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Comment by jononor

2 months ago

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.

So we want the government to decide what is advertising and propaganda? Is telling people about the wrongs of government propaganda? Is going door to door about have you made Jesus the head of your life propaganda?

  • The point is that advertising and propaganda are indistinguishable. Going door-to-door to talk about Jesus is the same as going door-to-door to talk about vacuums, but neither is anything like roadside billboards or programmatic advertising. We can ditch the billboards and the programmatic advertising and get a better world, even if some advertisers and propagandists still go door-to-door. At least when it’s door-to-door the advertiser/propagandist has to really work for it, and you have the option of just not opening the door.

  • Yeah? The government defines what is murder, defines what is tax evasion, and defines tons of other stuff already? Some states already have laws against billboards?

    • How would you like the government deciding some cause they didn’t agree with is advertising?

      If you live in a conservative state, what are the chances that they say advocacy for Planned Parenthood is advertising and say that advocacy for pro-life is freedom of religion?

      And how would that work over the Internet? Are you going to block foreign websites?

      I can give you a real world example. Florida requires age verification for porn sites. Sites not based in the US including the ones owned by MindGeek just ignored it.

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