading the newspaper might have looked at the weekly ad for the various supermarkets in your neighborhood. That never bothered you because you weren't being "watched". The ad was made "just for you" and it didn't include specials on only the things you like to eat. When read a magazine you saw ads in it for people who like to read about the magazine's subject matter. Magazines would periodically do 'demographic' surveys but you could make that illegal too.
Generally if you're under 40 you've probably grown up with the Internet and have always had things tracking you. You learned early on to be anonymous and separate your persona in one group for the one in another. That people have relentlessly worked to make it impossible to be anonymous angers you to your core and their "reason" was to target you with ads. By maybe that it was "ads" was a side effect? That is probably the most effective way to extract value out of surveillance data but there are others (like extortion and blackmail).
I resonate strongly with the urge to slay the "Advertising Monster" but what I really want to slay is how easily and without consequence people can violate my privacy. I don't believe that if you made advertising illegal but left open the allowance to surveil folks, the surveillance dealers would find another way to extract value out of that data. No, I believe choking off the "data spigot" would not only take away the 'scourge' of targeted advertising, it would have other benefits as well.
I’m over 40 and I think banning advertising is perfectly reasonable and should be done. I have been certain of this since at least my 20s, and since before the emergence of the current fully formed hellscape.
I have long thought advertising is the new smoking. One day we will look back and be amazed that we allowed public mental health and the wellbeing of our civilisation to be so attacked for profit.
I also manage to fairly easily live a life in which I see remarkably little advertising.
* I use a suite of ad/tracking blockers
* I don’t use apps that force ads on me
* I watch very little TV, and never watch broadcast TV
* I live in the UK which has relatively little outside advertising, and I mostly get around by walking/cycling (thus avoiding ads on public transport)
* etc…
It astounds me when I speak to friends and travel just how pervasive advertising is for some people, and particularly in some places.
The US, for example, is insane. I can see how some people used to living in such an environment may think it’s not possible or reasonable to get rid of advertising, and for sure there will be edge cases and evasion, but my experience is that it really wouldn’t be so hard to dramatically reduce the amount people are exposed to.
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This is IMHO the right angle.
Advertising is virtually impossible to stop, but more than that, is not inherently evil. Most countries include laws on how you can advertise. For example, you can't lie and make a claim that your product can't live up to, you can't use certain words or phrases, and you have to have disclaimers in some situations.
In the mid-90s when Yahoo was a young company, they had a simple advertising model. The ad would be placed next to the section of the site relevant to the category. If you were searching for watches, a watch ad would be next to it. The advertiser would know how many times the ad was served and how many times it was clicked on.
They didn't have deep demographic data like they do today.
The surveillance capitalism model is the predatory model. Advertisement is only one part of that industry.
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> 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.
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.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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* “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.
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.
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Very little of value would be lost.
It's interesting that you leave out Google (and similar search engines).
We would lose one of the most useful tools introduced to mankind in the last 3 decades.
> 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.)
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.
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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?
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only the shit ones
What I'd really like to see is a study on how much advertising drives consumerism and thereby eventually climate change / pollution. Maybe this could start some discussion.
I got the thing for you : a governmental report that showed that advertising as it exists today and ecological transition are not aligned. Pardon my french, though.
https://linforme.files.sirius.press/files/1742914627793-Rapp...
Can anyone say why the sibling comment, pointing to this official document (see link), is heavily downvoted?
https://linforme.files.sirius.press/files/1742914627793-Rapp...
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)?
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.
Neither convincing them nor compelling them through law would work. I’m surprised the author can’t see that as an ad person himself. The incentives are too strong; if you outlaw them, they’ll just be circumnavigated in more nefarious ways.
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> 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.
Same in Spanish. Propaganda and publicidad are interchangeable
Which makes it actually really hard to talk about political propaganda
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In tech specifically: is it the same mechanism? I mean, does commercial advertising and political propaganda flow through the same channel?
I would love your input as someone on the inside. My understanding, broadly, is that when there’s commercial advertising, it goes through a different channel; there’s an auction, the ad is marked, CTR is tracked etc. whereas I think the political polarization and the use of propaganda on social media happens much less explicitly: it’s “mixed in”with the non-ad content that’s posted, and therefore much harder to detect or remove.
I’m also curious how you might handle influencers. Those, like propaganda operations, are an attempt to influence people’s behavior but “from inside” the ad/non-ad boundary.
And then, I’m convinced, a lot of our politics today is simply an emergent phenomenon of the algorithmic feed. That there is no master, corporate or political, that lead to this condition. It simply happened as a result of “for you.” (I think this is changing, as the powerful are discovering how powerful the algorithm is at influencing their subjects).
I think I agree with you broadly. The total sublimation of human relationships and interactions into “the machine” has a whole host of really bad side-effects. Jacking into cyberspace causes the shakes, at a society wide level and certainly at an individual level as well.
> The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters.
The main difference between advertising and propaganda is that advertising usually is obvious and loud, and in many countries is required to be declared: people need to know they're watching an ad. You have specific placements for ads that are clearly defined: tv breaks, outdoors, even banners. It's true that there are active efforts to blurr those lines, but still.
The problem of propaganda is that it's mainly being done covertly, no one is saying they're speaking on behalf of someone or of an ideology.
> Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. Information would still flow.
While this concept sounds good, it doesn't seem to work in the real world. For example, could shops have billboards on their property? What about businesses that didn't have prime locations? How would people know they existed? How would small businesses compete with big retailers?
One of the things the internet brought, for better and worse, was to lower the barrier of entry—you wouldn't need to be a massive brand that could afford to have its product placed on TV Shows or even to have sales teams selling door to door.
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.
> Probation only moves the activities underground.
That implies that people want ads and they're going to be consuming underground ads from their ad dealers. Which actually already impinges on advertising because advertising doesn't want to be secret, advertising wants to be as visible or popular as possible. Advertising is inherently easier to regulate because of this.
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Google and Facebook sure, you could even make the argument that their non-adtech businesses would be collateral damage, but Amazon and Microsoft have substantial non-advertising related businesses. I'm curious why you lumped them in?
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"Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. Information would still flow."
I remember a world without advertising on the internet. Products still existed. Commerce still happened. Information still flowed. At first I got access to the internet through universities. Later I paid subscription fees for internet access. Nothing I accessed on the www required a paid subscription.
Bandwidth sucked. CPUs were less powerful, RAM and storage were in short supply. All that has changged.
But I still pay for internet access, much more than I did in the early days. And, remarkably, I see people asking internet users to "subscribe" to websites, in addition to paying internet subscriber fees. This does not stop these websites from also conducting data collection, surveillance and targeted advertsing.
Internet advertising is not like other advertising. People try to argue it makes stuff "free". Stuff that was already free to begin with.
I too spent far too many years in the adtech industry before realising that what I thought I was doing (helping fund cool things on the web) was not what I was actually doing (destroying the web as I knew it.) Having left it behind in the early 10s it's got way worse than I ever imagined, there's effectively no regulation at all now, and certainly no way of knowing where the ads stop and the content begins. Having sat in ad industry self regulation meetings myself I know the author is completely right, they will never do anything about any of the many many problems, so what else is there to do than ban it, nothing else is going to work with the system that currently exists.
> The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters.
Advertising is just a name for a delivery mechanism for propaganda. Its not a difference of master, as is clear in the political realm where when we focus on a particular commercial delivery vehicle we talk about "campaign advertisements" but the content is still "political propaganda".
> 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.
No, the mechanisms would just get even more sophisticated, to work around whatever (inherently, and unavoidably, arbitrary) lines were drawn against "advertising" while permitting the flow of information and opinions about products.
> No, the mechanisms would just get even more sophisticated, to work around whatever (inherently, and unavoidably, arbitrary) lines were drawn against "advertising" while permitting the flow of information and opinions about products.
Probably, but it would make advertising much more costly thus less appealing and reduce its market size. Just like for any other prohibited activity.
> The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters.
A big reason for that is influence from Edward Bernays:
"Edward Louis Bernays was an American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". While credited with advancing the profession of public relations, his techniques have been criticized for manipulating public opinion, often in ways that undermined individual autonomy and democratic values."
Bernays' mother, Anna, was Sigmund Freud's sister. There seemed to be a talent in that family in understanding the human psyche, and how to utilize that understanding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
Came to this thread to post that. Everyone should read _Propaganda_. It's public domain, found in various places.
>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.
We still get a choice about where we work, and we could choose not to put glorified ad companies on a pedestal.
I explicitly refused project related to mobile location data crunching few years ago. I told it loudly to my manager then, I was already thinking I'm too arogant. But it was outlr market, it worked out we've found other project.
Now I would probably bend my neck and accept it. It's just not everyone has choice.
That line about the mechanical difference between selling sneakers and selling a political ideology being minimal - yep. Once you've seen how the sausage gets made in ad tech, it's hard to unsee it. It really is the same machine, just tuned for different outcomes.
> What's frustrating is how the tech community keeps treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease.
If you think deeper, to first principles, it’s clear that disease is capitalism. I am not advocating socialism/communism, but isn’t it strange that capitalism was never reviewed or updated according to new science about anthropology, sociology, and economics? In 100 years, about 100 countries tried it, and not one country can report a harmonious society. It’s always with inequality and suffering.
Every science has new advancements and discoveries, every single one except political sociology. Why is more advanced and modern political economic system never seriously discussed? On what assumption is capitalism still being implemented? It was never working yet still it is referred as something like “word of god” that cannot be argued with.
If this was a situation in an IT company and methodology company uses constant change, it ends in disaster. After about one such cycle, management will be looking into changing processes and choosing something else instead of Agile or Waterfall or whatever is used.
For about 30-40 years now, we produce enough to feed and house everyone. Henry Ford introduced a five-day work week, which should be down to one workday by now. But instead, we got “bullshit jobs,” which are about 50% of employment in unnecessary made-up jobs to keep people occupied (marketing, finance). And still in the AI age, a person who is born now is brainwashed into capitalism and has to find an occupation, study, and work till retirement. Capitalism does not accept you for who you are. It only accepts you if you have some kind of occupation that brings value.
> capitalism was never reviewed or updated according to new science about anthropology, sociology, and economics?
If taking a human-science view, then one interesting take on capitalism is that it isn't a thing at all. It's the absence of a thing. It's a positive freedom. There can be no "science" of capitalism.
It allows the direction of excess human psychological energy. It is the absence of regulation of anti-social criminal behaviours, by creating an allowable "grey area" between moral and wicked behaviours - what so many business people like to call "amoral". But that same energy is innovative, creative - the destruction of what is old and weak is part of any finite-sized system. The need to destroy, dominate and exploit is strong in a significant percent of the population. Any decent study of criminology is continuous with "business".
William James, in The Moral Equivalent of War [0] suggested that we coped with this in the past by having every few generations of males kill each other in wars - and of course implied that it's mainly a gendered issue. During frontier times, as the European settlers conquered America and other lands, there was ample "space" for exploitation as that energy was directed against "nature" (and the indigenous folks who were considered part of "nature" as opposed to "civilisation"). Now we've run out of space. The only target left for that energy is each other.
Social-"ism" etc are projects to try controlling that nature by reducing "individualism" (and insecurity-based consumerism is an obvious first target). It's major fault is that the anti-social criminals tend be want to be the ones doing the controlling - just wearing the mask of civility and preaching the primacy of "the group".
If we cannot change human nature we must find a new outlet for that energy. Space exploration as a new frontier always looked good, but in reality it's something we are unlikely to achieve before self-destructing the technological civilisation needed to support it.
That leaves little else but a kind of cultural revolution. The pharmaceutically catalysed version of that in the 1960s is worth studying to see where and why it went wrong. See Huxley.
Any realistic systematic change would need to address this "problem" of the individual ego, creating some new focus that is the "moral equivalent" of war.
[0] http://public-library.uk/ebooks/65/5.pdf
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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.
It's been tried, in sci fi. The result is Influencers.
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?
I feel that the lumping together of advertising and propaganda in the article is very apt. That's why I find it somewhat sinister. You should be allowed to try to change minds. If anything should be outlawed, it's the massive tracking effort involved.
Let's talk about the modern world then. You want to get away from the grind of working for someone else and sustain yourself on your own.
Perhaps you could turn into a subsistence farmer making every home product you own on your own or in a small commune, or perhaps you and a group of employees could buy your existing employer.
But the other more realistic method is that you would start your own business so you no longer have to work for someone else.
19% of all American adults are starting or run a business. It's a very common way to make a living.
IMO the idea of removing advertising entirely would essentially entrench the status quo even further. People would only know brands like Coca-Cola, Tide, and Apple, the brands they knew about the day the ads shut off. There would be no chance for other companies to enter markets because they would have no realistic way of spreading the word about their alternatives, not even for small local businesses.
The proposal is not just radical, it's downright moronic if you've ever been in the shoes of owning your own company.
> People would only know brands like Coca-Cola, Tide, and Apple, the brands they knew about the day the ads shut off.
I wouldn't be surprised if these brands are so dominant because they can afford to flood the country with ads.
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> IMO the idea of removing advertising entirely would essentially entrench the status quo even further.
This doesn’t seem correct to me.
Products would still be searchable, but the wealthiest companies could no longer pay for placement or pay to have their brand name repeated endlessly so it’s on the tip of your tongue but you don’t know why.
People would still talk in their communities and share recommendations.
Reviews (unpaid) would still be a thing.
Markets (real and virtual) where you can compare competing products and make a decision wouldn’t go away.
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But I think part of the article's point is less about banning all forms of spreading the word and more about dismantling the surveillance-driven, hyper-targeted ad economy that's become the default.
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> check out the documentary “Century of the Self”.
The editing is not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed it. You come out of it not really knowing what it did to you, but something changed.
This is a fantastic recommendation, and Adam Curtis' documentaries are all on YouTube somehow.
But the way you frame the problem suggests it's not tech people's responsibility at all. It's a much bigger issue of governance that society as a whole must decide. Has there been any society on earth that has made the decision to ban advertising?
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.
Yes. Not all business models utilize public advertising. For example, MLMs like Amway and LuLaRoe.
Advertising didn’t exist for most of history because mass media didn’t exist. Advertising is part and parcel of mass media.
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> The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism
You might enjoy reading about– or a book written by– Edward Bernays.
Yes! The century of the self documentary I mentioned is all about Bernays.
>> We'd just be freed from the increasingly sophisticated machinery designed to override our decision-making.
That isn't all advertising. That is the modern algorithm-dependent systems that curate ads for individual viewers. In the good old days of print ads, ads targeted at say the readership of a particular magazine, we did not suffer from the downward spiral. There is no reason websites cannot have static ads. Many do. The issue is not advertising per se.
I would also recommend "Merchants war" by Fredrick Phol. WWIII was won by Madison Ave.
It makes me happy that you left that terrible 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.
Indeed. Marketing is essentially capitalist propaganda. It promotes capitalism and consumerism in an implicit way, and doesn't even mention it.
