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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#141

Post by dr_dshiv »

Eavolution wrote: post #28

I actually in principle have no fundamental problem with advertising, but it's execution on the internet I have many, many issues with. Putting an ad in a newspaper, or on the side of a building, or during a break in a tv show seems perfectly reasonable to me. What I absolutely have issues with is targeted advertising, having to modify content to make it advertiser friendly (i.e. reasonable people on YouTube having t…

I agree and I just wish to god I could simply tell those poor advertisers what I actually am interested in because they are just so consistently wrong and it annoys me.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#142

Post by pishpash »

OJFord wrote: post #131
toomim wrote: post #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 sample…

I would propose 'unsolicited salesmanship'. If I enter your restaurant, car dealership, etc. then you can pitch & try to up-sell your goods and services to me. If I drive down a motorway or use your website, third-parties can't advertise their goods and services at me from spots you've sold them. (But you can tell me it will be faster to exit onto your toll road or that I should buy or upgrade my membership plan on t…

So no third-party advertising. But that would then create bundling schemes where the restaurant sells you a bundle of their goods and some third-party goods together, for a kickback on the backend, or they make referrals.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#143

Post by renewiltord »

fixprix wrote: post #116
renewiltord wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, personally, I think you shouldn’t even tell your friends and family. That kind of “native advertising” is ruining human relationships. People should stumble upon your product. If someone mentions it to someone else, that alone should be grounds to shutter your company. Even so-called “catchy domain names” are a deep evil that we didn’t have in the heyday of the US: the ‘70s. Your product should be named exactly…

I actually agree. Telling friends and family will get you more of a 'flash in the pan' response. They are not content creators or influencers. You need to do advertising to figure out if your product/business is even economically feasible. For example, run an ad campaign on Google, figure out your CPC (cost per customer). See if that is even below your LTV (lifetime value per customer) plus operating expenses. And th…

Yeah, that’s the classic The Mom Test insight innit

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#144

Post by hshshshshsh »

spaceywilly wrote: post #90

“What if we made advertising illegal?” Many small companies would go out of business, that’s what. Yes we definitely need advertising reform, but advertising is a very important part of any business if they want to be successful. Making it illegal would cut a lot of businesses off from their potential customers. The author doesn’t seem to propose any alternative solution for this.

It would also create a lot of new businesses. So allowing advertising at the moment has killed all those businesses.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#146

Post by frogperson »

I don't know if advertising should go, freedom of speech and all of that.

I could see an argument for eliminating targeted advertising. I think everyone gets the same message or none at all.

Being able to precisely target a desired group for a desired outcome seems too powerful and dangerous to exist as it does today.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#147

Post by OmarShehata »

imiric wrote: post #127
toomim wrote: post #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 sample…

We don't need to go into absurd discussions in order to prevent 99% of the harm that comes from modern advertising. The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That's advertising. Someone I know mentioning a product because they want to recommend it to me? Not advertising. Giving out "free" samples? Presumably someone is being paid to do that, so advertising. We can later quibble about…

> The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That's advertising.

this is obviously not a clear line. No money is exchanged when I promote my own product through my own channels, nor when I promote my friends products, whether I disclose it as promotion, or disguise it as my genuine unaffiliated opinion. Sometimes it really is a genuine opinion! Even worse: sometimes a genuine opinion becomes an incentivized one later on as someone's audience grows

the good news is there is a solution that doesn't require playing these cat & mouse games and top down authority deciding what is allowed speech: you want better ways to reach the people who want your product.

Ads are a bad solution to a genuine problem in society. They will persist as long as the problem exists. People who sell things need ways to find buyers. Solve the root problem of discernment rather than punishing everyone indiscriminately

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#148

Post by UncleEntity »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #50
UncleEntity wrote: post #30

Ok... First, it is 100% free speech. Second, the government isn't allowed to make laws prohibiting the exercise of free speech based on the content of said speech. Nor can it take actions which are arbitrary or capricious. Third, restrictions on free speech MUST fulfill some overriding public good like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater or words meant to incite violence. Slander, libel, &etc. Fourth, why is it even…

> First, it is 100% free speech. It's speech for sure. > Second, the government isn't allowed to make laws prohibiting the exercise of free speech based on the content of said speech. Nor can it take actions which are arbitrary or capricious. Except that they can and do, as you outline below. All laws are arbitrary. > Third, restrictions on free speech MUST fulfill some overriding public good like yelling "fire" in a…

> Except that they can and do, as you outline below. All laws are arbitrary.

The third rule follows from the second, the government isn't allowed to curtail speech except under extraordinary circumstances which has been whittled down to basically "panic and disorder" and "fighting words". The other two are civil torts if I'm not mistaken, you can't be arrested for slander or libel. There's others but they are extremely limited.

> Firstly, the fire thing is a myth.

Go spread panic and see how fast you get charged with disorderly conduct or whatever the equivalent local statute is. Bonus points if someone is harmed by your actions.

> Secondly, so we're just quibbling on "overriding" then?

No, the Supreme Court has some pretty hard and fast rules on this.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#149

Post by djoldman »

djoldman wrote: post #117

This is a really interesting question. Some thought experiments: What do [search engines, social networks, newspapers] look like? I assume they'd all be paid and you'd get some free tastes and then decide which you'd pay for in the long term (à la kagi). By removing the third party payer, the service provider has no incentive to do anything for them, whether aligned or not with the user. That is the big plus. What ab…

Thinking through this more...

All money and energy spent on advertising might be funneled into employees and workers. We would see a huge rise in promoting a company's products through their employees through any medium possible.

If you're a company, you can't pay a third party to get the word out, so you massively increase public relations spending and attempt to get publications to do articles on your product.

We would see all advertising hide under the guise of public relations: PR firms would sky rocket in workforce and there would be many more "review" sites and "news" sites. SEO would increase even more than it is now.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#150

Post by kelseyfrog »

tener wrote: post #113
kelseyfrog wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ambiguity of these questions is a feature rather than a bug. Being unable to tell when something is "advertising" forces everyone to think twice before hawking their wares, which is exactly what we want if we intend to kill ads. The chilling effect is precisely the intention. It’s the engineer’s curse to believe that airtight laws are automatically better, or that justice springs from mechanistic certainty. The w…

So we end up in a system in which those with money to litigate will do what they want? I'd rather have airtight laws instead.

Can you point to an airtight law regarding speech that exists today - both as written and enforced? I can't.

This is a worse is better[1] situation. Specifically, I'm arguing against the MIT approach to lawmaking.

The MIT approach:

> The design must be consistent. A design is allowed to be slightly less simple and less complete to avoid inconsistency. Consistency is as important as correctness.

Thinking about laws like software terminates thought.

1. https://www.dreamsongs.com/WIB.html

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