Comment by Hendrikto
2 months ago
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?
We can see historically that advertising evolved from the charmingly blunt "Foo Bros. makers of hats" to "makers of the FINEST hats" (untrue, but at least we still know what business they're in...) to "wear Foo or no one will talk to you again". Along the way, regulations had to be enacted here and there, snake oil didn't actually raise the dead, so lying about that was banned, but letting us feel that we're inadequate because we can see how happy and cool the people wearing Foo are on TV (or TT) is just their free speech. And of course there are the side effects TFA touches on like building trillion dollar empires for Goog and Meta, and using the same levers to manipulate voting and buying.
Personally, I can imagine a world without ads because I block them everywhere I can, and somehow I still manage to buy things, even if they might not be making me feel as cool as I should if I'd only play along.
> Is this manipulation or information?
Looks like manipulation. Information would be a sheet of parameters relevant to the product. The cheapest and most expensive strollers can be claimed to be "Compact" and "Ergonomic".
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.)
Resellers maintain such information. There are many websites where you can specify the weight, height and hundreds of other parameters for your product search.
Ad revenue is not the only kind of revenue. Traditionally, people would pay purveyors for goods or services they deemed valuable enough to acquire/use.