It's vaguely of like the statement "X is the way to serve god best". I'm saying that god exists without actually making that statement; it's implicit. If statements of this style were ubiquitous, they work as propaganda in a way far stronger that just repeating "god exists".
I actually kind of enjoy advertising -- most ads are shit, but some are very clever. Low budget ones make me laugh, or admire the (complete lack of) execution. I like to see the graphic design trends, the typography, the strange brand collaborations and IP tie-ins, the vogue cycles of looks, feels, musical choices, the trends that get beaten to death with a hammer. It's all very interesting, not to mention the glut of weird products, insane sales pitches, the general grift on display. Simply fascinating shit.
Intellectually I know most people wouldn't mind living in a world without Slap Chop and those old Quizno's ads and Kylie Jenner solving racism with a Pepsi and Arnold riding a pennyfarthing inside of a Japanese energy drink bottle, but IMO that stuff really brings color to our often-monochrome human existence.
An advertisement ban is also an interesting idea from the theory of free markets perspective.
Consumer needs are met by the most efficient producers, products compete for consumers on the market. That makes a ton of sense. But ad spending inverts this relationship. Consumer needs are no longer an external condition for the market but become subject to producer intervention.
This creates a source of misalignment between incentives for producers and the public good.
I think outlawing ads would go a long way towards fixing capitalism.
> The uncomfortable truth: most of us in tech understand that today's advertising systems are fundamentally parasitic.
While my opinion on ad tech has been negative for years, over the past couple of years I've come to realise how much this business model depends on outright crime to survive.
If you have YouTube ads on any device, you probably noticed (at least in my country) that a large fraction of ads are for either extremely low quality products (such as shitty mobile games, apps of dubious value that probably exist mostly to gobble up your data, or just shady IRL products), or outright scams of various kinds.
In one case I saw an obvious scam ad that impersonated a famous person in my country. I reported it to YouTube, and got back an email a while later that said that the ad did not break any of their rules and my report was dismissed.
Some weeks later I read a news article that reported that that exact scam had scammed some old people out of large amounts of money.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been, but I was genuinely surprised that my report had been dismissed. While I already thought YouTube is to blame in serving users scam ads, I had naively assumed that YouTube doesn't want to serve scam ads, it's just hard and expensive to filter them out systematically.
But no, they want to serve scam ads. Even when they get pointed out they refuse to remove them. A dollar paid by a scammer is just as good as a dollar paid by someone trying to advertise a real product. And they're not liable for the scam, so why would they care?
But surely that's too simplistic. Even a complete sociopath would understand that having your website/app overrun by scam ads will tarnish its reputation over time, or invite more aggressive regulation. So these long-term risks don't seem to be worth it. Unless, of course, scams are a very significant fraction of ad revenue.
So this is my hypothesis: scams ads provide a very significant fraction of advertising revenue on at least YouTube, and possibly most social media, perhaps to the point where the business model would not be viable without them.
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This idea isn't uncommon because it's beyond the Overton window, it's uncommon because it is silly and unworkable.
* Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally.
In fact, the author touts as a benefit that you'd stop populists being able to talk to their audience. This is destroying the village of liberal democracy in order to save it!
* Absolutely zero thought has been given to how to police the boundaries. Giving a paid speech? Free gifts for influencers? Rewards for signing up a friend?
* Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy. Advertising fulfils an important social role. Yes, I know it can be annoying/intrusive/creepy. "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
* Banning billboards or other public advertising? Fine. Not new. Done all over the place for commonsensical reasons.
* Any article that talks about "blurry, “out-of-focus fascism”—that sense of discomfort that you feel but can't quite point out" is itself blurry and out-of focus, not to say absurd and hyperbolic. Calling a mild sense of psychological discomfort "fascism" is just embarrassing.
> * Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally.
Some limits exist on advertising exist in most countries. Do they respect free speech?
> * Absolutely zero thought has been given to how to police the boundaries. Giving a paid speech? Free gifts for influencers? Rewards for signing up a friend?
Absolutely zero thought is never given on policing boundaries on anything. That's not how the legal system operates. All laws are approximations at best and grey areas get decided by courts on a case-by-case basis.
> * Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy. Advertising fulfils an important social role. Yes, I know it can be annoying/intrusive/creepy. "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
In my country, advertising alcohol is forbidden. Somehow I still manage to find interesting new beers to try year after year
> In my country, advertising alcohol is forbidden. Somehow I still manage to find interesting new beers to try year after year
This is interesting. Alcohol companies a well known to bypass this prohibition by all possible means (product placement, influencers,...) and yet I find real benefits in it. It would possibly be similar if advertising was forbidden for everything
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> how to police the boundaries
Any existing policy inevitably has a gray area, no matter how elaborate it is. That's okay if the author didn't cover corner cases in a short essay.
> You don't just magically know what to buy.
Knowing what you need is not magic. I don't remember much advertising lately that would tell me how a good can satisfy my existing needs. Mostly, they are trying to make me feel I need something I didn't need before
Hardly a corner case. It's such an obvious question that the failure to cover it means the author isn't serious.
Knowing what you need is not magic, but knowing which products might satisfy it is not automatic. Advertising targeting, which people quite reasonably find intrusive, exists because advertisers desperately want to find people who may potentially want to buy their product.
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This argument is an example of the Perfect Solution fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti...
It really isn’t. The comment argues that the proposed solution is unworkable and would have adverse consequences, not that it would only partially work.
See also
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-buying-things-from-a-st...
I knew there had to be a fallacy for this line of argument, thanks for sharing this!
> Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally.
Corporations don't have rights. Corporations don't have the right to free speech.
Yes, I'm aware of the SCOTUS opinion on this issue--I'm saying SCOTUS is wrong on this.
And no, granting corporations personhood isn't a viable approximation. We're discussing a case in this thread where granting corporations a right is drastically different from granting individuals rights.
> Absolutely zero thought has been given to how to police the boundaries. Giving a paid speech? Free gifts for influencers? Rewards for signing up a friend?
Your criticism is basically that OP didn't draft a full detailed legislation in a blog post. That's not how ideas get proposed on the internet and you know that.
> Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy. Advertising fulfils an important social role. Yes, I know it can be annoying/intrusive/creepy. "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
I agree that people don't magically know what to buy, but ads make that problem worse, not better. Ads cannot inform, because they don't come from an unbiased source and even in the rare cases where they tell the truth, they're leaving out important facts intentionally. You're basically saying, "People don't know what the truth is, so we need to let liars lie to them." The solution to lack of knowledge is truth, not lies.
In the absence of advertising, independent third party reviews such as those provided by Consumer Reports would actually fill the need for consumer information.
Also, free speech isn't the same as free amplification of speech.
We don’t have to do it all at once. Focus on what ad platforms like Google’s offers. Ad banners, ads on videos, etc.
Start by banning target advertisements - now ad platforms can’t use information about the user to decide which ad to show.
Next, ban forced advertisement - people cannot be forced to watch 10 seconds of an ad, or to have the ad be persistent on a page. All ads can be easily dismissed.
Then, force ad platforms to respect a user setting that says they don’t want to see ads. Just a new browser standard that communicates the user preference, or a toggle that can be changed in apps.
That alone should get rid of most problematic ads, but we’d still have sponsors and affiliate links. For those, we can start by increasing the requirements for disclaimers or identification. e.g. sponsored content has to be strictly separated from non-sponsored content. Get rid of “segways” and affiliate links close to the actual content.
If advertisers find loopholes or ways around these measures, we just close the holes with new regulation.
Tobacco advertisement is banned or heavily regulated in most of the world (including the U.S.).
Free speech has a couple dozen exceptions like libel, incitement to violence, etc. And besides, it's not clear how it applies to corporations.
"Free" gifts for influencers typically need to be disclosed. Otherwise it's just payola.
Arguments like "policing the boundaries" can be applied to a lot of existing laws, so it's not particularly useful.
> In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
What information are you getting from a clip of a polar bear drinking a coke?
> Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy.
A-Are you Don Draper by any chance?
Seriously, though: you don't need marketing. What you need while searching for what product to buy is a technical specification of the product by which you can determine if the product suits your needs.
I'm not sure.
I keep thinking about this, and the only conclusion I can come to is that businesses would still need to be able to advertise their own products in places that they own.
For example, what if I want to buy a guitar?
I'm shopping online. First, I need to pick a company to purchase my guitar from. How do I choose? Any sort of aggregated comparison of places to purchase from can be considered advertising, so they are all banned (otherwise, astroturfing would be only form of advertising). Do search engines also count as advertising? Okay, so I've found a site. How do I know I'm getting a good deal? (although this is a whole different argument about us worried about getting a good deal because maybe we over-consume, it's still a consideration).
Now, on that site, is this company allowed to advertise different brands that they carry to me? By definition of advertising, no - the whole purpose of showing me products is to make me purchase, which is the definition. So then do we reach a true communist state where there is only one option to purchase? If so, can I still not see it because it's considered advertising? Okay, fine, I need to be able to see at least one guitar, we can concede that point.
Or maybe instead I go to the store to purchase a guitar. Firstly, how do I find the store? If they are not allowed to advertise, must I organically drive past their store? Are there rules on business signs that disallow specifying the type of store, because that could be construed as advertising products? Or is that limited to a certain brand - the goal is to allow all competition equally, so it just says "guitar store"? We've already agreed (probably) that this store can't 'advertise' itself elsewhere, so the only way I will know about it is through (illegal) word-of-mouth, which is still technically advertising. Or maybe it's only illegal for businesses to advertise? Or for people who are earning money from the act? How is that defined?
Okay, anyway, I've made it to the store. When I walk in, I'm met with the same dilemma in example one - the store isn't allowed to hang up products, because that incentivizes me to purchase. Maybe I need to just say "hey, show me a guitar so I can try it" and they must present me with a randomly selected guitar to avoid bias. We continue this until I find one that resonates with me. They can tell me the price of each, but not a sale price, as that falls under unfair advertising law to incentivize me to purchase a specific brand, so brands aren't allowed to run sales anymore. I have no idea if I'm getting what I want - sure, it sounds great and feels great and I enjoy it, but maybe I could have gotten that from a less expensive guitar, or maybe I didn't realize that I wanted a different size guitar.
By this point, economies of scale have collapsed because every purchase must be organic and therefore every national retailer has been dissolved - and most likely the largest manufacturers have discovered the best way to exploit this situation, so the largest now have natural monopolies and the rest have died off because they couldn't compete and were selling direct to consumer, not stocked in stores. Speaking of which, how do stores even work? How do grocery stores work? Every grocery store is built from the ground up on advertising. The same logic applies here. Two choices on a shelf must be in identical nondescript boxes with absolutely no calls to action or differentiators listed. Therefore, the smaller companies go out of business, or maybe the companies with the largest or smallest packages. In fact, just the size of an item can be used to intuit value, so now prices must be fixed to size, and sales & coupons are outlawed.
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All this to say, marketing in some form has existed since time immemorial. Finding value in choices is human nature.
The only way something like this could happen ("Advertising is illegal") would be a monumental wide-scale, best-effort, not-perfect set of judgement calls, which would require drastic overreach by a governing body - which would be exploited by finding weak links in the system and exchanging something they value to look the other way for a certain seller - which is exactly what got us to where we are.
One of the main reasons that we always arrive right back where we started is because the people with (less empathy, win-at-all-costs, better-than-thou, etc.) mentalities are willing and able to exploit the other group, the group that wants (peace, fairness, equity, teamwork), because the second set of values means enabling those around you, and the first set of values means taking advantage of that.
The only way I ever see healthy systems working is in relatively small groups of people where there can be shared accountability and swift action taken towards selfish behaviors, as defined as a community. Unless there is near-total buy-in, a system cannot thrive with the assurance of fairness, teamwork, equity.
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Is the right to pay others for speech necessary for free speech to exist? If so it is already non-existent. No functioning democracy allows judges or politicians to sell their speech to the highest bidder for example.
Why should advertisement be different?
> No functioning democracy allows judges or politicians to sell their speech to the highest bidder for example.
That surely depends heavily on your definition of functioning democracy.
The difference is that advertising is extremely broad while bribing a judge or politician is extremely narrow (not to speak of conflicting with their professional remit)
It's relatively easy and sensible to ban very specific forms of paying for influence. But a ban on publishing your opinion in someone else's publication is extremely broad and obviously in violation of free speech. Free speech isn't defined as standing on a corner yelling at people.
I also think it's counterproductive. All influence seeking (both commercial and political) would be forced to move from overt advertising to covert infiltration of our communication.
I want more transparency, not less.
> "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
It's worse than that in that it's just plainly wrong. I learn about useful products via advertising all the time -- so often, in fact, that I'm sort of bewildered that anybody could claim otherwise. We must be experiencing the world quite differently.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43601740
> In fact, the author touts as a benefit that you'd stop populists being able to talk to their audience. This is destroying the village of liberal democracy in order to save it!
the irony is the author is using propaganda to spread populist ideas
I agree with almost all your points, but this is just false:
> Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy.
We don’t need marketing, we need information. Objective information, that would be easier to come by in the absence of manipulative marketing.
You are defining marketing as manipulative. In fact, marketing is just "bringing a product to market". For example, it includes having booths at a trade show. The line between objective information and "puff" is impossible to draw. I googled "strollers" and got:
Joolz strollers with ergonomic design, manoeuvrability, compactness, and storage space. compare and choose your favourite Joolz pushchair model.
Is this manipulation or information?
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How would that be easier to come by?
Who would maintain such information repositories and what would the incentive be to take that on? (As they no longer could be supported by ad revenue.)
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I just wanted to say that I don't think I've ever seen the adjective "commonsensical" before, but I plan to use it heavily now!
> Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally
Can you still advertise smoking in the US?
What if we at least just outlawed billboards?
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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 rosé 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?
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.
> 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
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> 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.
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> The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That's advertising.
So that would exclude:
- listing your house, or car in the classifieds
- buying a sign for your business (ad discussed in other posts)
- buying a garage sale sign
- buying a for sale sign, or flyers for your house for sale
- paying a realtor to sell your house
- paying a reporter or professional reviewer to write a review. Even if they are paid by a newspaper/magazine/consumer report site, money exchanged hands for something that promotes a product.
- distributing a catalog
- paying a cloud provider or VPS provider or website hosting service to host a website that promotes your product
Also, what exactly constitutes a "product"? Does a service count? If not, that is a pretty big loophole. What about a job position? Or someone looking for employment?
And finally, advertisement in some form is kind of important for making customers aware your product exists. Word of mouth isn't very effective if you don't have any customers to begin with. I would expect removing all advertising to have a chilling effect on innovation and new businesses.
To be clear, I think the current advertising environment is terrible, and unhealthy, and needs to be fixed. But I think that removing all advertisement would have some negative ramifications, especially if the definition of an ad is too simplistic.
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> 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.
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Does CNN, Fox News, ABC, New York Times and CBS use money to endorse candidates on air? Is that advertising?
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> 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"
Why not just eliminate the sale of personal data? That seems pretty cut and dry.
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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?
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> Someone I know mentioning a product because they want to recommend it to me? Not advertising.
