Well, it would be great if we could simulate an ad free environment
What if we made advertising illegal?
181–190 of 1001 posts
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#182This 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…
You don't need to draw a precise line, just one where things over the line are clearly undesirable, like billboards on roadways, TV commercials, etc. There are some countries with virtually no advertising. People who visit the DPRK come back saying it's like "Ad block for your life".
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many lines are hard to draw but we benefit from trying to draw them. Worrying too much would be bikeshedding The biggest example that comes to mind is gambling. Japan says it's not gambling if the pachinko place gives you balls and then you have to walk next door to a "different" company to cash out the balls. I say it sounds like their laws are captured by the pachinko industry. Video game loot boxes are technically…
Any laws with blurred lines will be used by the people in power against their political adversaries to keep them in power.
All laws have blurred lines. I guess you could say some are a lot more blurred than others.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#184Better would be to make targeted advertising unprofitable. This could be done by requiring data retention to be accounted for as a liability on the balance sheet.
E.g. If a business want to run an ad in the newspaper, go for it. But if they want to follow me around on the internet and collect information on everything that I do, then they should be required to record what they collect. Congress could then vote to make laws introducing taxes on that quantity.
Once this stuff is measured then appropriate counter measures could be taken to discourage socially damaging enterprises.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#185Glad to see this, been noodling on it for a long time. My crazy proposal is to make advertising illegal, in the US... by nationalizing Craigslist. USList or some such. No more billboards, no more ads on TV or radio or podcasts or when you're on a plane or when you're in an Uber and they have that screen. No more ads in something you've already paid for a la newspapers. You want to advertise to, say, all the people in…
You don't see how this could possibly be used by unethical politicians?
Like, only Company A (who completely coincidentally contributed to my political campaign) is allowed to advertise inside the political boundaries I control?
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No, that's why I said 'unsolicited' rather than 'third-party', so take the motorway billboard toll road example - if you also happen to own the car dealership or the webapp, you can't advertise that, because that's not what I've come to your motorway for.
And what's solicited or 'relevant' doesn't need to be rigidly defined in statutes (assuming common law) - the ASA or OfCom whoever it would be (UK examples) slaps fines on the rulebreakers and if they think they've interpreted the law correctly in good faith then it goes to court and we find out (and the growing body of case law helps future would-be-advertisers interpret it).
The existing advertisement disclosure rules for social media for example don't allow the loophole you propose: a 'sponsored' segment shilling a product in a YouTube video isn't considered different from directly selling video time to the third-party in which to run their own ad reel.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 b…
> People who sell things need ways to find buyers.
No, you've got that backwards. People who sell things should have a way of announcing their product to the world. Buyers who are interested in that type of product should be the ones seeking out the companies, not the other way around.
The current approach of companies pushing their products to everyone is how we got to the mess we are in today. Companies will cheat, lie, and break every law in existence in order to make more money. Laws need to be made in order for companies to stop abusing people.
You know what worked well? Product catalogs. Companies buy ad space in specific print or digital media. Consumers can consult that media whenever they want to purchase a specific product. This is what ecommerce sites should be. Give the consumer the tools to search for specific product types, brands, specifications, etc.; get rid of fake reviews and only show honest reviews from verified purchases and vetted reviewers, and there you go. Consumers can discover products, and companies can advertise.
This, of course, is only wishful thinking, since companies would rather continue to lie, cheat, and steal, as that's how the big bucks are made.
I honestly find it disturbing that with all of humanity's progress and all the brilliant technology we've invented, all of our communication channels are corrupted by companies who want to make us buy stuff, and by propaganda from agencies that want to make us think or act a certain way. Like holy shit, people, is this really the best we can do? It's exhausting having to constantly fight against being manipulated or exploited.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#188Earlier 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…
There would be a chilling effect on speech. People would be afraid to speak or be imprisoned for saying the wrong things. North Korea is the only country that bans advertising.
> North Korea is the only country that bans advertising.
Outright banning, yes maybe. But many countries or local governments severely regulate advertising in one form or another, and no one is crying foul either.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#189So some of the most critical public goods of our age, which are currently mostly ad-funded, like web search, video hosting, email hosting, smartphone navigation, etc. would become publicly funded? Great, I'd like to live in that world too. But this article says nothing about how to get there (actually it considers the demise of Google et al to be an argument in favor without even considering the fact that in the absence of advertising, Google's services would need to be either restricted to those who could afford them or taken over by the government).
Advertising certainly has plenty of negative externalities, but the positive externalities of the free ad-funded services I mentioned are absolutely mind-boggling. Try to imagine living without them (if you couldn't afford to pay for them yourself).
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#190This 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…
How do grocery stores work in this model?