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What if we made advertising illegal?
11–20 of 90 posts
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#12I 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 with giant companies who have all the brand recognition. Now you need to somehow make your Etsy store viral instead of just putting it in Facebook ads
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#13I 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.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#14> What if we made all advertising illegal? It's such a wild idea that I've never heard it in the public discourse.
Local jurisdictions have restricted or even forbidden outdoor advertising since it was invented.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#15I used to know one of the great ad execs from Mama Bell and he told me nothing happens in this world until a person decides to trade a dollar for something. How do they decide such things? How do people become aware of what things are available for purchase? Another thing he said was that they knew half of their ad spend was "wasted" on people who would never buy what you have to sell. The feeling I get from the auth…
Maybe it's not possible (tried and failed or just technical fantasy), but if the ad market could be inverted where I could manage what I am and am not interested in, as well as sell feedback on the ad (couldn't understand the value prop, thought it was dumb, loved it, etc) where the end user is not the product but a partner in that marketplace.
I've not thought it through deeply, but the notion intrigued me.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#16I used to know one of the great ad execs from Mama Bell and he told me nothing happens in this world until a person decides to trade a dollar for something. How do they decide such things? How do people become aware of what things are available for purchase? Another thing he said was that they knew half of their ad spend was "wasted" on people who would never buy what you have to sell. The feeling I get from the auth…
If I want to know what's available for purchase, I check out https://geizhals.de or visit a store and look what's there.
Hope I could give insight into a largely ad free life
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#17I despise advertising, but anecdotally, I can think of three ads in the past week that informed me about products I didn’t know existed but would enjoy. I also learned about multiple new games releasing, sporting events that were happening, etc. The claim that ads are not at all informative is incorrect.
That being said, I also block as many ads as possible from my life, so the few I actively notice tend to be more noticeable.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#18Imagine an empty cafeteria. You and your friend enter, get your meal, sit down, and enjoy quiet conversation. Then two other people do the same thing and, because your voices reverberate in the room, you and your friend begin to talk a little louder. As more people enter, the ambient volume increases until no one can hear themself think, never mind hear the person across the table from them.
That is how advertising seems to me. If only one person hired false witnesses, their hires might rightly be consigned to the eighth circle of Hell where they belong. But because everyone hires false witnesses, it's become an operating expense necessary to overcome the ambient lying.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#19> What if we made all advertising illegal? It's such a wild idea that I've never heard it in the public discourse. Local jurisdictions have restricted or even forbidden outdoor advertising since it was invented.
Related:
Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36586632 - July 2023 (413 comments)
São Paulo’s Outdoor Advertising Ban (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20725409 - Aug 2019 (95 comments)
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#20i am in favor of this. of course, in America, that would mean no 1st Amendment which I am okay with doing away with as it has served its purpose.
I would say the exception would be one must speak with 100% certainty. No 'virtually no side effects' and none of this 'best burger in 200 miles'.