Except that it is, and it's why social media is so important for marketeers; the best kind of advertising is word-to-mouth, so generating discourse about products is big business.
Anyway, without strict legislation and tight controls on social media / chat / RL, how would you know whether they would be getting paid or not?
It's a legal and / or philosophical conundrum, not to mention even more of a legal whack-a-mole than it already is.
The definition in the second sentence would ban sponsorship of public television, among other things. I don't think that plan nets out to a positive.
> is money being exchanged in order to promote a product?
So if I paint my store front's sign myself, I'm good, but if I pay a signwriter to paint it, it's illegal?
I guess I better become "friends" with a signwriter, so that they don't mind making a sign or two for me "for free". And so that I don't mind giving them a widget or two from my store sometime in the future.
Well money must be exchanged to put up a sign outside of your business. Therefore it would be illegal.
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Most advertising is done via "influencers," now...
Commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment.
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What if I "win" a BMW and I can't stop talking about it on social media?
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 rosé 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 rosé, 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? Because a discussion entirely based on "I know it when I see it" vibes is completely worthless; everyone's vibes are different.
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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.
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.
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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.
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Put this way I almost think we should ban anything that makes “people into the product”
Does a website count as broadcast, since anyone with an internet connection can access it (sans the Great Firewall and similar)?
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.
> 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.
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Any laws with blurred lines will be used by the people in power against their political adversaries to keep them in power.
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>video game loot boxes
Is buying packages of random baseball/pokemon/etc cards gambling then?
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
>- Advertising and marketing are when an entity pays some other entity to transmit content
So all usage of the internet would apply?
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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.)
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.
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How do grocery stores work in this model?
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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)
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.
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.
So if you accept GP's waiter's rosé suggestion, it was advertising, and if you don't it was not?
(Schrösédinger, if you will.)
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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?
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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.
The answer is the same way we banned cigarette ads.
Yep, such an obvious & simple answer.
I’m always amazed by how much ink gets poured before somebody mentions the obvious: this question has already been answered in a different context.
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.
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."
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.
> Were you paid to say it, with the intent of motivating said person, to buy a product?
For the waiter, this is probably true.
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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.'
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.
Good question. Yet, unlock origin manage to filter out 99.99% of all all ads without blocking actual content, so must be possible!!
>What about a waiter asking you "would you like to try a rosé with that dish? It pairs very well together. Is that "advertising" that would need to be outlawed?
Were they paid by a vintner to say that?
>What about giving out free samples? Is that advertising, and thus should be illegal?
To and by whom? From Nvidia to a GPU reviewer: Yes; from a chocolate shop to a patron: No.
>What about putting a sign up on your business that says the business name? Is that advertising?
No. Do you have any hard questions?
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.
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.
Yet we have laws against fraud, rape, and so on. Where do you draw the line for those? There are some crystal clear cases, and there are unclear cases where you could argue forever.
So it is for advertising. You don't need to draw a clear line for every case before you can make a law.
I like how it turned out with email advertising, actually: spam is defined to be whatever people put into their spam folder.
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.
>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.
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I’d draw the line at publishers.
Are you a publisher (ie responsible for every single thing that appears on your platform)? You can show advertising. Otherwise no.
I know this isn’t in the spirit of the article, but I like the idea of a ad-spaces and ad-free spaces.
Not all countries have the same free speech protections as America. I can easily imagine a country that simply has a bureaucracy whose approval is required to publish TV programming, or one that bans banner ads in social media, billboards, restricts shop signs in various ways, requires all packaging in the store to be black and white, etc. Advertising doesn’t have to ve banned outright. It could be killed by a thousand specific rules targeting the most obnoxious forms, provided there wasn’t a constitutional issue in the country implementing these measures.
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.
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".
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.
One man's propaganda is another man's truth-to-power.
There are dangerous consequences to handing the government the authority to ban public communication (even about mouthwash brands) without very careful scrutiny.
Imagine if you couldn't advertise energy alternatives because oil and gas came first and, with advertising banned, we can't even talk about the relative merits of installing solar vs. buying coal-made grid electricity. The status quo will maintain until the planet cooks.
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“begs the question” means something entirely different than “raises the question”, fyi.
Remind me why corporations are protected by human rights such as free speech.
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.
> This begs the question: how could you reliably distinguish advertising from other forms of free speech?
That's a great question, but let's not lose sight of the fact that failing to legislate on this is 0% reliable. If we even are able to identify and ban 25% of advertising, that level of reliability is a massive improvement over doing nothing. Don't fall for the perfect solution fallacy.
The reality is that some really basic, careful definitions of advertising would identify a huge percentage of advertising, without catching any cases that aren't advertising.
As a starting point, if a corporation pays a person or corporation to display their corporation's name, product, or logo on a physical property, broadcast, or publication when they aren't directly selling your product, that's advertising. Maybe you can think of some cases where that catches some stuff it shouldn't, and I'm open to revising it.
> 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 think this sort of handwringing is pretty silly. I don't care about either of those--I do care about "free samples" in the sense of auto-renewing free trials, but that's because the intent is to trick people into forgetting to cancel, not because it's advertising.
Draw the line very conservatively, making a very clear definition of advertising that we can agree on illegal, and go from there as we see the effects (i.e. what loopholes people start to use). Regulation is an iterative process--start small and build.
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.
Vaccine ads are a great example, in that large parts of the population consider them as fake propaganda. Trump supporters were up in arms against Biden/Dems for promoting vaccines during COVID. With your logic RFK Jr would be very happy!
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It's actually really easy, you're not allowed to be compensated for your speech. It's free.
There is no line, to fully and strictly ban advertising we basically have to abandon democracy and capitalism. Advertising and capitalism a so tightly related that you can't have one without the other.
You want no ads? Cool, let's familiarize yourself with North Korea.
People might want to rather opt for ethical ad standards and regulations, something fundamental like... GDPR.
Most things that people post online, voluntarily, is essentially advertising of one form or another.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I feel naive saying this, but a certain percentage of the ads on YouTube seem to contravene what would be legal of they were shown on television - in Australia at least.
It feels like standover tactics, showing the worst of the worst unless you pay up.
I should also at least admit that recently,Like the last 12 months, those greasy-type ads are less common, having been replaced with more television-style ads, although they last longer. Still an improvement overall though.
The trick with YouTube on iOS is to delete the app and use the website in Safari instead. There, you can use Wipr 2 or other ad blockers.
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Serious question: Why don't you pay for YouTube premium?
Isn't it hypocritical to want YouTube to offer you its content for free? If the content is valuable to you, you should be willing to pay for it. If not, just stop watching YouTube.
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YouTube is great if you pay for it, which I do. Any time I open it on a device I’m not logged in and get an ad i instant close.
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I can still remember ads on TV from when I was a kid. Mind worms, embedded deep. And it makes me angry.
Call education conn-ec-tion!
Inflamed hemorrhoidal tissue
> 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?
I don't think it's exclusive to advertising. Humans in general desire stability (myself being no exception), and anything that disrupts a system they've become accustomed to can very quickly become perceived as a threat.
My theory is that the people who fight against changing the status quo are just fundamentally opposed to change itself, not necessarily supporting the system as it currently stands. They know the ins and outs of the current system, and changing it means they have to dump knowledge and re-learn things - which they're fiercely opposed to doing. The enemy you know, over the enemy you don't, in a manner of speaking.
Those of us who can visualize futures starkly different than a continuance of the present day are a threat to those people who demand indefinite complacency and an unchanging world. Unfortunately for them, the universe is chaos and change is inevitable - so finding your own stability amidst the chaos is a skill more people need, such that necessary change might be embraced.
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Trotting this out again because somehow it hasn't completely saturated the internet yet:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
--Upton Sinclair
>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.
I lost a lot of faith in the decency of others a month ago when I heard a song on my car radio, looked at the display to see the artist and title info that comes from the radio station, and was met with "Bounty the quicker picker upper." That slogan stayed up for at least a minute. Every possible channel of communication will be sold for ad space.
I've been using browser ad block for more than twenty years now. Back then it was to block flashing banners etc. I use Firefox everywhere so have it on my phone too. Due to this I haven't realised how bad it's become. I didn't even realise YouTube had ads until recently and how ridiculous they are.
I run DNS blocking at home which helps somewhat with shitty devices like Apple that don't give users any control. But my partner was looking at a local news site on her phone on the train the other day and I couldn't believe it. Literally an ad between every single paragraph plus one sticky ad at the bottom. It was like twice as much ad as content. Sickening.
Brave browser on mobile solves the problem for me
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.
It's illegal here in Canberra, Australia. There's not total compliance -- people still stick an A-frame on the street, and of course real estate agents will always put something in a front lawn -- but there aren't giant billboards that you see everywhere else. It's really refreshing.
That idea about taxation is interesting, I’ve never considered that angle.
It would be very unpopular with the people I’d imagine.
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)
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Making advertising non tax deductible has the effect of making it marketing ~20% more expensive, which would lead to about 20% less marketing. But not really. It doesn't really cost YouTube anything to play an add, so YouTube ads get 20% cheaper, and you see the same amount of ads.
Also this would be hard to implement. Tax law has a hard time discriminating costs. What if all the marketing is done by an Irish subsidiary?
The author is identifying a technical problem (it’s become so cheap/easy to insert ads they’re everywhere). Technical answers? How about require that it be easy to opt out, or simply remove the ads from the content. Codify ad-blocking software.
> 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.
> I doubt there's even the slightest difference in sports betting.
> Yeah the city is cleaner..
Cool. So it has positive effects on the city, without any negative effects on economic outcomes.
Cool. I'm in. Let's implement it everywhere
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You don’t value the city being cleaner? I live here and the city looks absolutely so much better. For one it has a lot less visual pollution and you can drive with less distractions… That alone justifies everything else for me.
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.
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.
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.
Vermont bans billboards and it is amazing.
São Paulo implemented "Cidade Limpa" which banned posted ads. It was said to renew the city.
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.
My hometown did this, and I was surprised how bad billboards can be when I moved away
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.
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.
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.
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.
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> 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.
> 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.
In the same sentence, you give a possible solution and the reason why it wouldn't work.
Ban ads and companies are going to pay more and more for sponsored content to the point you can't differentiate what is legit from what is not.
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There are a very few areas where there are good reviewers. Sadly most "reviewers" just repeat marketing materials, read stats from the box, and talk about themselves.
>is a valid and desirable function
No I don’t think so. I would genuinely guess that 97% of the ads I see are irrelevant garbage or, more commonly, bids by products I know to raise awareness to increase the probability of their sale. I discover the vast majority of what I care about through word of mouth and I suspect I’d be fine without ads. There are so many negative externalities that it’s actually ridiculous.
And pray tell how the chain of word of mouth started for that product?
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Lobbying is too ingrained in American politics. Banning lobbying would just drive in underground like with Clarence Thomas.
Just give the responsibility for policing it to the tax authorities. The lobbyist might be able to hide the money but the recipient has to spend it or it is worthless so it will be detectable and the transactions punishable.
Also, that we won't be able to make it perfect is not an argument against trying to improve.
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.
It is useful in specialist domains. If you love fashion then fashion magazine ads are worth studying, because you read them with a critical eye. If you're into any sort of nerd hobby (model trains, synthesizers, board games...) then the specialist magazines/video channels/forums for that hobby are interesting, again because you have a critical eye. Sure, there are ads that target the newbie with 'the first and last ______ you'll ever need!' but as you get more experienced in the hobby you quickly learn to distinguish which manufacturers are selling the dream vs offering their product. This remains true even on forums for particular vendors that have a cult following. Likewise for many professional trade news outlets.
But it only works where you have specialized focus and experienced/informed consumers that are able to separate the sizzle from the steak. For example, doctors and other medical professionals are generally well qualified to assess the claims of pharmaceutical advertising, consumers are not - even though I am comfortable reading the fine print in such ads and even reading papers about clinical trials, I still rate my evaluative ability as mediocre compared to a professional.
Mass market advertising for general consumers is generally cancer, imho.
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Many people, otherwise advertising wouldn’t work at all and the industry wouldn’t exist. Even if you hear it via some other source, they may have heard of it via some form of advertising.
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I'd be happy to give an example I gave below: rake hands.
I hate the step after raking where you have to use the rake and one hand to carry the leaves to the bin. There was an ad for "rake hands" where you just hold a small hand-formed rake in each hand and scoop them both.
Twenty bucks, vastly improved yardwork experience, and I would have literally never thought to look for something like that.
Yes, happens often. Plus all the products that have been recommended by (a friend that became aware of them through)+ advertising. And all the products that only exist because of advertising.
Also: sales. I have bought things in sales that I would not have bought otherwise (because its value to me is higher than the sale price but lower than the normal price) where I was only aware of the sales from ads.
There's several games I've enjoyed from seeing ads for them. I would have never seemed them out on my own.
I can think of one such case in my life and I'm 69 years old. That's not enough to warrant the amount of advertising we are bombarded with.
My hand is raised
> 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.
Every time you communicate something to a politician, submit a submission on a Bill, or write a letter to the editor criticising a political policy, you are lobbying.
That you don't bother engaging and others do doesn't give them an unfair advantage.
That being said, the US system sounds like a shitshow of bribery and corruption.
Fantastic article, I particularly like the point about humanity being more or less ad-free for much of it existence. I was just thinking about absurdity of advertising yesterday. As a life-long football fan (not soccer ;)), I was always bothered by the slow creep-in of those silly, mindless pre- and post-game interviews they do with players and managers nowadays. In the two decades since this has been happening it never occurred to me why these were a thing, until yesterday. In a lead up to a minor game, of course there was an interview with one of the players. In front of one of those panels with repetitive ads for various businesses. As it happens to be the case every time for the last 20ish years. Of course! The interviewees are just providing the mindless content, while my mind absorbs the background ads! So obvious, but it never occurred to me even once. Ad industry is really a cancer on society.
I too am a NFL fan but I watch just the highlights on YT now. 60 minute game reduced to 15 mins max without all the stoppages, ads, unnecessary commentaries.
There also weren't good or services for sale for most of humanity's existence
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.
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.
>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.
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> If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.
This is unbelievably untrue. Consider clothing brands, large and older labels have an immense advantage over newcomers. Newcomer word of mouth will never come close to some brand that has a store in every mall across the US.
With (say) Instagram ads alone, tiny labels can spend and target very effectively to create a niche, and begin word of mouth.
Gap and Lululemon would love it if all advertising was shut off today. It would basically guarantee their position forever because of the real estate and present day distribution Schelling point.
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.
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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.
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.
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>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.
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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.
If nobody advertised then first mover advantage would be everything. How would a new product come to market and compete with no way of getting new users except word of mouth?
> every solution would be equally discoverable via search
I hate ads but there would be no search engines without ads unless they were backed by governments
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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.
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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.
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.
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Those existed once. They were called ‘magazines’. But they mostly became ad-supported, and then got killed by the Internet.
> 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
> 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.
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> 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.
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.
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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.
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Your access to all of that collective knowledge is funded by ad revenue.
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I don't think it should be referred to as a 'necessary evil' (by the following definition of that term):
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...
