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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#231

Post by Ukv »

senderista wrote: post #189

So 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 abse…

I'd claim services being ad-funded is not dissimilar from being funded by a JS crypto miner - which is to say while it does move money to that service, it's on net a waste of resources and average affordability would be better without it.

For instead of your ISP spending 20% of their resources advertising (because otherwise they'd lose market share to ISPs that are advertising), they could likely offer email hosting and basic web hosting without you paying any more than you do currently. Competition between companies should be directed towards productive ends (improving their product) else it just becomes a giant zero-sum game of resource wastage.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#232

Post by TuringTest »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #179
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…

No. This is called selective enforcement and is the worst thing in the world. It gives the enforcers the option to pick on whoever they want and give a pass to whever they want, as if there were no law at all. There is effectively no law at all, because literally anyone doing anything can be called either guilty or innocent at the whim of the person doing the enforcing, or whoever controls them.

You've just described how laws actually work - but we have created modern judiciary system so that it will tend to produce outcomes considered fair by the majority. Algorithmic enforcement of justice without human deliberation of case-by-case specifics would be worse that the worst horror stories about soulless bureaucracies.

That's why we have judges and lawyers, so that the outcome can be decided as a communal process instead of just one person deciding what is punishable - even if the person is the developer building the automated justice dispenser and they'll be not around when the decision is taken, it would still be made by the whims of a single enforcer.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#233

Post by ghssds »

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…

Remind me why corporations are protected by human rights such as free speech.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#234

Post by stego-tech »

Just from the headline alone: oh please dear god yes.

The internet became usable after implementing the Pi-Hole. So much noise, so much wasted bandwidth, so many unnecessary lookups, gone with a Raspberry Pi and a few packages.

While other commenters are getting into the technical weeds of things, the reality is that the OP is right. Ads don’t inform, they manipulate. They’re an abusive forced-marriage that we cannot withdraw from even with ad and script blockers, because so much of society is built upon the advertising sector that it’s impossible to fully escape them. People like the OP and us are mocked for moves to block billboards in space as being “alarmist” or out of touch, yet driving along any highway in the USA will bombard you with ads on billboards, on busses, on rideshares, on overly-large signs with glowing placards, in radio and television, on streaming providers who raise our rates on what used to be ad-free packages.

Advertising is cancer, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not. Let’s get rid of it.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#235

Post by tptacek »

Here's how not constitutional this idea is: municipalities can't even ban circular flyers, which is essentially junk thrown onto the doorsteps of everybody's houses, junk nobody wants, because the First Amendment proscribes those ordinances.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#237

Post by kelnos »

I've been saying this for years. It would be great to make advertising illegal.

Advertising is just psychological manipulation. Any argument that there's "good" advertising that respects the target and is merely informative... well, maybe there is, but it's overshadowed by the other 99.9% of the garbage.

Implementing this feels impossible, though. There would be disagreement as to what constitutes an ad. I disagree with the author that advertising isn't an exercise of free speech; I think that would be a huge roadblock in any country that enshrines free speech rights.

But man, that would be great.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#238

Post by lukev »

jdietrich wrote: post #133
lukev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Advertising is a zero-sum game. If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth. It's only when some actors start advertising that the others must as well, so they don't fall behind. And so billions of dollars are spent that could have gone to making better products. It's basically the prisoner's dilemma at scale.

>If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth. Most consumers don't do extensive research before making a purchasing decision, or any research at all - they buy whatever catches their eye on a store shelf or the front page of Amazon search results, they buy what they're already familiar with, they buy what they see everyone else buying. Consumer behaviour is deeply h…

I think a market without advertising is sufficiently "alternative reality" that it's difficult to say what it would look like. The giant incumbents are only giant incumbents because of ads to start with.

In a world without advertising, our entire cultural approach to consumption would necessarily be different. Maybe it would be as you say. But, maybe we'd be more thoughtful and value-driven. Maybe objects would be created to last longer, and less driven by a constant sales cycle. Maybe craftsmanship would still be a valued aspect of everyday goods.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#239

Post by ndr »

Almost every single time speech is limited someone finds a way to weaponize that limitation.

In most jurisdictions there are, at times weaponized, limitations, and that's the tradeoff those jurisdiction landed on.

I don't see how this proposed limitation could produce acceptable weaponizations.

Just think for a second how outlandish these would sound with such limitation in place:

- The ban on "persuasive content" is used to shut down political dissent labeled as "unwanted influence."

- Independent journalists are silenced when their reporting is categorized as "promotional advertising."

- Fundraising for humanitarian causes is outlawed as "solicitation advertising."

- Religious discussions are prohibited as "advertising spiritual beliefs" or "donation to the organized religion."

- Medical awareness campaigns are shut down as "advertising health concerns."

- Environmental activism is criminalized as "advertising eco-agendas."

There would be just no end of these.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#240

Post by Gud »

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…

Good question. Yet, unlock origin manage to filter out 99.99% of all all ads without blocking actual content, so must be possible!!
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