What if we made advertising illegal? • Hacker News Board

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#31

Post by thfuran » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

SecretDreams wrote: post #9

daedrdev wrote: post #6

This seems to focus on online advertising. The question is how would you pay for many things on the internet?

Sign me up for a monthly internet pass. Shit, bake it into my monthly internet access fee and make it so the service providers then pay back into internet infrastructure. Just like we do for radio and TV. I'd love to see the internet become relatively non profit, instead of the current for-profit, for absolutely shit model we are living in.

>I'd love to see the internet become relatively non profit

The stocks haven't gone down enough for your liking?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#32

Post by vaindil » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

bofadeez wrote: post #15

This is free speech. It's not open for discussion. Our right to free speech is not granted by anyone's consent or by government decree. It preexists the state and cannot be taken away. We hold this truth to be self-evident. We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. If any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.

I feel that this is a very black and white view of the issue. I don't want to see billboards as I drive down the freeway, but I have no choice (in the US) if I need to get somewhere far away. Several states have banned outdoor billboards, should those governments be dissolved?

At some point the public interest overrides an absolute freedom of speech. We can debate where that line is, but "it's not open for discussion" is objectively incorrect.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#33

Post by knowknow » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

> The financial incentives to create addictive digital content would instantly disappear, and so would the mechanisms that allow both commercial and political actors to create personalized, reality-distorting bubbles.

...

> But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.

Humanity had hatred and insular bubbles a millennia ago just fine without advertisements. There was genocides and wars before the current form of ads ever emerged. It's a shame that so many people think that changing a financial policy is all that is needed to change an ingrained human behavior.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#34

Post by binarymax » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:23 PM UTC

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…

Hard rules are fallible, but we can lean on precedent in the supreme court for an adjacent topic (obscenity): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#35

Post by galangalalgol » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:23 PM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #21

hedayet wrote: post #14

Advertising has consequences, and I’m not a big fan of it, but it’s also a necessary evil. It’s easy to dismiss advertising as just a profit engine for ad platforms, but that’s only part of the picture. At its best, advertising plays a meaningful role in solution and product discovery, especially for new or niche offerings that users wouldn’t encounter otherwise. It also promotes fairer market competition by giving s…

> Advertising has consequences, and I’m not a big fan of it—but it’s also a necessary evil. At one time, definitely. Now though? We all carry around all of humanity's collective knowledge in our pockets. If you need a solution to a problem you have, if you need a plumber, if you need a new car... you an get unlimited information for the asking. I don't remember the last time I responded to an advertisement. If I need…

Review pages are often ad based. Unless you paid for it. But I still think having to pay for reviews is a better option. That way the reviews are the product not me.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#36

Post by philipwhiuk » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:23 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #20

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…

Well, the thought piece had one simple answer: Were you paid to say it, with the intent of motivating said person, to buy a product? Though, this piece made me groan with the buzzwords "a micro-awakening of the self." Great way to make me cringe if I send it to someone.

> Were you paid to say it, with the intent of motivating said person, to buy a product?

For the waiter, this is probably true.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#37

Post by Apreche » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:23 PM UTC

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…

The answer is the same way we banned cigarette ads.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#38

Post by bofadeez » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

vaindil wrote: post #32

bofadeez wrote: post #15

This is free speech. It's not open for discussion. Our right to free speech is not granted by anyone's consent or by government decree. It preexists the state and cannot be taken away. We hold this truth to be self-evident. We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. If any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.

I feel that this is a very black and white view of the issue. I don't want to see billboards as I drive down the freeway, but I have no choice (in the US) if I need to get somewhere far away. Several states have banned outdoor billboards, should those governments be dissolved? At some point the public interest overrides an absolute freedom of speech. We can debate where that line is, but "it's not open for discussion…

It's just paraphrasing the declaration of independence. This is already the established world order.

You have an extremist point of view that your right to free speech is granted to you by the government.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#39

Post by renewiltord » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

SteveNuts wrote: post #17

daedrdev wrote: post #6

This seems to focus on online advertising. The question is how would you pay for many things on the internet?

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 not willing to pay enough”.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#40

Post by lukev » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

hedayet wrote: post #14

Advertising has consequences, and I’m not a big fan of it, but it’s also a necessary evil. It’s easy to dismiss advertising as just a profit engine for ad platforms, but that’s only part of the picture. At its best, advertising plays a meaningful role in solution and product discovery, especially for new or niche offerings that users wouldn’t encounter otherwise. It also promotes fairer market competition by giving s…

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.