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?
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.
> 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.
In theory, I'm all for this. In practice, we have to take smaller steps towards this radical change and see how far we can actually get in real life.
In Norway, we have a total ban on advertising on certain products, like alcohol and tobacco. We also have strict laws regulating advertising towards children and political messaging on TV and radio.
There is only one problem; these laws where made before the digital age, so they have been sidelined. Political parties buy ads on Facebook and Insta like there is no tomorrow and children are constantly exposed to ads on social media. Only the ban on alcohol and tobacco is somewhat successful.
The right next move would be to ban peronalized ads (ie tracking of personal data). This is the one factor that has made the advertising industry (with Google and Meta at the top) go completely of the rails.
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.
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.
Can product recommendation sites place a funny video on their website, unrelated to products, just so readers can have a little rest while doing all this product comparison?
Can product recommendation sites _pay_ a video creator to create a funny video for their website? It's a win-win for everyone, right? Product recommendation website gets more visitors, popular creator gets money, and visitors get to see a funny video from popular creator.
If you allow ads on product recommendation websites, most entertainment websites will declare themselves "product recommendation".
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Ooh, that's pretty clever!
This is why I like HN, people here are smarter than I am
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>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
>it's not advertising if it's on their own website
Is SEO advertising though?
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> 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.
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.
lobste.rs is not though. Its not impossible to have such a thing without advertising
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.
Most users are not happy with addictive apps. The psychology of something you pay for is fundamentally different to something that's free. If your choices were paying for TikTok, or paying for actually good entertainment, I think a lot of people would do the latter.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Advertising is a tax on the rich.
It subsidizes basically all modern entertainment, from the filmmaking and sports industries (through TV Shows and sports broadcasts, respectively), to musicians and amateur filmmakers (through Spotify and Youtube).
The costs of advertising are ultimately passed down to consumers in the form of higher prices for products and services, not unlike a VAT or sales tax. Because rich people spend more money than the poor (citation needed), they end up paying a lot more of this "tax" while getting the same amount of entertainment for it.
Targeted advertising only exacerbated these dynamics. Because high-spenders are very desirable customers to have, companies can now demand more money for the ability to target them, which turns advertising from a linear to a progressive tax.
Advertising turned the internet into a sort of public commons, with no government intervention and the inevitable inefficiencies and inflexibilities that come with those. It gave us free, high-quality video and voice calls to anywhere across the world, free unlimited texting, including picture messaging and group conversations, free video hosting for everybody, regardless of scale, free music (through Youtube, Spotify and the radio), with at least some compensation to artists, free movies and TV shows (on free-to-air TV as well as through services like Pluto), excellent free educational content (e.g. 3b1b, university lecturers hosted on Youtube at no charge), as well as cheaper entertainment overall through ad-supported tiers.
I think framing things this way is important when discussing advertising regulation. Maybe we want more cheap groceries, don't care about cheaper luxury cars and don't mind less free entertainment, so maybe we should ban grocery ads and encourage more Mercedes ads. Maybe we're fine with less free entertainment if it gets us fewer alcoholics, so we ban ads for alcohol. Those are tradeoffs worth thinking about, perhaps tradeoffs worth making, but they are tradeoffs, and it is important to be conscious of that.
> Advertising is a tax on the rich.
Even if advertisers make more money from the rich (citation needed), the poor are still disproportionately negatively effected. I would argue that it's less ethical to persuade someone with $100 to their name to spend $10 on something they don't need, than to persuade someone with $1,000,000 to spend $500 on something they don't need.
To bolster this argument, look at the things that are most advertised to the poor: alcohol, gambling, fast food, and predatory loans (including predatory auto financing). The wealthy, meanwhile, are more likely to be targeted with ads for lifestyle goods: health foods, travel, gym memberships.
If we want to tax the rich to subsidize the poor, let's just do it directly, instead of feeding an army of parasites along the way.
I find it ironic that there's a big "Follow @index@simone.org via your Fediverse account (like...)" over this article that I can't seem to close and covers up part of the article.
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!
The thing that really irks me is celebrity endorsements.
Tell me, do you think Roger Federer really appreciates that watch he's selling you? Does he really use that coffee machine that he sells, and thinks it's the best one?
We know what his motivation is, he is not your friend who bought a watch and a coffee machine, used them, and recommended them to you. He gets paid by the producers of the stuff he endorses.
Plainly, advertisers have discovered a loophole in the human psyche, and are exploiting it. We evolved to take in recommendations from people we know, and billboards/TV/etc are close enough to the real thing to trigger _something_ in us that doesn't just work when it's a non-celebrity whose face we don't know. The effect is big enough that celebrities get paid a gigantic amount of money to pretend they are someone you trust and recommend some product they never even thought about until they got given the deal.
I think we should tax that kind of thing. I'm not restricting his free speech. Roger is free to stand in front of the opera in Zürich and tell random strangers that they should buy the coffee machine. But if you put it in mass media, there should be a gigantic tax.
People will hate me for saying this, but when people want to ban advertising they fail to realize how much utility they actually get from advertising when it is done in a straightforward, ethical way. At the core, advertising and advertisements are a way to inform potential customers of a product or service that they might like. A few points for consideration:
1. You probably only know about half the things you like, enjoy, and use because of advertising. Did you see a trailer for a movie on YouTube you wanted to watch? That is an ad for a movie. Did you get a demo disc for a new band at a party or club in the 90s? That is an ad. Did you see the concert lineup poster? Ad. No one complains when advertising is done well and provides utility.
2. Ads subsidize things you enjoy. Browsers, search engines, television, your tv, most websites, are all subsidized through advertising. You can say would prefer to just pay full price for it and avoid the ads, but most people clearly would not like to when given the option.
3. What even is an ad? What is the line? Are store signs an ad? Are movie trailers? Defining what an ad is and isn’t is messy and a bit silly.
4. The alternative may be worse. What happens when traditional ads stop working? Businesses still need to get their message out, so what do they do? They hire YouTubers to play talk positively about their product, they wine and dine journalists and publications for favorable coverage, which becomes easy because without ads they are hurting for revenue. If ads were banned this would get worse.
It is nice to opine about a utopia without ads, and believe me, I often do, but the reality is advertising has been around for thousands of years and integral to how business and even society works.
> You can say would prefer to just pay full price for it and avoid the ads, but most people clearly would not like to when given the option.
Truth is, you pay the full price anyways, because the money earned through ads is also paid by you.
Even worse: you additionally pay the advertising industry
> Businesses still need to get their message out, so what do they do? They hire YouTubers to play talk positively about their product, they wine and dine journalists and publications for favorable coverage, which becomes easy because without ads they are hurting for revenue. If ads were banned this would get worse.
No, we wouldn't see it at all, because that's advertising.
If you are a new company starting out (suppose aluminum siding), you have to market your product or else nobody will know about it. I'm not sure what all parts of marketing are counted as advertising here, but generally in marketing you pay to get word out about your product. Wihtout that, starting a business might be tough. And then, as a consumer, there are lots of free products I have gotten my entire life by virtue of the fact that one of those companies offered to pay for it for me. If you turn that off I'm not sure how that all would work. I don't think the OP goes into too much detail.
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.
The issue is that if you ban advertising, we still get advertising, but it'll be done in a way that hides that it is an advertisement. Aka, the internet will be full of bot posts that are thinly veiled ads posing as legitimate inquiry or discussion. That's a worse off scenario. Better the enemy you know.
Currently, we have both, so banning ads would reduce ads.
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.
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).
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.
ISPs, at least in the US, already offer free email hosting.. they used to offer basic web hosting too, not sure if that's still the case.
Using those is worst idea ever. ISPs are all horrible, and the only good thing is you can switch to the other one. The last thing you want is to tie your email/website, something you can't easily change, to them.
1) Advertising is profitable for companies. Which means that you as a consumer ultimately pay the advertiser more than what they paid to advertise their product to you.
2) Wikipedia is not ad-driven, and remains as useful, if not more useful than any ad-driven competitor.
All ad-funded services are really customer-funded.
you can pay money for goods and service. (just saying)
YOU can.
I think taxing ad revenue and investing the proceeds in research and social programs is the middle path
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
Thought about that years back, and went to the conclusion that you can't kill advertising and political propaganda without strict rules that every big business and their owned politicians would fiercely fight against. Also, advertising is the way they keep barely alive an economic system almost entirely based on overproduction of unnecessary goods built to not be durable; take out advertising and you'll see millions of people bankrupt; not thousands: millions. Advertising doesn't scale anymore: from a handy tool to discreetly let people two blocks away that a new barber shop just opened, has transitioned to a weapon businesses use to fit their product between a thousand others, grabbing more and more space from every free second or square millimeter, in the hope they capture the attention of someone who doesn't give a damn about them; and it can only get worse. I'm all for killing it, but be warned that if you take it out, you take out the entire business universe built around it that depends on it to be kept afloat. It'd probably need a few decades, not even years, to become reality if someone decided to start the process in a harmless way. But would first need a very different political environment to be accepted: more power to the state, less to corporations, and probably that would conflict with ideas that some propaganda, that is, advertising, stuck in the mind of so many people several decades ago, and those are quite hard to undo.
Maybe a good initial step would be to tighten up false advertising laws:
Make it illegal to make statements that are not objectively true. E.g. you can't say that your product is "the best", you can only say specifically how it is better.
Put restrictions on advertising an idealized version of a product and then selling a lesser version. E.g. the difference between what fast food ads show versus what you get. I'm sure it would be difficult to completely fix that since it's so subjective, but we could probably get incremental improvements.
I consider it false advertising to not tell me the drawbacks of your product compared to your competitors. I shouldn't have to look up every competitor to find your car is the only one without a steering wheel, even if it has heated seats.
Ads don't even bother with that anymore. Theye pure id- make something memorable so you associate something with thinking about their product. "All happy families go to Disney" style.
These are often lies too but its the subtext not the text
They already do that. Is always in TINY print or they use weasel words that are meaningless in common use, but defendable in court.
Improved health is a good one. It doesn't really mean anything.
That's exactly the sort of thing that I think should be banned. Particularly the meaningless terms like "improved health".
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> But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence.
But humanity has never been free of non-current forms of advertising
> The financial incentives to create addictive digital content would instantly disappear
No the wouldn't, you can still monetize addictive without ads
> Think about what's happened since 2016 ... fracture our social fabric along existing fault lines.
Just think about what happened before 2016 and how many times the social fabric had been fractured (sometimes also with foreign actors) ...
I suspect this proposal wouldn’t be met well. Ignore the pachyderm in the shared living space (all the lovely money people make from advertising), but defining “what’s an ad” gets sticky.
For example, highly relevant PSAs and warnings could be considered “ads.” They can be every bit as obnoxious as “penis pill” ads, but they convey information that may be of life and death importance.
The placards outside professional offices are ads; possibly the oldest form of advertising.
In-store signage are ads, and can cost sellers a lot of money.
You could argue that “shelf-stackers,” and “endcap displays” employed by supermarkets, are a form of advertising.
Sales people rely on personal relationships, and get quite skilled at making every conversation they have, into a sales pitch (which can get annoying).
Promotion is a very complex system, and often goes far beyond simple signage. For many businesses, it’s a matter of life and death.
People that run businesses probably can’t live without them, and are willing to pay a pretty penny for ads.
One thing that might be relevant, are “ad books,” like the old-fashioned Yellow Pages, “pennysaver” papers, or the “brand books,” used by designers. These are ads, but gathered into a place where they are expected, and actively sought out.
In the last century, we often called variants of these, “catalogs.”
Silly idea. Some advertising is bad. Some is really bad. Other advertising is useful. I wouldn't know about half the gigs or exhibitions I go to and enjoy if it weren't for the advertisements throughout the city. There are many small local businesses I wouldn't know about (to my detriment) if it weren't for advertising. The internet as we know it never would have been built if it weren't for advertising.
But there is a certain kind of advertising that is detrimental. My first thought is Amazon 'sponsored' products. Allowing companies to pay money to put inferior products at the top of search results is bad for society. Same goes for Google sponsored search results. Sponsored content in general is terrible. People that have gained your trust selling you things and not actually telling you they are being paid to do so. There are many many digital ads that would not be allowed IRL because they would be stopped for false advertising by regulators.
Like most things in life these days, the problem is not the thing itself. The problem is the Wild West that is the internet where there is minimal regulation allowing people to lie, cheat and get away with it.
What if we built a strong culture around actively avoiding advertising? What if we educated the general public about adverse effects of time after time giving up your attention, without getting anything in return besides a short lived dophamine kick? What if we showed how it's only in those moments of paying attention a person has a chance to exercise agency over their own life, and spending that scarce resource on doomscrolling is a catastrophic-group-mind-suicide, sadistically prolonged over the lifetime of an entire generation? That the illusion of community in the comments is just that, an illusion that dispels the moment the user clicks the dreaded "logout" button spitting them back into a gray heroine-withdrawal-like reality, isolated from their peers, all means of human connection monopolized by the attention sharecropping farms? That every moment a jingle on the radio captures your mind it's distracting you from something necessarily more important? That we are all in effect trapped in that externally-perpetuated procrastination loop, with all the neon-lit arrows pointing us further and further away from what truly matters -- our very lives?
Stay away from the algorithmic feeds, instead get to know your authors and choose them explicitly. Stay away from the personalized ads, pay for content you care about, block what can be blocked, avoid the rest. Learn active banner blindness: catch your attention drifting and look away. Uninstall reels, tiktok, youtube, sanitize your life from short term attention grabbers. Turn off that TV. Mute your car radio. Practice focus: take a book and set a timer. Lock yourself up in a room with a hobby project. Meditate. Set up a ritual with a friend or family, as long as you still got any. Make smalltalk to strangers. Get to know your neighbors. Plan that getaway. Choose your life!
While laudable, this seems significantly harder to implement than banning advertising. Not that either are particularly feasible policies but this one seems harder.
Change advertising to anything we ban agree to ban as a society and you will see why putting the responsibility to the individual is not sufficient.
Laws don't get tired or can be forced through dark patterns. Laws are generally there to allow us to expect something from everyone at the same time.
Let's start with banning the sharing/selling of customer data, tracking data, or anything else that can be aggregated to form some idea of a targetable resource.
That would shed some initial societal parasites. See what's left, and then go after the next biggest / grossest topic in the space.
I could get behind that particular brandishing of chainsaw.
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.
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.
No worries, we can make those illegal too.
The internet is so full of authoritarians wanting to outlaw everything thinking that will work and not even thinking about supply and demand, definition of what is actually ilegtal and enforcement of that.
It's hilarious. For a forum where people pretend to be smart it's absolutely missing critical thinking.
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.
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.
I'm so happy to read this, I've been thinking about this question for a while now, and I think it would help a lot:
Big companies where revenues are based on marketing would collapse, the market fragments (which is good), smaller companies are created instead, better diversity of local products and services. Better wealth distribution. More money for the government, hopefully better public services.
With less flashy products and services, people have a better purchasing power, even considering they'll have to pay for services they use, like reviews. Review companies would need strict controls to be put in place against corruption.
