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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#81

Post by krapp »

tim-tday wrote: post #80

Can’t. Some asshole convinced us to allow them to frame advertising as speech to get it protected by the first amendment. Clever. Tragic, but clever. If you ask me advertising is manipulation, specifically designed to convince you to buy things you don’t want or need (if you want it or need it advertising is literally not necessary). But I’m not the boss and we have things like the constitution guiding what we can an…

It's difficult to see a good faith argument where advertising isn't speech protected by the first amendment, that doesn't put other forms of speech in peril. One could argue that all religious and political speech is manipulation specifically designed to convince you of positions you don't want or need. What is the news media if not advertising a point of view? Every movie, television show, book, song is trying to manipulate your emotions and advertise itself, or an artist or author. It can get really slippery, really fast.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#82

Post by cadamsdotcom »

t0bia_s wrote: post #58
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #40

It'll get replaced with something even more annoying that isn't called advertising but is functionally identical. People make things then talk about them. It's normal. A careful read of this piece should show you why advertising was invented in the first place and why it's fundamental to commerce. Unless you want to go back to buying from your neighbor or buying only what your limited circle of friends can recommend…

Why product needs advertisement? Because it's terrible and is unable to justify it's existence. Good product is advertisement to itself. Imagine that market is filled only by useful products.

The market will be filled with people who can't reach their audience. That's far worse.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#83

Post by davidivadavid »

rwz wrote: post #50

I'm blown away by author's refusal to spend even a second to adversarially pressure-test his idea and try to imagine for a second what the world would realistically looked like with advertisement banned. Like, the movie industry as a whole cannot exist without advertisement. Nobody would spend hundreds of millions of dollars on production of the scale of Odyssey, if there's no way to communicate to enough people abou…

Having working in that area a little bit, simple heuristics to know if someone has dumb ideas about advertising are whether they: a) think it's some kind of magical MK-Ultra-level mind control technology, b) think the business that pays them for a living could exist without any form of advertising. Once that's acknowledged as fantasy you generally get into goal-post moving territory about what is or isn't really advertising but that's purely academic.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#84

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #53

Don't need to ban advertising everywhere Just need to ban advertising on the internet When I first used the internet, advertising, i.e., commercial use, was prohibited

Don't need to prohibit commercial use

Just need to exclude "advertising services" from acceptable commercial use

By all means, use the www to sell stuff

But having nothing to sell, intermediating access to sellers and selling "ad services" should be prohibited

Allowing intermediation of access to sellers and sales of "ad services" creates the wrong incentives, e.g., data collection, surveillance by third parties, and serves the wrong interests, i.e., so-called "Big Tech", not sellers or buyers

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#85

Post by cykros »

satvikpendem wrote: post #31
khatkhati wrote: post #13

I LOVE this idea and advocate for it in private convos all the time. Banning ads and enabling (micro-)payments for accessing content that is currently ad-supported would be an unimaginable game-changer.

Definitely not. I don't want to pay for every single website I visit for example, it creates a chilling effect overall as to my want of visiting many different sites.

The UX would have to be carefully thought out. But something like setting a "don't bother me" threshold, an overall budget, and an amount that you would like to be asked for explicit permission before accessing would go a long way to making it a smooth experience.

I don't want my browser just paying everything willy nilly but I also don't want to be nagged every time I access a news article as to whether or not I agree to 6 satoshis.

There could be ways of addressing that; browser extensions may make it a configurable option with the default of "ask for everything" being the absolute safest way forward.

Decent use of the http/402 error code, and sort of exactly what the L402 folks are working toward resolving.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#86

Post by dredmorbius »

Timon3 wrote: post #72
firasd wrote: post #12

I think one way to look at this is that--why are Meta and Google so successful? Because they are basically an index fund on the world economy right. If you want to sell soup in Jakarta you advertise on Instagram. If you want to sell paint in France you advertise on Youtube. If you want to sell T-Shirts in Boston you advertise on Facebook So then the flipside is that without ads these sellers now have to complete head…

On the other hand, brand recognition is fundamentally a function of advertisement. This would mean that the money spent on advertising has to be invested into improving products instead, and without the ad industry actively destroying every halfway honest avenue of comparing actual product performance, you have a chance of customers recognizing your product's advantages.

