What if we made advertising illegal? • Hacker News Board

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#331

Post by timewizard » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

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.

Let's say I have a journal. It costs money to subscribe. It covers a topic that many college students also study.

Can I give the school a free copy? Can I give the teachers one? Can I give the students one? Is this advertising? When does the amount of "value" become offensive?

> surfacing the dark data broker market and banning it altogether.

This is why this has become a modern problem. I can live with erring on the side of free speech when it comes to advertising, but there is no side to err on when it comes to analytics and targeting.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#332

Post by almosthere » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:17 PM UTC

Why? Are people going to your house and measuring your feet and asking if you want to buy sneakers?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#333

Post by c0wb0yc0d3r » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

magicmicah85 wrote: post #290

Advertising is not a modern phenomenon, business owners would shout and have town heralds advertise through them. Everyone being literate is a modern thing and people need to learn how to modulate themselves. You don’t have to buy things cause something is on sale. A business owner is absolutely entitled to shout if their underwear is 20% off and you’re entitled to ignore them.

I’ve thought about a world where ads are illegal several times. I think a better compromise might be all ads must silent and static, no movement. In my mind this includes ad carousels. That would mean that there would regulation in place stating that a digital billboard can’t switch ads more than once per day or something.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#334

Post by LunaSea » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

pseufaux wrote: post #279

LunaSea wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. But newspapers, TV and Youtube would die out.

TV and YouTube would definitely suffer. Not sure if that's an issue or benefit. But I'm not sure newspapers or journalism would be so bad. My expectation would be that people would still need/want information from somewhere might begin paying to get it.

They already have this choice and don't pick it.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#335

Post by inopinatus » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

LunaSea wrote: post #271

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…

> Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. But newspapers, TV and Youtube would die out.

only the shit ones

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#336

Post by curiousObject » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

>Is there any concrete evidence that anything bad has ever happened as a result of advertising? … What is the steel man for "advertising bad"?

Electoral politics[0], alcohol, tobacco[1], drugs, gambling, unbridled consumerism … for example

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

[1] https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/throwback-thursday-wh...

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#337

Post by cauch » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

LunaSea wrote: post #271

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…

> Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. But newspapers, TV and Youtube would die out.

Advertisement get the source money from the viewers, it does not create any money in itself. So, if advertisement is banned, people will have more money, and this money can be used to finance what they want to consume.

This is something that I still struggle to wrap my head around: if a company is paying X$ for advertisement, it means that people subjected to this advertisement will give Y$ to this company that they would not have paid otherwise, Y higher than X, otherwise there is no reason for this company to pay for advertisement. Yet everyone is saying "yeah, advertisement, I don't care, I just ignore it". Surely it cannot be true.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#338

Post by V8Falcon » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

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…

If you'll humor me leaning into the steel man and addressing advertising-as-practiced i.e. ad-tech rather than advertising in the abstract sense:

Data collection is the big harm right now. Advertising companies have enormous databases on ~any individual's interests, political opinions, gender identity, and much more.

The immediate harm of all this data collection is that, while Google has good security practices, the average webshop or advertising middleman does not, and so data leaks are frequent. Stalkers and harassment groups as well scammers and other fraudsters already use such leaked data. This particular harm is in the here and now.

The big looming threat is: What happens when a government decides to tap into these databases. (Y'know. Like they do in China.)

Because right now, should a government ever want to, it can just call up Google, Facebook, whomever else, and ask: "Give us a list of everyone who meets these criteria".

This completely trivializes any kind of large scale oppression of the people. Pre-compiled lists of almost every political dissenter, with verticals across almost every topic imaginable.

It's no hypothetical either. During WWII, the Nazis seized civil registry records in order identify and kill people as part of the holocaust. There's no reason why any future authoritarian government won't do the same to the big ad-tech databases.

---

For something in a lighter mood: The one general problem about advertising is that it's an industry prone to quite a lot of fraud. There's an inherent information asymmetry in that advertising agencies have a near-monopoly on not only the performance data, but also how it's gathered.

How many impressions did a video get? Only Facebook knows. What's an impression? Only Facebook knows. And why would they ever be honest about those two things to you, the advertising buyer?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#339

Post by LunaSea » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

chronogram wrote: post #313

LunaSea wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. But newspapers, TV and Youtube would die out.

News would still exist and would not be competing with engagement driven news because there's no engagement=ad views. I wager it would be very helpful to news. TV would absolutely still exist, given that people pay for it and there is a big industry around ad-free streaming services already.

Almost no online newspaper survives from subscriptions.

Non public broadcasters are rarely if ever and free. Meaning that their business model requires this as revenue to survive.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#340

Post by ryao » Sat, Apr 05, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

Advertising medicine, medical services and legal services used to be illegal because it is unethical. Then the US Supreme Court ruled it had to be legal. This is just stating history. Interpret it as you will.