It would probably also change a lot of nonsensical landscapes (ex: sports)
Advertising is evil.
If ads just vanished, that would be great, but making it illegal ought to do more harm than good. For one, a lot of ad money would be routed to shills, which are far more pernicious and have already infested otherwise great platforms like Reddit. Everything would turn to crap and no adblocker would help you. An ad ban would make every influencer profile instantly worthless, unless they decide to shill, which they're probably already doing anyway.
Also big tech would be incentivized to sell even more user data, as their business would still mostly exist, either via subscriptions, or through the now even more profitable user data market with more expensive targeted shilling.
I have thought about whether banning advertising would be a good idea prior to stumbling onto this article. I'm not saying there would be no downsides, but I think there would be a TON of benefits as well.
Consider that advertising is mostly (not 100%) a zero-sum game. It's not zero sum when it helps to inform people of products and services that would make their life better, that they would willingly have sought out and purchased if not for their lack of knowledge that the product existed.
However, there are lots of extremely common situations where advertising is just a net drain on society:
* when it encourages people to buy things they don't need, exploiting our monkey brains' desire for the seratonin that accompanies buying stuff.
* when everyone already knows what's out there in the market, and it's just massive empires fighting for market share, like coke and pepsi, or various car companies, trying to keep their products in people's minds. They're just playing tug-of-war and very little changes.
* again like with soda, or cigarettes, or vapes, or fast food and junk food, where the products being advertised are actually worse for your health than the default alternative (drinking tap water, not smoking, cooking food at home). Perhaps people enjoy these things, but there is a hedonic treadmill effect where you quickly get used to them and are no better off than if you just avoided them.
* when advertising makes public spaces less pleasant to be in. And when it's distracting to drivers, increasing the chances of an accident.
* when advertising makes websites hard to use
* when the advertising industry vacuums up tons of talented people with the attraction of the money they would make, who might otherwise have gone into careers that are more beneficial to the rest of society
I don't doubt that shills and astroturfing would still exist or possibly get worse if you did nothing about it -- but you could ban that too. You wouldn't catch everyone, but the threat of punishment would make it much less likely for people to be willing to participate in that sort of stuff.
I do think that we would need a replacement for the small, actual valuable thing that advertising provides, which is providing information. I think it would be great to allow sorts of "ad indexes" or "product indexes" which are websites specifically dedicated to aggregating information about all the products available in a given market. Maybe search engines are already good enough for this purpose. Honestly, when I want to learn about what's out there because I'm getting into a new hobby or something, I just do the google-reddit trick like searching for "reddit good value electronic piano" and reading about what other people like.
Likewise for politics, it would be fantastic if every election had a website where candidates could submit their policy platform and potentially a video or two (though I like the idea of JUST text for this) where you can read about them. It's hard enough to find out about candidates for local elections already.
So I'm very much in favor of trashing the whole thing. I think it's a case where advertising benefits those who do it (and in very rare cases, consumers) but mostly just has massive negative externalities. Classic case for either banning it, or putting a steep tax. Usually I'd prefer the latter (as in the case of carbon taxes), but I think taxing ads would be very complicated and the tax rate would probably instantly make most ads vanish anyway, so I think a ban makes more sense.
I definitely agree with ads being bad in principle. But banning shills is an even worse idea than banning ads, because you absolutely, under no circumstance, can correctly identify those. Any "replacement for the small, actual valuable thing that advertising provides, which is providing information", is bound to become infested in ways you cannot control. Escalate this idea further to solve the issues you created and you would end up banning speech or trade.
> It's such a wild idea that I've never heard it in the public discourse.
IIRC there is a Dilbert comic strip about that.
> Clickbait [...] would become worthless overnight
Advertisement is not the only incentive. E.g., the Veritasium YouTube channel's host explicitly switched to clickbait, explaining it by his intent to reach a wider audience. Another example is clickbait submission titles on HN, not all of which are for the sake of advertisement (unless you count HN submissions in general as advertisements themselves, of course).
> When I say advertising, I also mean propaganda. Propaganda is advertising for the state
Not necessarily for the state, the usual definition includes furthering of ideas in general. In more oppressive regimes, propaganda of certain ideas is actually banned, as it used to be in even more places ("heresy" and suchlike). Combined with selective enforcement, it is as good as banning all propaganda. It may be a particularly bad example of such a ban, but still an illustration of the dangers around it.
I think a better path towards the world without (or almost without) commercial advertising is not via coercion, but as kaponkotrok mentioned in another comment, via education and public discussion (which may also be called "propaganda"), shifting social norms to make such advertisement less acceptable. People can make advertisements unprofitable if they will choose to: not just by ignoring them (including setting ad blockers), but also by intentionally preferring products not connected to unpleasant and shady tactics, including those beyond advertisement: slave labor and other human rights violations, unsustainable energy sources, global warming, animal cruelty, monopolies, proprietary or bloated software and hardware are some of the common examples. Social norms and such enforcement seem to be less brittle than laws are, and harder to turn into an oppression mechanism.
Although, since I brought up monopolies and other issues, perhaps state agencies may also usefully assist with restriction of advertisement, as they do with those. Social norms and laws are not mutually exclusive, after all.
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 (à 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'd argue that people look forward to the Super Bowl ads specifically because they're clever/funny, and not at all because they're ads. You could replace them with non-advertising skits and they would have the same draw.
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.
It is an interesting thought. What could be new business models for sites that currently rely on third party advertising? It seems big publishers are increasingly moving to first party advertising. But that seems difficult for small publishers.
While advertising messages may not be themselves particularly important for free speech and can be even detrimental to it, e.g., propaganda, sites themselves disseminate speech and are often third-party ad-financed. What could be a good business model for them (other than direct payments)?
Unfortunately, the next question becomes “is consumer reports considered an ad” etc.
It becomes a question of what truly is an ad?
That said I appreciate this sort of thought; it would even be nice for it to be implemented, but whether it could be enforced is another question. At that point it then becomes a question of who you allow to advertise.
For a long time, hedge funds were not allowed to solicit investments publicly under rule 502c of reg D.
I could see grounds to restrict things further; I’m sick of restless leg syndrome drug treatment ads…
I really dislike the impulse to ban things we don't like.
Of course, a ban on advertising will never happen, because it's very useful to some people. I'm more concerned with the general pattern of thinking that goes:
1. I greatly dislike thing and think thing is bad. 2. Thing should therefore be illegal.
We should be less eager to use the power of law to mold the world to our preferences. It should be a solemn undertaking to use the law! It's an instrument of coercive power and should really be held in reserve as much as possible. Otherwise, we're all just petty tyrants sniping one another for minor transgressions.
There are many things that are very bad that nonetheless must be legal in a free society! I realize this is a uniquely American right, but I nonetheless believe "hate speech" must remain legal. It is bad, yes. I do not like it. I really wish it didn't happen. However, it is markedly less bad than entrusting some byzantine bureaucracy or benevolent dictator to adjudicate the meaning of hate speech. I greatly prefer a world with hate speech to one in which we apply legal authority to eliminate hate speech.
Some years ago, at the height of the Augmented Reality bubble, I had a hackathon idea about smart sunglasses that would replace any detected poster and billboard with information of your choosing - your favorite art, personal photos, notifications about upcoming alarms.
I am no longer into hackathons, but I would pay good money for such a product. Bonus points if it is styled like Nada's glasses from They Live.
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.
It's always the same story. I'm mad trump or some "right leaning" party won so this is what we can do to prevent that by being authoritarian "to fight fascism" and "the greater good".
It's not an honest what if because it finds no downsides or tradeoffs nor does it try to define what exactly would be ilegal.
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.
There are literally thousands. e.g. [1] [2] . Are you remotely serious about "free media"? There is no free media. Never was, not ever.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_United_State... [2] https://www.wallis.rochester.edu/assets/pdf/wallisseminarser...
Then you'll be thoroughly disappointed by US media. It's also not just about misstated facts, but facts they don't state at all when it is convenient for them.
I also say this without a hint of irony: I don't trust two shits on either side of the aisle.
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.
The issue isn't that advertising is speech. The problem is it's easy to label speech as something else.
It's interesting, I have been saying a much less intelligible version of this from observing my children. They have been exposed to services without advertising, and as soon as they see an ad... "Another commercial!!!". A part of me hopes their entire generation can develop a disdain for advertising based on the negatives they can see in their parents.
You don't need to ban it, you need to find mechanism to prevent the worst effects.
In civilized countries, this could be done by taxation (limit the mass) and regulation (limit the excesses.)
Use the country of the advertisment target audience to decide which juridiction applies.
I'm pretty sure advertisers have to be aware of the country their targeting, given that they know me better than my spouse.
What annoys me the most are advertised contracts like "Only 9.99€ per month*"
* First 3 months 9.99€, 42.99€ per month thereafter, 1 year minimum
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.
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.
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?
There's no such thing as a clear law, hence the need for judges. Too many people in this thread have never taken a contract law course if they think you can just "write good laws".
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.
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?
Find a major metropolitan newspaper from 1990. Print would be best, so that you can feel the heft. Now compare it to the same newspaper (if it exists) today. Print advertising did not become illegal, just uneconomical. Now consider what happens to the entities that now run on advertising. Do they survive?
Economist here. My biggest issue is with the “news” industry.
Companies provide what the customer wants. And, as the adage goes, if you’re not paying, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Advertisement-funded “news” isn’t meant to enrich the reader/viewer — it is meant to attract the reader/viewer.
I think that perverted incentive has always existed with it, but the internet ad technology has really killed the information content. And now we’re have society-scale problems with misinformed citizens.
I don’t think industry will solve the problem. If a company allowed users to opt out and pay, their richest customers would do that and those were the ones most valuable to advertise to. So, offering an opt-out probably loses them money (and increases costs).
I think the news industry should be advertising free. I’d have to think on if it should also have govt funding, but that often gets co-opted.
>I think the news industry should be advertising free.
When's the last time you paid for a newspaper?
Says the person paying a provider to get their voice out there to make themselves look better or influence the world.
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.
I think he missed one of the use cases for advertising: providing “free” services to people in the “third world”. I come from west Africa, majority of people can’t afford to pay for Facebook, YouTube, whatsapp etc even though these are their main means of communications. Even if they could afford it (“just a few cents is nothing” to us on here - to these people that’s how much they make in a day), they don’t use traditional banking services and certainly not access to credit and debit cards to make payments. I hate ads too, for all the reasons mentioned in the article. But I don’t see a feasible way to make these services available for the 1 billion plus people I’m describing. Open to ideas.
In France, I had watched a video on the subject more than 10 years ago, and since then I have been in favor of banning all forms of advertising, including and especially IRL in the streets. I've been using an adblocker on each of my devices ever since I saw that video, and I no longer see any ads (I use ReVanced etc. for X, YouTube, etc.), except unfortunately in real life since there are still ads in the streets, but at least from an activist standpoint, the online advertising industry should take a hit.
If any French speakers are interested, I believe it was this YouTube channel (which is very interesting anyway for discussions about fascism, advertising, manipulation, etc.): https://youtube.com/@hacking-social
I don't have to imagine it at least on the internet - I've been blocking all ads on all my devices very successfully since 1999. In fact now I can't stand having to look at or use anyone else's computer or smartphone (usually when they ask for free tech support).
IMO advertising itself is ok, if not targeted by profiling user. I'm reading about bikes and I'm offered a bike or helmet? Fine by me.
Problem starts, when I'm scrolling $socialWebsite and I see ton of biking ads, because some Orwellian ad network is tracking me through time & space.
Then content starts to serve as means to push ads into my eyes whenever I dare to open them. If content is crap - doesn't matter - if I switch to other source ad will follow.
What's worse - many people were brainwashed into believing that's normal. I remember guy from Chrome team, who published draft for web attestation. He was convinced he's doing good thing because brands have "right" to be sure they're getting real eyeballs and he was just making this process "better" for the users.
If ads are ok, how do you feel about this one https://i.imgur.com/599PMEl.jpeg
Obviously it's crap and shouldn't be allowed.
However I don't see how it affects my arguments. I'm generally ok with cars - doesn't mean I'm OK with monster trucks on every corner of my city.
One of the things that bothers me most about advertising is that we sell attention to the highest bidder. It happened before online ads too but online ad networks 'perfected' the bidding process. And I say this as someone who's made much of my wealth indirectly off of such ad networks.
It means the expensive product/service gets your attention, coz it can afford a higher bid, instead of the one that's better for you. It also sets a high floor on prices.
To some extent the bidding process was needed when there was inherent scarcity of inventory to place information (e.g. billboards or the 1 local radio station), but there's no scarcity online. Why can't we just have a web where product/service info is listed, and people can seek that info through some search engine?
For me personally advertising doesn't work. I've never bought or done anything because of an advert. If all ads stopped tomorrow nothing would change for me. Advertising clearly works out it wouldn't be such a big industry, I just don't get it though.
This idea immediately reminded me of “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” by James Tiptree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Was_Plugged_In
This novella is a masterpiece and needs rediscovery.
> The protagonist (P. Burke) is a lonely, severely depressed teenager. After a failed suicide attempt, an international telecommunication company offers her a new job -- to become a remote operator of a public celebrity. She is given a new persona "Delphi", and her new job is to buy products publicly to advertise them.
The protagonist is basically a Youtuber/Instagram influencer/TikTok streamer today.
Here's another thought: I just wish more businesses had some class. Maybe your logo and product doesn't need to be smeared across every inch of physical and digital real estate. I realize the article is focused on digital advertising, but for example, am I really inclined to buy life insurance from the guy whose face is on the back of the shopping cart? NIL has ruined college sports and at its heart it's about being able to slap a logo on the back of a college kid. Prudent to say, gee, maybe there are more tasteful ways to get the message out to the world about our produce or service would be a nice thing.
You can ban specific forms of advertising. But the general form is too vague, too easy to hide.
Movies set in our world, for example, should be allowed to show real cars, real phones, etc. But that is nigh impossible to prevent from becoming a fight for getting your product placed. And lots of similar places.
It might be possible to outlaw ads targeted more narrowly than a bit of content (i.e. advertisers have to choose, ahead of publication, what content to put their ads next to.) Combining this with banning some of the more direct advertising might work. Though perhaps a world where advertising is purely done through product placement is also horribly distopian.
It's fun thought, but probably also scary one.
The we have any robustness towards propaganda/ads is that we're being bombarded with contradicting arguments.
In a society without would be more susceptible to propaganda. Just just we outlaw it, just doesn't stop bad actors.
That there are lots of places we forbid advertising. Bill boards along the road. Content targeted minors.
We are also lots of advertising we could outlaw: regulated medicin, loans, gambling.
We could regulate what ads can say: products must be sold advertised price (fine print not allowed).
Lots of things could we that don't outlaw all advertising. Look around world you'll find many examples such regulations.
