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What if we made advertising illegal?

simone.org

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#2
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.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#9
post #6

This seems to focus on online advertising. The question is how would you pay for many things on the internet?

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.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#10
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?

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