I've long considered advertising to be an anti-signal. Overly-advertised goods/services are those I actively avoid.

Seek out alternatives, usually local, FS/OSS, noncommercial, etc. Sometimes you might get burnt, but often it's quite the pleasant surprise.

And yes, every so often I find something that's good *despite its being heavily advertised.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#87

Post by dredmorbius »

khatkhati wrote: post #13

I LOVE this idea and advocate for it in private convos all the time. Banning ads and enabling (micro-)payments for accessing content that is currently ad-supported would be an unimaginable game-changer.

Ban ads: yes. Or at least tax the motherlovin' heck out of 'em. And regulate the jebeezus too.

(See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49048747>.)

Micropayments: no.

As I've said before: Micropayments have an absolutely unblemished three decade history of perfectly and precisely failing to work.

(Why? See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41261063>.)

Alternative: an all-you-can-eat bundling option with a wide selection of publishers. We're already starting to see this with, e.g., commercial wireless / broadband plans, though largely limited to the major streaming platforms rather than news/journalism sources.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36838925>.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#88

Post by Timon3 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #86
Timon3 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, brand recognition is fundamentally a function of advertisement. This would mean that the money spent on advertising has to be invested into improving products instead, and without the ad industry actively destroying every halfway honest avenue of comparing actual product performance, you have a chance of customers recognizing your product's advantages.

I've long considered advertising to be an anti-signal. Overly-advertised goods/services are those I actively avoid . Seek out alternatives, usually local, FS/OSS, noncommercial, etc. Sometimes you might get burnt, but often it's quite the pleasant surprise. And yes, every so often I find something that's good *despite its being heavily advertised.

I try to do the same, but I rarely know which ones get advertised too much due to adblocking. It'd be great if there'd be some directory which lists the big offenders!

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#89

Post by dredmorbius »

Timon3 wrote: post #88
dredmorbius wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long considered advertising to be an anti-signal. Overly-advertised goods/services are those I actively avoid . Seek out alternatives, usually local, FS/OSS, noncommercial, etc. Sometimes you might get burnt, but often it's quite the pleasant surprise. And yes, every so often I find something that's good *despite its being heavily advertised.

I try to do the same, but I rarely know which ones get advertised too much due to adblocking. It'd be great if there'd be some directory which lists the big offenders!

Some breaks through. I figure that which does has to be pretty bad.

(Various methods: occasional use of un-blocked media, podcasts, being out-and-about and exposed to street ads, others' video / audio / streaming experiences, print, bars / restaurants / offices / gyms, etc.)

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#90

Post by mathgeek »

card_zero wrote: post #70
mathgeek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The catch there is I don’t look for this stuff, as it isn’t a priority. I am happier not pursuing what advertisers want to sell me, as my time is limited. I imagine many folks are the same, based on it being a core problem advertising tries to solve for businesses.

That's kind of interesting. I was thinking independent reviews would become important. But you're saying that you wouldn't want to spend any time at all reading or watching or listening to the output of an entertainment reviewer. Instead you want exactly what adverts do: to be tracked in an effort to read your mind, and then to mendaciously shove news about events and movies and games in your path, while you're doing…

That's a lot of extrapolation that's incorrect. All I said was I've found some ads recently that were actually useful to me. I don't want to seek out ads, nor do I want to see them. Usefulness does not imply desirability. Think of it like "I don't want to drive in traffic, but hey, there are some funny billboards along the way. I wish they'd just take down all the billboards, but at least some of them were funny if I'm forced to see them."
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