As ads are getting crammed into more and more aspects of our lives both online and offline, what I find particularly creepy is there's been a push by advertisers and tech companies to normalize these practices to upcoming generations. It seems like we're getting pushed towards the status quo of Futurama where we'll have ads broadcast into our dreams... As is the case with idiocracy, that wasn't an instruction manaul. I can only hope we can push the Overton window back to a place where limitatons on advertising can at least be considered.
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.
The global economy would fracture, is what would happen. A good chunk of the top performing stocks would disappear, affecting banking, retirement, housing, just everything. Most of the communication channels people use today would disappear. The online tools even non-ad-businesses use to function would stop, so those businesses would grind to a halt. News would disappear. Products would stop getting made. (US) Politicians would freak the hell out because now they don't know how to get elected. It would be a categorical economic and social disaster.
I think about this a lot. Consider the difference between the tidy signage of Tokyo versus the pell-mell streetfronts of Hong Hong. Societies should be able to choose how businesses impinge the public space.
Where I live this is hyper local. Some municipalities are extremely strict on ads (to the point of fining _churches_ over signage on their property) and some are overrun with billboards and ads on every corner and bench.
I don't think this is as much as a "societies choose" as "some societies have no choice." The municipality I'm in now struggles with property tax revenues and has to stoop to what I'd call predatory revenue streams (gambling, ads, etc) to make up the difference. And it creates a feedback loop.
I've never heard the signage of Tokyo described as "tidy." Maybe "chaotic," or "overbearing" fit better.
The sadest part is that we the consumers pay for having things constantly popping up infront of our eyes. There should be a ”NoAds”-label on products that have chosen to not levy the ad-tax on us consumers.
The inability to get a TV/stream box without some kind of ads cooked in infuriates me to no end, and it just feels like it's getting worse
For so many comments in this thread saying that it’s impossible to make all advertising illegal, we can certainly start with making personalised advertising illegal with all its invasive practices.
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.
au contraire.
internet have very few entry points, and they are all corrupted by advertising.
> 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.
As someone who grew up in the state of Vermont, where billboards have been outlawed since the 60’s, this feels do-able. It is also such a high leverage change that I’m going to keep thinking about this.
I think Bill Hicks had something to say about this once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY
I have seen it suggested before, but not for a long time. Things have become even worse since then. What I saw suggested was to ban all forms of marketing, not just advertising. The argument was that it exists purely to mislead consumers rather than inform consumers which is vitally important for a free market to function. So that means standardised plain box packaging, for example. Companies like Apple would have to display the features that matter, like battery life, rather than hide behind clever marketing.
I really like the idea. Fuck advertising.
There's much discussion about what constitutes advertising in the comments, with some dismissing this question as either solved or not crucial. Note however that seriously banning advertising requires a clear definition of it.
My 2 cents: Ban payed advertising online, including banner ads, search ads, and pre-roll / inter-roll ads (e.g. youtube and instagram).
This is a clearly defined market and probably causes a plurality of the negative impact of adverts (especially when connected with the incentive to algorithmically addict users to show them more ads).
Norman Mailer once suggested that advertising just be heavily taxed.
Since its positive impact on society is limited, this would be a way to channel some of that mind-warping wealth into actual civic improvement...
I'm against advertising that presents a simplistic, beautiful world — in other words, manipulative advertising. Which is basically all advertising currently. Nevertheless, there must be ways for producers to communicate the existence of their product and its advantages to the consumers. Comparable to how programmers put links to their projects here. How do you inform potential car buyers that you have built a car that consumes one liter less gasoline and travels 25 km/h faster, if you are not allowed to advertise?
Does anyone with a brain think ads inform? I'm not sure they ever did. The real issue here is that there's never going to be political will for this. Advertising and propaganda are the same yes. Lobbying is closely related. Banning anything for the good of the people or society is anathema to the current crop of politicians. Even if that wasn't the case, anyone putting this forward as a policy would find themselves running against an extremely well funded opponent with the backing of a lot of the media.
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.
> 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.
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.
I think we could actually start the path to this by making unethical advertising illegal. Here's kind of what I'm thinking: no forced advertising. All ads that steal time away from you (like forcing people to watch ads before accessing something) would be illegal. The reasoning being that you're essentially stealing an infinitely valuable resource: people's time. It's unethical for ad agencies to steal such a valuable resource for such a meager reason.
A lot of niche things I want cease to exist in this advertising-free world. If the interest isn't mainstream enough to get a word-of-mouth recommendation then it can't survive. The services we use to find these things, Google, Etsy, Fan sites, none of them exist without advertising. I'm sure you can think of something that was never explicitly advertised to you, that you wanted, that you wouldn't be able to find anymore if this came to pass.
I would love if we could just make unavoidable advertising illegal. What I mean by unavoidable are things like billboards, bus stop ads, ads on the plane preceding the safety demonstration, ads in a train station, etc.
I’m very fine with ads on private spaces. In a guitar magazine, a few ads for new music equipment actually makes the product better and is a win for everyone.
I understand that this distinction has a gray area, but we could start with the black and white cases (Vermont has tried)
> I am convinced that outlawing advertising is the best thing we can do for our world now. More than gun control. More than tackling climate change.
i would rather live in a world of public transportation, with less children and vegan oriented (climate change == enviroment) without people with guns and only at the hands of an effective police; 100x times than an ad. free world...
wrote this at my Android without a single ad. notification, via Firefox along ublock. been a while i watch an ad.
That's an issue I have with this article. We can avoid advertisements, it really isn't that difficult. It can be inconvenient but that's better than slowly eroding your sense of normalcy.
I'd rather not live in a childless police state, actually.
Taking the “organic certification” approach, there could be a “ad-free certification” for products and companies. This could be a first step towards an ad-free world.
Such and interesting thought provoking situation. So much money circulates and thrives off the idea of advertising. The concept of YouTube would cease to exist. Some products would never even get off the ground without some level of advertising.
What constitutes advertising vs marketing?
Does product placement count as advertising or marketing?
Does opening up a pop shop count as advertising or marketing?
So much to this, ultimately we do need to regulate advertisements. But I am not sure we can survive without them.
We describe "consuming" information and media just like food. I would settle for all media and advertisements having a required Nutrition Facts label:
Serving size: 1200 words / 60 seconds
Total commercial advertisement content: 600 words
Total US Government sponsored content: 300 words
Total foreign government sponsored content: 100 words
Total NGO sponsored content: 200 words
% of daily content of society shaping propaganda: 30%
% of daily content of subliminal content: 15%
% of daily content of emotional manipulation: %40
% of daily content of Gen5 warfare: 20%
I love the general idea, but banning all forms of paid advertising seems a step to far. That encompass a lot, and enforcing it would be near impossible. There's also clear areas where it could have a negative impact, like for public transport that relies on providing ad placement.
I don't see a problem with criminalizing big ad companies, ad markets, and ad middlemen. I think that would solve a good chunk of the issue.
What goes into your sense organs is just as meaningful, and capable of causing unwanted and lasting change or trauma, than what somebody does to your physical body. Intellectual force is no less force than physical force is.
Harassment is just a mild precursor to outright force. Advertising is just a mild precursor to intellectual force. Advertising is to indoctrination as physical harassment is to physical force.
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.
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.
Do you always answer the door for Jehovah's Witnesses, alternative gas companies, or posters? Usually, people put "No soliciting" signs on their doors and in their yard. They get irritated, if not irate, when these people ring the doorbell. How is advertising any different? Would you invite these people into your home to watch TV with you, eat dinner or drive around town?
I see it as a privacy issue.
I agree with this article but wish it had more facts and figures backing it up rather than vibes and adjectives.. bad faith actors may be malnourished by lack of ad money to prop up their sensationalism, but there are still platforms like patreon or substack(not advocating to destroy these platforms). Without solid evidence I can’t make the logical leap that advertising alone causes this.
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.
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.
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.
Where do we draw the line at what counts as an advertisement? I just bought a cassette tape that I learned about from a Facebook post. What do we call that post if not an advertisement? And if that was illegal, how exactly would I have found out the tape? Word of mouth? I don't think there is anyone in a 100 mile radius who listens to the same kind of music as me.
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.
“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.
It would also create a lot of new businesses. So allowing advertising at the moment has killed all those businesses.
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There's some fascinating research by Rachel Griffith which shows that advertising can be significantly welfare reducing for not only customers, but also for companies themselves (they just overall make lower money taken together); it is just another dimension of competition, like pricing/positioning, and adding a meaningful dimension is costly.
I think a better thing to do would be to outlaw algorithmic feeds where monetization is via advertising. If subscription based that is fine. The incentive for sub based monetization is to keep you long enough to continue subscribing. For ads it is to keep you on as long as possible which trends towards divisive / fear / anger inducing content.
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.
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
"What if we banned all advertising?"
This sounds like someone who was born intoo an era of internet advertising. As opposed to someone who has been expoosed to adevrtising over many forms of media, the internet being only a recent addition.
The early internet had no advertising. Commercial use of the computer network against the rules.
The web-based companies comprising "Big Tech", while they dominate today's internet by acting as allegedly "necessary" intermediaries and conducting surveillance, appear to have no viable business model to stay "big" in this scenario: where the computer network does not allow advertising, let alone commercial use.
Thus, the question "What if we banned all advertising" sounds extreme, unrealistic, the product of myopia, all-or-nothing thinking. Advertising will always be "legal". But historically man has regulated where it can be disseminated/placed.
A more interesting question might be "What if we had a computer network where advertising was prohibited or limited". About 35 years ago we did. Then the rules against commercial use were removed. Now people are complaining. People who never used the network in the time before advertising was allowed.
Imagine what it would be like to have a computer network without advertising using the computer and networking technology we have today.
Maybe this network could be built on top of the internet, as an overlay.
Make no mistake, there will always be computer internetworks that allow advertising. But the first ones didn't. And there could be ones in the future that don't.
I'm kind of shocked how rare it is to see someone say this out loud. We've normalized advertising to such a ridiculous degree that even questioning it feels like heresy. But yeah, imagine how different the internet (and society) would be if the incentive to manipulate attention just vanished overnight.
What if advertising were 100% truthful and straightforward. Like in that movie "The Invention of Lying" with the scene that shows a close up of the side of a bus with "Pepsi" on it, then as it pulls away the full advert reads "Pepsi... For when then don't have Coke".
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?
What does “doesn’t lend itself to word of mouth” mean? Products you can’t speak about?
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).
It's impossible to enforce a law like this. The real solution is to create personal AI filters for each person that reads all the data for the user, filters out anything that doesn't enrich the user, and hides the rest. A general-purpose AI-enabled spam filter for your entire digital life.
Submissions from yesterday and 3 days ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43558438 - 4 comments
[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.
I fundamentally disagree. You are basing your tenets on two overly-broad ideas that don't make for a good basis for an actionable framework. You are kinda motte-and-baileying.
First of all, I dispute that "human autonomy" is the basis for the immorality of slavery. Rather, it is the preservation of human dignity. The subtle difference being, you can cede a certain amount of your autonomy without losing any dignity such as when taking on a specialized role to function in a society (in other words, a job). Actions that violate another's autonomy has some overlap with actions that violate another's dignity but "some overlap" is all that is really there to it.
"Human attention is sacred" therefore...what? Would, for example, schools count as a violation of human attention? A good book? A perfectly fine movie with a smattering of product placement? There's no telling what the blast radius of your principle here is.
Rather than thinking of human attention as a sacred inviolable thing, it is more akin to a currency each of us can spend. We just have to facilitate wiser spending.
That's a fair point. Much like the original article, I don't have a very good idea of where to draw the lines
This seems to focus on online advertising. The question is how would you pay for many things on the internet?
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.
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.
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Ha ha, so your answer is, everything that advertising pays for, which is like 99% of the internet usage today, would go away.
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.
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.
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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?
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> Obviously credit card transaction fees would be a problem,
Card transaction fees here in Norway can be extremely low if the merchant uses BankAxept, much lower than Visa, Mastercard, etc. And it even works if the network is down.
https://bankaxept.no/en/services/backup-solution
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”.
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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.
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).
We can rely on donations, look at Wikipedia or personal blogs. The best parts of the internet are free and non-profit.
How many things on the internet do you really need and that are paid for via advertising?
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.
>I'd love to see the internet become relatively non profit
The stocks haven't gone down enough for your liking?
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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.
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.
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.
we could start by banning digital profiling and personalized ads entirely. the remaining ads could work with a pull model, and not this endless push model it's currently in. if I am in need of a service or goods, I should initiate the intake of ads, not the other way around.
If you want to take an incremental step towards this start here: make it illegal to buy or sell user data.
My ad blocker blocked 4 tracker scripts on this website.
This website is about blocking advertising because they're often predatory and invasive.
> Outlawing advertising would help protect and reinvigorate our minds and democracy.
Practice what you preach. Or don't, if you just want to make a quick-hit blog post.
No, I need advertising to know what companies to avoid. The more annoying the ad, the more will I spend time and effort to avoid the product and boycott the business. Which is quite easy actually, since most online adverts are for obvious scams anyways.
It will give enormous power to the monopolies. Because you'll no longer be able to advertise your product, but search on marketplaces will still be legal right? That means, Amazon, Alibaba etc. will have an absolute chokehold on everyone who sells things.
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.
Theoretically, this is impossible.
There is already a concept called surrogate advertising. In India, promoting alcohol products is banned, but companies advertise packaged drinking water instead. Everyone knows what it really represents, yet nothing can be done about it.
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.
Billboards however are banned in Vermont and Marin County, CA.
I don't think I fully agree with either the premise or the solution, but the pov is at least refreshing; in a world full of people proposing the same stuff we already tried 100x times over the last 70 years and we already know it doesn't work.
If we're going to do the extremely hard thing, why not just make ads opt-in:
That's typically not the target audience you want, people who are not willing to spend money and whose time is worthless.
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.
What's really interesting about this is that it's not just about advertising, but rather several deeper issues that all intersect with it.
* the pervasive tracking of data and serving targeted ads without consent.
* the addictive algorithms engineered to keep users engaged in the feedback loop.
* the machinery being used beyond commercial purposes - influencing opinions, manufacturing consent, and sometimes being hijacked by bad actors.
Not to mention the philosophical and psychological implications. What does democracy mean when elections come down to who spent the most on Ads? What's the merit of capitalism if consumers can be brain washed?
Like most here, I have a vendetta against Ad-tech and go to great lengths to keep ads out of my life (i highly recommend opnSense - Blocking ads across the whole home network is pure bliss).
But should they be illegal?
Questions of what constitutes an ad, how to enforce such a rule, and my personal opinion aside: I don't think its inherently wrong for a company to promote their products. I do, however, believe that all of the above points - data tracking, addictive algorithms, non-commercial ads - are bad and should be illegal. Outlawing all of those practices would do a great deal to restoring balance to advertising and the web.
Not thinking big enough. Make paid-for public speech illegal. Make speech free. Eliminates advertising plus punditry. Imagine a world where no-one gets paid a kingly sum to whisper poison into the ears of millions on a daily basis.
Ironic that the article pops up a banner "Follow @index@simone.org via your Fediverse account (like Mastodon, Pixelfed, Flipboard, Wordpress, Writefreely, Threads, or BlueSky.)" ie advertising themselves.
