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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#291

Post by freetime2 »

The biggest TV event of the year in the US is the Super Bowl, and a big part of the event that people look forward to is advertising. Ad spots during the Super Bowl are famously expensive (like millions of dollars for a 30 second ad), and advertisers try really hard to make funny or memorable ads. There are lots people who don’t care about football and watch just to see the ads.

The best ads and brands are an iconic part of our culture - something cherished and celebrated by many. I think this is worth keeping in mind at least when talking about banning advertisements.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#293

Post by glacier5674 »

hedayet wrote: post #77
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also promotes fairer market competition by giving smaller players a shot at visibility, That's what they said about patents, and so far it just means players with more money buy up more patents. Do they not buy up more advertising too? Coca-Cola and Google spend huge amounts on advertising just to make people feel okay with the amount of control they have over everything

> That's what they said about patents, and so far it just means players with more money buy up more patents. That's a bit of a strawman argument. > ...Coca-Cola and Google spend huge amounts on advertising just to make people feel okay with the amount of control they have over everything. I agree - some reform is necessary. The current system often exacerbates the imbalance, but completely dismissing advertising igno…

Sometimes the man really is made out of straw.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#295

Post by 888666 »

mgraczyk wrote: post #286

Is there any concrete evidence that anything bad has ever happened as a result of advertising? I don't like rap music, but I think it would obviously stupid of me to claim that it's harmful because I dislike the aesthetics. What is the steel man for "advertising bad"? Articles like this always take for granted that advertising is harmful, whereas on the contrary I'm starting from a position where advertising is one o…

I agree. Many things we benefit from are free or significantly reduced in price due to the profitability of advertising. I would not want to live in a world where I'd have to find everything through word of mouth and not get to try free versions of services.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#298

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 »

Terr_ wrote: post #284
gcp123 wrote: post #262

I can’t stop thinking about this article. I spent a long time in ad tech before switching to broader systems engineering. The author captures something I've struggled to articulate to friends and family about why I left the industry. The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters. Having built targeting systems myself, this rings p…

It is a tricky and uncomfortable truth that human minds are hackable. On the flip side, we've had many thousands of years of adversarial training, so it's not as if protections don't exist—at least for a very classical modes of attack.

The reality of "mind control" of those perpetually exposed to media has been a popular topic throughout the last half century at least.

Humans don't have those protections. Although, ego deludes oneself to believe they do. Ask anyone if they are susceptible to advertising. Maybe 1 in 5 have the humility and awareness to state the truth.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#300

Post by SteveNuts »

renewiltord wrote: post #39
SteveNuts wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be a reason someone hasn't invented a browser plugin for microtransactions on the internet? I'll gladly pay 25 cents to read an article from a news website, but I won't subscribe for a whole year for $25+, especially when there's dozens/hundreds of sites. Obviously credit card transaction fees would be a problem, but that could be mitigated by depositing say $15 at a time and deducting from the balance eac…

This is something I explain too. I’d gladly pay maybe 10 cents for IntelliJ but it’s the Pirate Bay otherwise. Just set the pricing appropriately. It costs $0 to make a copy so it’s an infinite margin. Same with most SaaS. About 20 cents per month should be the maximum. Any more than that is gouging. Hiring engineers is even worse. I think about $20/hr should suffice but there’s this big fuss kicked up about “they’re…

I mean the alternative is they get nothing from me at all once I hit their paywall..

And I don't think ad revenue is paying the bills so I'm not sure what other options there are. I just went to a few major news sites:

Wapo: $120/yr Reuters: $45/yr WSJ: $349/yr NYT: $195/yr Bloomberg: $299/yr

That's just a few. Is it better if I just choose one and only get my news from a single site? Or should it really cost thousands of dollars per year to be informed?

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