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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#361

Post by jzb »

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.

"But newspapers, TV and Youtube would die out."

The missing part of this sentence is "as they exist now". There are other models that exist that could support broadcast and publications. There are other models yet to be explored or that have floundered because they've been snuffed out or avoided because the easiest (for certain values of "easy") path to dollars, right now, is advertising.

It is a pipe dream, of course -- and the author of the piece doesn't really do the hard work of following through on not just how difficult it would be to make advertising illegal, but the ramificaitons. While an ad-free world would be wonderful, that's a lot of people out of a job real quick-like. Deciding what constitutes an "ad" versus content marketing or just "hey, this thing exists" would be harder than it might seem at first thought.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#362

Post by ipaddr »

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…

Probation only moves the activities underground. Not focusing on ad tech specifically but removing all advertising would mean finding other ways to get your message out which is advertising. The only way to stop it is to stop communication in form and function.

Limiting certain types of advertising or changing tax codes to not allow dedicating expensive could shape it in a way that meshes with society.

Trying to rein in the abuses you saw in the adtech world starts with Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft being dissolved.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#364

Post by wintermutestwin »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #351
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.

I don't know. I would GLADLY pay for ad-free youtube if the price were set at what they'd otherwise make on ads for me. In which case, that'd be about $3.50/month. Instead they want to price-gouge me for 5x that so... no thanks. I'll just use my ad blocker.

I would gladly pay for ad-free youtube if they weren’t double dipping by tracking me (which is now more valuable because you have my cc#)

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#365

Post by petra »

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…

For discovery of niche products,The Google search ads(without spying) system is a great solution. The issues of monopoly should be handled of course.

And regarding word of mouth: Is word of mouth for great products really random?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#367

Post by kodt »

djoldman wrote: post #81
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…

In the communications industry there are SOME fairly bright definitions: - Advertising and marketing are when an entity pays some other entity to transmit content - Public relations is when an entity, without paying , causes another entity to transmit content - Public affairs is when an entity causes a governmental entity to consume specific content at minimum, up to possibly influencing decisions. It should go witho…

>- Advertising and marketing are when an entity pays some other entity to transmit content

So all usage of the internet would apply?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#368

Post by kodt »

thfuran wrote: post #272
mnky9800n wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about just restrict it to advertising on the internet? The internet is supposed to be an information retrieval tool. Advertising’s whole goal is to stand between you and the information you actually want. And it does so by trying to anticipate instead of the thing you want, the thing you are most willing to buy next, whether that’s actual products with money or propaganda. Whereas an ad in a magazine about compu…

>What about just restrict it to advertising on the internet? Why? I don't see the difference between a webpage and the magazine here, except that I guess you're assuming the webpage must be showing an unrelated ad.

Webpages also have the ability to capture far more data about who is viewing the ad, with the use of tracking cookies, browser fingerprinting etc..

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#369

Post by margalabargala »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #358
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…

> imagine a world without advertising I can't because a world with magic and world peace is more realistic and believable. It's impossible. How do you even define advertising? If you define it conservatively, then advertising will skirt through the loopholes. If you define it liberally, then you have an unfair, authoritarian system that will definitely be selectively enforced against political enemies. And in all cas…

> If you define it conservatively, then advertising will skirt through the loopholes.

This would result in a better world still, without the authoritarian system you describe. No need to get it perfect the first try, just start small.

For an example of this in action, drive through any of the US states that do not allow billboards.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#370

Post by autoexec »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #29
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…

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…

> I say it sounds like their laws are captured by the pachinko industry.

It wasn't just the pachinko industry that tied the hands of Japanese government. It was the people too. It's a lot harder to ban something and keep it banned when everybody wants it. Thankfully, not many people want ads, but pachinko was popular enough that it makes sense to continue to let people do it. You're right about still getting a benefit. Even after carving out exceptions, banning gambling broadly otherwise is effective enough to solve a lot of the problems that unregulated gambling can cause.

I do think video game loot boxes are something that needs regulation. Not just because it is gambling, but because the games can be unfair and even adversarial. Casinos exploit and encourage adult gambling addicts but at least those games are required to be "fair" (no outright cheating) and they have to be honest about how unfair the odds against you are. A supposedly impartial third party goes around making sure casinos are following the rules. Video games don't have any of that and they're targeting children on top of it.

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