Advertising is a zero-sum game, just as most crypto and stock market activity.
It's the basis for web2 economy just like crypto is the basis for web3 economy, though. So it's hard to make a man admit something when his livelihood depends on it.
The crime is broadcasting without a license.
We are all guilty, making waves, swamping the spectrum with antagonistic signals that often interfere with each other.
We have too many signals in our society. The resulting noise, the cacophony of lies, are echoed and amplified and evolve into perpetual crosstalk and distortion.
Too many signals transmitting too frequently with too much power.
We can't really outlaw advertising.
But we could limit and license spectrum, like we do with radio frequencies. We could legislate the broadcasting and publication of information, based on that extended simile: regulating 'antenna power' and the airwave spectrum... Holding any broadcaster responsible for the public welfare of their listeners.
We share the infosphere. These channels are theoretically owned by us, the aggregate public. Certainly we are all swimming in the same ocean.
We might want to agree on some boundaries, and even licensing, for broadcasters.
I believe companies would resort to paying individuals to give word of mouth or endorsements to friends and neighbors and anyone who will listen. Social media would be full of "I've just tried this and..."
so if Simone.org here paid someone to help build this website of theirs, where the posts ends with "Sign up for Kōdō Simone" and a short blurb why the blog is valuable, that would be illegal, right? Because they paid someone to create an advertisement. This post claims that "community networks" are fine but where is the line between that and a paid advertisement - if I paid someone to print my business cards vs. paid them to put the card on a board? or to put up flyers around town for my band? "advertisement" is so vague I just dont understand this proposal.
> 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
There is of course absolutely zero chance of this happening. But I didn't actually expect that amongst people rather than lobbyists/corporations the very idea would actually be considered controversial, subversive or offensive. I'd have brought popcorn if I expected this incredible display of mental gymnastics. I guess I assumed that even people who are forced into the situation where ads are their bread and butter directly or indirectly still know about the damage and think the whole thing is gross. (I've been there and done that myself..)
Now I'm thinking of the "neighborhood beautification projects" in Abbey's Monkeywrench Gang though where the guys light up the cutting torches to cut down any billboards that get too close to the Grand Canyon. The fear of course is that police might drive by, since if you think about it the activity itself is really reversing vandalism more than anything else. Apparently today you would have to worry about mobs of concerned citizens tearing you to pieces for taking away their right to be advertised to? I'm so amazed by the very idea of this I can't even get that disgusted or angry about it. What else are these people up to, how do they live and what else do they think? Like, if the best food was determined by ad budgets, do they wonder what to have for dinner ever, and what's the most gourmet cuisine in that world? Best candidate for the election is the one with the biggest ad budget? Channel surfing to get away from the annoying so called "content" that prevent you from seeing ads? I feel a bit like I've discovered alien life or something
Start with banning billboards.
Rather than ban ads in an absolutist sense, why not think about ads as “bads” (rather than “goods” in economic terms) and then tax them?
Let’s define a “good” as something with positive utility and value, and define a “bad” as something that imposes harm or negative externalities. If we treat advertising as a “bad” — not uniformly, but in terms of impact (manipulation, misinformation, psychological harm) — then we can apply Pigovian logic: tax it to reflect its societal cost. This wouldn’t require a blanket ban, just a rebalancing of incentives. Less intrusive or more transparent ads might be taxed less, while high-volume, misleading, or attention-hijacking ones could face heavier levies.
This shares the spirit of the original argument but trades prohibition for systemic correction — more like how we treat pollution or cigarettes. The advantage is that it avoids the free speech trap, acknowledges that not all advertising is equally harmful, and allows markets to adjust.
You don’t need a moral consensus to act — just an agreement to price the harm.
I have thought a lot about this basic idea of “incentivise goods / tax bads” over the years, and even how to do it a way that is revenue neutral to the government (via “feebates”) and advertising is one of the first places I’d try this.
Likelihood of success in the current climate: zero.
some related ideas from the intellectual kernel of Google, for you to improve on/steal from
https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/japan/japan....
(I tend to think of the aether in which ads are transmitted as the public, uh, space)
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I will check that out.
In between you doing that and me thinking on it overnight, I ended up writing up my thoughts as a blog post [0], which I have submitted here to HN as well [1].
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43620407
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This is such an insanely good and important idea, that it feels inevitable that we'll eventually do it, probably in the next decades/centuries.
Probably one of the hardest new laws we'll ever have to implement.
Is the "follow me" bar that moves with (and covers some of) the third paragraph and can't be dismissed intended? Either way, it struck me as a little ironic given the content of the article.
People market themselves when they put on makeup. Should makeup be banned too?
Article clearly says "advertising".
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.
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.
I've sold a product that were only possible to sell because of targeted advertising.
The customers were happy and I made a profit.
Hard to see advertising as outright bad even though it should probably be more regulated than it is.
Although I almost never see any ads at all online thanks to uBlock Origin on all of my devices, I agree that making it illegal would be a net benefit for society. It would be hard! But worth it.
Impossible in the United States under the constitution. To put plainly, this would be a colossal first amendment violation, abridging the freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Yeah not really. Advertising has been and is currently banned in many forms and situations. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press is not unlimited. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=be04fd64-b899...
what else seems “impossible” under the “constitution” and yet happens daily (if not hourly)…?
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....
How would that work for physical shops, restaurants etc.? No illuminated signs allowed? No products or services visibly displayed? Everything has to be invisible in the streets?
Good questions go get started, we can begin with the obvious and figure out the details later.
But yes, to me illuminated signs are wasteful to my attention and to environment, so out they would go.
Well, it would be great if we could simulate an ad free environment
Who is going to know about your product if you cannot advertise it?
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.
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.
Then your company would be beholden to the Yelp's of the world. Pay up or have your listing removed.
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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.
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.
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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.
>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...
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
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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.
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)
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.
> things we benefit from are free or significantly reduced in price due to the profitability of advertising.
Is this actually known to be true? And if so, to what degree and for which products, at which point does it tip into simple manipulation of the customer?
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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)?
This is the exact type of thinking, this type of casual totalitarian social engineering, that led to the invention on the guillotine.
Interesting but the issue is that you can't just ban advertising because it has many aspects.
20% discount or tv ads are a form of advertising, easy to spot. What about sponsored content ?
It's already trickier to detect, and even then there are sponsored content where someone is paid to showcase, review or straight up lie about a product quality.
If I make a great job with a customer and I tell him, make everyone you know aware how great I am. That's also a form of advertising.
Just being myself is advertising for myself, if I'm good at something, I can take part in a talent tv show and purposely avetise my skills to tv viewer.
This is poorly thought out. What this would incentivize is first party content networks. Instead of fox selling ads it would be the colgate channel for example
There never was any need for advertising, except for someone desiring to get paid for it.
you know it's a scam the moment they promise you more than 2% returns.
Don’t need to make it illegal just make it not deductible.
It's deductible?
In the US advertising is considered a business expense. So we equate it with investing in infrastructure or research, both of which reasonably would be subtracted from your revenue to determine your tax burden.
It's very dumb.
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From what I can tell, the problem isn't advertising so much as surveillance.
Surveillance is much worse, and banning it also solves the worst aspects of advertising.
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
People already give away free advertising for free by wearing branded clothing. That is more beneficial to companies then actual ads on screens.
On the South Bank in London, physical advertising (posters/billboards etc) is banned and it makes it a much nicer place to hang out
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.
To measure attention while confusing it with intent, is at the root of everything wrong with today's society.
A start would be banning of misleading statements and half-truths.
A panel of randomly selected 100 people will be the judge and jury.
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"
Yep, it's hard. Let's deter it in the first place with imprisonment for the CEO if convicted. Ads will be amazingly informative.
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.
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?
Illegalize advertising. Then intensely monitor every conversation everywhere always for advertizational content.
as good as it may sound, but this will never happen. People will never pay for everything, majority don't even buy PC games, they use pirated one's. This is how humans are designed, and this is what which keeps the market afloats.
Yeah I really want Simone to be the overlord who defines what should and shouldn't be allowed
What about ads from governments and organisations that promote mental health awareness, DEI, etc.?
Why? Are people going to your house and measuring your feet and asking if you want to buy sneakers?
Entrenched incumbent big businesses (others than those selling advertising) love this proposal
Don't ban advertising but also don't treat commercial advertising as pure free speech.
For instance, for false claims, make it easier to drag a corporation into court and get legal remedies commensurate with the damage or potential damage caused by their dishonesty.
Right now the bias is towards unfettered, dishonest and psychologically manipulative commercial "free speech" with no guardrails the average person can enforce.
So, saying "we think this is the best detergent ever" is fine. It's clearly an opinion. But false or generally misleading claims, especially those that cover-up the potential dangers of the product, could lead to punitive damages sufficient to be a deterrent.
Burning Man is an example of advertising free world and it is quite a refreshing ad-free week.
We'd probably go into a recession, there is a lot of money in advertising and marketing
Just tax it.
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.
That would be huge, also really good original scenario idea for a future sci-fi film
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?
99% of consumer tech would die
Cool. Is there a downside?
I hate advertising because it’s nonconsensual, subconscious manipulation. When I see an ad for product X, I’m more likely to buy it in the store than product Y because there’s artificially increased familiarity for it in my brain. If the purpose of advertising was to inform, you’d never see an ad for Coca Cola, since everybody on the planet knows about it already. The %0.01 of advertising that informs me of a product that I might actually purchase can die overnight, and I’d not notice a difference, because I use adblockers and when I need something, I search for it on the internet, Google, Amazon, and the like. When I need reviews I turn to Reddit and HN.
If advertising is a zero-sum game between companies competing for your eyeball-minutes, allocating double digits of their income to marketing departments, it’s a net drain on the economy. If it’s a positive-sum game for companies and you are purchasing more goods than you otherwise would because of the ads you see, it means you are purchasing stuff you don’t need, and it means advertising is a way to funnel your money to companies through nonconsensual means, i.e theft. In reality it’s a slightly positive sum game for companies.
Advertising is cancerous in the sense that if there was no advertising, nobody needs to advertise, but if somebody is advertising and you are not, then you’ll lose market share and die, so you advertise too and hence it spreads. It is parasitic in the sense that vast amounts of collective resources of society is spent on this redirecting-money-from-company-A-to-company-B scheme with no positive value generated.
Political advertising undermines democracy. Ads have a huge influence on the outcome of modern elections. You need billionaires backing you to fund your campaign, and guess what? Those billionaires will have some special requests when you take the seat. Fair elections and leaders caring for the people are only possible in a world without political advertising.
All arguments in favor of advertising are circular, they presume the current economy/society where everything is heavily dependent on advertising and then point out “Look, but X wouldn’t work without advertising!” In reality a world without advertising would look much different, and my hunch is it would be wealthier and with less inequality, too.
Social media is nearly the same as those home shopping channels from the 90’s.
Nice. Advertisements is one of the first things I studied seriously, when still in high school almost thirty years ago. I remember arriving at the very same conclusion, even though Big (AD) Tech had yet to arrive. Any hypothetical rational and enlightened society in the future - think Star Trek - would of course not have any advertisement. It just doesn't make sense. It is a compromise, an evolutionary transition, like fascism, human sacrifices or settling conflicts with a duel of pistols.
If we - as in humanity - are still there in 500 to 1000 years, advertisement may be taught in a history class as one of the barbaric practices of the 21th century. Maybe some scholars will be able to relate it to world hunger, climate change and genocide with a mathematical precision that we are not yet capable of. That is a timeline I love to think about.
Of course, slaving away in the asteroid mines for Bezos inc., looking at hyper sexualized ads for a trip to Mars is equally likely.
From a forum with technical people (that build stuff) I would have hoped to see more ideas that would propose replacing advertising with something better (sorry, if I missed any replies, but did not see that).
Advertising can be useful (to find out about stuff) but very disingenuous (because people can lie). What I would very much like is to be able to assess the trustworthiness and similarity of people advertising me stuff. If someone likes same things as me and I never find him to "lie" (whatever my personal interpretation of that is) I should give him more trust. If someone picks things that I am not interested in and I think he favors stuff (because he is paid, for example) I should give him less trust. Then when I look for a product/video/restaurant I should see things recommended by people I trust more.
I know this kind of happens with "stars", "vloggers" and so on but lacking a system where you track it, means that it is easier to get complex to separate who is just "fun" and you watch but you know he lies and who is also "trustworthy" and you know you can also take his recommendations into account.
But that's just one idea, maybe there are others out there...
I'm not against this idea, but I feel like it can be really hard to execute in practice. Especially considering that many of the parties involved don't mind being maliciously compliant.
The really tough part is classifying "what counts as an ad". Of course the ones shown by Facebook and Google are ads, but let's look at some not-so-straightforward examples:
1. The community centre in my neighbourhood has a wall with lots of ads from local groups. Language practice groups (which are free), language lessons (paid), narcotics anonymous, painting classes, and a lot of other services provided by individuals or small groups. Some of them non-profit, some of them are the main source of income for those providing the service. I deliberately approached this wall looking for those ads, and we need them for this kind of groups to survive.
2. A supermarket places a large banner near the entrance with this week's offers. The products on offer are expiring soon. There's an interest in selling the goods so they are consumed and don't go bad. The interest isn't only on the supermarket's behalf: as a society, we want to minimise the amount of food that goes to waste.
3. How do we buy and sell houses if there are no ads for "houses on sale". I am aware that there are economic models where individuals don't need to buy and sell houses, but switching to such a model seems way beyond the scope of the proposal. Is an ad stuck to the window still allowed?
4. iOS shows "suggestions" in the order of "sign up for cloud storage to store my data because your phone is full". I consider this an ad. Can we write legislation which would catalogue this as an ad without false positives?
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.
The article is suggesting that they'd rather not have ads than not have guns? Because ads are tools of manipulation? WTF do they think guns are for?!
Let's face it, it is incredibly simple to entirely avoid ads everywhere online. Vivaldi or Brave will block all ads (Brave even does it in YouTube) so just install those in 2 taps and you're set.
Many online communities and first party sites are free because they are paid for/motivated by ad income though
Sure there are many sites that don't have ads and are done truly as a passion project by the owner(s) but many rely on the income to pay for bandwidth and hosting etc, or even staff costs. Would Reddit et al exist without any source of income?
People say "I'd pay to use foo without ads!" Yet when those options are available, and when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is, turns out that actually most people don't want to pay to access foo without ads (think YouTube, think Facebook etc that have ad free tiers that hardly anyone pays for). People just block the ads and keep using it for free and so the site gets neither ad revenue nor subscription revenue.
It is possible because the largest incumbents would profit enormously
"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."
Feels similar to a point in a larger rant about bloated page sizes:
https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
"I think we need to ban third-party tracking, and third party ad targeting.
Ads would become dumb again, and be served from the website they appear on.
Accepted practice today is for ad space to be auctioned at page load time. The actual ads (along with all their javascript surveillance infrastructure) are pulled in by the browser after the content elements are in place.
In terms of user experience, this is like a salesman arriving at a party after it has already started, demanding that the music be turned off, and setting up their little Tupperware table stand to harass your guests. It ruins the vibe."
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.
I love this idea. Jaron Lanier should join forces with the author.
I hate ads. I hate them everywhere I see them, but if you want to start a business, and you can’t advertise, how do you possibly stand a chance against entrenched incumbents? Banning advertisements is regulatory capture taken to an extreme.
There can still be product catalogues, people will still shop in person or on online resellers. You can still start off with a limited time discount so people can try your product. None of these need advertisement, they are organic ways of getting the word out there.
That's the best thing I've read in months if not years.
Not going to happen. There is no higher calling than advertising and marketing. Most of us here have probably worked on something that is at least adjacent to or in support of that noblest deed of influencing others to spend money.
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 ;)
how sad, pointing at hypocrisy met with downvote button :)
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.
there are people who disagree, they are called communists. and yes, they can ban agriculture, no agriculture for you my friend.
True enough, but the math never works out in their favor either.
>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.
> Any form of paid and/or third-party advertising would become illegal. Full stop.
I am currently selling my house. He's basically saying this would become impossible. This whole post has some real im14andthisisdeep energy.
Some sort of default Anonymity layer may be worth exploring
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.
This would be an insanely cool premise for a short story!
We’d probably have more underground free papers with clever writing, littered with tons ads in them, circulating around in the black market.
But there would likely also be a lot of bad “telephone,” literal word of mouth, but the message might get lost, turning into disinformation.
On the other hand, there could be organized, sanctioned markets where you’re allowed to hock wares and show off product catalogs.
> It makes perfect sense.
Only to authoritarians who think banning things is the solution to everything.
This is the typical "common sense Genius notion" that hasn't been thought out one bit.
This person doesn't care for democracy. They are zealots and ignore the fact that:
- marketing is communication to achieve a goal (reaching a potential customer about the value of a service) and is a legal way for companies to compete. If they can't do marketing legally they'll do it illegally and/or compete with violence. - discoverability is necessary and if you didn't have any means to discover stuff it would be insane or worse, absolutely dictated by this "democracy lover" who wants to have total control for "the greater good".
I don't like ads one bit and absolutely welcome regulation (which is hard because whether you outlaw something or not, the money will be there, see alcohol and prohibition) but this is just so self congratulating and obtuse that it's hard to take it seriously.
All the talk about propaganda or fascism and laughing at the concept of free speech tells me this is yet again, one of these "my blue party lost the elections and I blame propaganda and ads" and that they haven't even given it a second thought beyond "I get clicks" because they don't explain how they propose making sure communication doesn't hide advertising in it. Articles like hers advertise her blog, posting it here is advertising. Making any sort of argument about X being better is an advertisement for X.
It's like people want to play scenarios in their head and refuse to think about economics and game theory because the reality is they want to shape the world politically to their will. Authoritanism hidden with "good feels".
No thank you. You're far more dangerousn than ads.
Hell yes. Advertising is legitimate interest but it has become completely degenerate with social networks and the attention economy.
It is the root cause of many modern issues and _something_ definitely needs to be done about it. It even erodes capitalism itself by making consumers the product, which has been known for a while but the generalization seems non-obvious - that this happens every time when to the producer-consumer relationship is introduced a third party that changes the financials incentives of producers.
I probably wouldn't go as far as making advertising completely illegal but I'd like to see it regulated and probably limited to spaces specifically made to be "advertising hubs" both online and in the physical world.
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.
Advertising isn’t the problem. It’s a natural part of discourse and business. The issue is “dishonesty” and “manipulation” and the tolerance of these.
Do we need a way to connect suppliers with consumers? Yes. Do we need an intermediary that acts in bad faith? No we do not.
I would propose the crazy idea that such intermediaries should be at least equally responsible to the consumers as the suppliers.
That would be helpful.
A lot of discussion here about where boundaries would be with free speech, how this would be implemented, specific details. But, as with any policy, this is not a binary "do it or don't". This is a dial that can be turned in a more libertarian or a more regulatory direction. (In fact, even this is simplistic: it's many hundreds of conceptually correlated dials.)
The interesting question is whether we're happy with where the dial is right now, which direction we want to push it, and how fast --- and the underlying meaning of the article is that maybe we should be pushing it in the regulatory direction very fast indeed.
Start with just outlawing political advertising.
For me it's the pointlessness of it all, and the fact that advertisements even when "targeted" are just sprayed out of a firehose at me.
So many apps I use are supported by 30-60s ads for some stupid fucking mobile game that I immediately know I don't want to install, I have no intention to interact with the ad and yet I'm forced to sit through it for 30s, only to hit the X on it and have it open the Play Store anyway?!?!
And video ads in general, if I know that I'm not interested right away, why am I forced to sit through 30-60s of it?
I mean I can look away from a fucking billboard...but this stuff. A great first step would be to make ads that forcibly hold attention like that illegal.
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.
what can be the alternate business model to serve services like instagram, youtube to such large no. of people???
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.
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.
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.
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>If someone mentions it to someone else, that alone should be grounds to shutter your company.
I don't agree. It should depend on whether such a mention leads to promotion of the product. We are not barbarians to limit freedom of speech.
After any mention of a product by its user, a court should be held to decide whether this mention was advertising. Because even though the user received a benefit from purchasing the product from the company (otherwise he would not have bought it and would not have become a user), advertising also implies promotion, so the court must first determine whether this mention was made in such a way that it could potentially induce the purchase of the product by other people, and only then close the company.
And it doesn't even have to be a mention. Advertising is really mean, like a couple of days ago my girlfriend ate a pudding right in front of me. And it was the last pudding, and she ate it so well that I wanted one too. And you'll never guess what I bought at the store today! Yes, that same pudding. Unfortunately, we are vulnerable to advertising even when we are fully aware of its destructive nature.
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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.
Someone wants to pull up the ladder?
How will a new business promote its product if advertising is banned ?
Thinking from a small business perspective, advertising is the only way to find consumers if you are just getting started.
Business stop advertising. Sales drop. People lose job.
Does that mean paying for Facebook?
Isn't this article advertisement by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?
(edit: I have actually been thinking in similar terms as the article, but I do think the article is optimistic and utopian, as if a good intuition would be enough to prevent the very same forces from exploring the reform
Filtering visitors by fingerprint of the browser (cloud flare and palemoon) won't stop bots, but creates a market for more sophisticated bots)
what
A lot of people have suggested that the idea is in opposition to free speech. The title can be misleading here. The article doesn't talk about banning 'advertising' - it specifically says "Any form of paid and/or third-party advertising would become illegal. Full stop." People can still advertise themselves using different channels.
With so much fake news and data, a lot of content has started to seem like white noise. Maybe this is a direction worth exploring for us as a society.
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.
Honestly, I’d have no issue with banning advertising. Truth in advertising laws don’t seem to have any effect at all, and spaced repetition combined with targeting is pretty much the most vile thing I’ve ever seen.
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.
Kind of love this idea...
The funny thing is so much of the advertising industry seems like embezzlement or fraud. So much of the time money is being pumped into this industry unnecessarily, things like Coke could not pay and suffer no loss in profit. It seems like some nonsense to keep money within first world nations or something. Just money going to a gamble which doesn't stand up to basic scrutiny as reasonable.
We’d back in Soviet Russ
Making advertising illegal is probably not going to pass first amendment muster in the US (though god knows how much longer we'll have meaningful constitutional rights at all) but at one point there were laws against blatant misrepresentation, lying, and deception. Any such laws still on the books have long since ceased to be meaningfully enforced.
One way to do it in social media:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/04/05/The-CoSoc...
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.
I see no errors
If we make ads illegal, only criminals will advertise.
It would be hilarious to have a criminal trying to goad me into buying a bucket of fried chicken.
No. There would be some guy on the street goading you to enter a restaurant by offering you free chicken, and once you did enter, they would start pressuring you into ordering other things while overpaying for that bucket of low quality chicken that may or may not be a health hazard. There would be a threat of violence and you would not be allowed to leave before paying.
I get that you all hate ads
And you hate paywalls
And you don't subscribe to newsletters
And you don't buy merch
And you don't donate $5 to Wikipedia
And you haven't bought Winrar
And you think copyright should be illegal
But maybe you should consider the second order effects
> 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.
I watch crowd here since 2011, and asking cowards not to downvote will probably have opposite effect :)
if you disagree with the tribe, you will be punished by the tribe. Some of the tribe can down vote you and so they will use this terrible power to silence anyone who might shake tribes life view :)
Being downvoted isn’t punishment or silencing. But I find it lazy to simply downvote something because you disagree with what is being said.
USA would rather ban abortion than advertising
Which is normal in a lot of European countries
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
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
Growing up around Seattle, I had never seen any billboard ads on the freeway. I had no idea it was heavily regulated in Washington State! I wish other states would ban them.
Could you name 3?
Author would love this song:
https://genius.com/Minutemen-shit-from-an-old-notebook-lyric...
This sort of thinking is exactly why Big Tech shifted from being left Democratic in Obama's time to being center-right Republican in Trump 2024 election. Demonizing ads comparing it to Heroin and tools of authoritarian regime is a MASSIVE hipérbole. Go to look at heroin addicts. Go to look at people that click on a personalized ad with cookies that knows they want to buy a new fridge. They are very far apart. It's like claiming the electricity company holds you slave. Go look at what slavery was. The simple truth is that Big Tech is incredibly powerful because they earned it. They made incredible technology that helped humanity moving forward. Yes there is a great power imbalance now. Yes it would be better if that power was less concentrated. But it also wrong to demonize Big Tech, to paint them as evil Machiavelli's dealing drugs. What we need is a new generation of Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple. Yes Steve Jobs in order to build Apple in his own time painted IBM as evil, but it was done in an ad (paradoxically) and it wasn't the whole government passing laws against IBM just to reduce it's power. I'm European and GDPR in Europe was in my opinion a very bad move. I don't think third party cookies are that bad. And people that think that they are bad they usually don't know how they work. Companies shouldn't directly export your plaintext data to others. Third part cookies didn't do that. So stop painting ads like heroine. Once you destroy Google you will have destroyed also the income that allowed Google to give us free (g)mail, free maps, chromium and then node, Android and a ton of other products I'm not remembering right now.
What advertising should be made illegal?
The spyware and bunch of blatant lies part?
Or the new product discovery part?
Is everyone forgetting there's a middle ground?
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?
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.
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).
> 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?
> 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.
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> It's speech for sure.
Good point. It’s specifically paid speech that’s the problem.
Are cigarette ads still free speech? Are you saying those should be legal again?
> 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.
Ads power the free internet. I prefer them to paywalls and silod information.
The problem with all this is that consumerism seems to drive economic power.
Particularly good advertisement in society is a cultural trait that makes it consume way more than it needs, driving individuals into debt, but that means way more business activity to capture that and then redirect all that human effort into actual power.
Butan has no advertisements and people consider themselves quite happy, but the second China or India decide they want something from it, there is nothing it can actually do.
Kinda like in the novel “the dispossessed” from Le Guin - the anarchist planet ultimately lives at the mercy of the capitalist one, and if policy changes (for example - Trump) then you are … no more.
So while I agree that ads are an unnecessary tax that should be banned, I can imagine a society that does could end up at the mercy of a society that doesn’t, given a generation or two.
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.
What if we made ad-blocking illegal?
Welcome to reality....
In True Communism (tm) there would be no need for advertising! Because anything people could want they would already have!!!!
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.
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.
I say this shit all the time.
> 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.
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.
What a nonsense idea, you'd need to nationalise news, in the USA, right now this would not go to well, imagine Trump having the only news outlet...
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 ?
This is totally bullshit. In USSR ALL enterprises was own by government, private property prohibited and many rich people killed or jailed, even churches transformed to form of museums, so advertisement become unnecessary and nearly disappeared.
This was extremely ineffective society - because in such system people don't have any real motivation to grow and to become better.
And this leads to society of fools - when in 1990s borders opened, many scammers from all the world, made fortunes on fooling people, who just used to sterile environment without even weak manipulation, so totally defenseless for really serious scam.
Unfortunately such environment now, after 30 post-soviet years have extremely problems with economy.
Imagine, we in Ukraine have thousands engineers unemployed, or working for less than general laborer.
You may wonder, how this could happen. Answer - information inequality - engineer or any other professional know at least few times more than ordinary people (or from other specialty).
Why information inequality is so important - because even in USSR, where govt tried to make totally controlled "planning" economy, have about million products on market, so to optimize production need to solve system of equations 1Mx1M size, which is even now semi-possible.
In free market environment, complex of mechanisms "invisible hand of market", advertisement+entrepreneurs as intermediators+mechanisms of reputation, making market semi-optimal, so in real world have about 30% resources spend ineffective.
But when soviet govt claimed to make 100% effectiveness, in reality, was about 300% ineffective spending, and that's why USSR fail - just because was ineffective. This have many causes - first I already said - people was not motivated to grow anything; from lack of motivation appeared technical weakness - unmotivated people don't invent new things and not eager to adopt abroad technologies (because this also need lot of hard work); tech weakness leads to lack of modern computing infrastructure, so when USSR government dreamed about modern computers, could have only outdated hardware, steal from West (or got via grey-black schemes which is just other name of steal).
And after USSR fail, several directors of huge soviet enterprises, used scam schemes to become private owners of these enterprises, and now they brake reforms, to save their fortunes and power. And for small business need more than 10 years to gather so much resources and reputation, to become enough powerful to run reforms. So many exUSSR countries stuck in between totalitarian and democracy (in reality I see slow motion, but seen next fact in many cases impossible to say, if it is positive or negative, or just nothing significant), and nobody could predict, how many years will spent in this extremely slow motion (or I prefer to name it hang in the air).
So, if we made advertising illegal, huge enterprises will got huge advantage over small business, and will disappear concurrency, so richest people will become rich forever and poorest people will become poor forever.
And must admit, I sometimes don't like advertisement, but it is required by market, so we need to invent some other measures to make advertisement more ethical.
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advertising should be illegal. its lying propaganda which is now utilising brainwashing techniques
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I haven't reade the article, but YES PLEASE.
> What if we made money illegal?
Good luck.
Don't ban. Educate.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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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.
Any voluntary transaction between two conscious, consenting adults is axiomatically ethical and moral.
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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.
> 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.
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"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.
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You know what is an example of propaganda/advertising? Peta, extinction rebellion et al antics. Marching for right to bear arms. Standing outside of Tesla dealers dissuading shoppers. Militancy, activism in general. At this stage of society I too think having less of any of this is good. It's a shame there's no ad blockers for militancy. The chance to achieve consensus on this is 0, so we will be left with propaganda to try to shift public opinion towards censuring one militancy over another
You seem to have mentioned pretty much the only things that I think are worth keeping under your definition of "advertising".
(Noting that the extremities of some of those examples are already illegal)
It does highlight, however, that a shared definition of a spectrum of what "advertising" actually means, is the first step towards being able to exploit whatever rules the politicians decide upon.