Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What if we made advertising illegal?

simone.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 1001 posts

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#371

Post by jononor »

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…

One would never reach zero. And it would be challenging both to define and police laws against advertising. But to get to a world with drastically less advertisements than today seems doable.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#372

Post by jzb »

cauch wrote: post #337
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.

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…

"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"

You seem to be assuming that, in the absence of advertising, the company will sell as much as it did before -- just with lower overhead costs -- rather than advertising driving more sales and possibly lowering costs because the company has more customers. For some items / things this may be true-ish. I'm going to buy paper towels because I need paper towels, and advertising has little influence on that -- except, maybe, which brand I buy. But I'm going to spill things, and my cats are going to keep barfing on the floor from time to time, so I'm going to need paper towels regardless. And I'm not going to buy a bunch of extra ones just because the ads are so good.

Don't get me started on soda advertising and such because the amount of money those companies spend on ads is mind-boggling and I don't think it moves the needle very much when it comes to Coke vs. Pepsi...

But, would I go see a movie without ads to promote it? Would I buy that t-shirt with a funny design if I didn't see it on a web site? Sign up for a SaaS offering if I don't see an ad for it somewhere?

If a SaaS lands 20% more customers because ads (and other forms of marketing) that's not necessarily going to mean I pay more for the SaaS because ads. It may very well mean that the prices stay lower because many of their costs are fixed and if they have 20% more paying customers, they can charge less to be competitive. If a publication has more subscribers because it advertises, it may not have to raise rates to stay / be profitable.

In some cases you may be correct -- landing customers via ads equals X% of my costs, so my prices reflect that. But it's not necessarily true.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#373

Post by jongjong »

It's a solid idea, and could even fall under 'anti-spam laws' with some additional clauses. There should be a daily or monthly limit on the max number of people that a person or entity can contact or send unsolicited content to... Maybe like 100 people per day on average. That's more than enough for anyone to make a living as a sales person.

Big tech has been mass-spamming us with unsolicited content for decades and driving monopolization, centralizing opportunities towards those who can talk the talk and away from those who can walk the walk. So we've been getting lower value for our money and also losing jobs/opportunities which has made it harder to earn money.

It's crazy that big tech is allowed to spam hundreds of millions of people with unsolicited content but if any individual did it on the same scale, they'd be in jail.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#374

Post by 1oooqooq »

Animats wrote: post #205

Sao Paulo, Brazil, made outdoor advertising illegal. That worked out quite well. The US used to forbid prescription drug advertising. That seemed to work. Ads for liquor, marijuana, and gambling are prohibited in many jurisdictions. The FCC once limited the number of minutes of ads per hour on the public airwaves. That limit was below 10% of air time in the 1960s. The SEC used to limit ads for financial products to d…

> Sao Paulo, Brazil, made outdoor advertising illegal. That worked out quite well.

it was just a gimmick in the end. yeah the city is cleaner, but i doubt there's even the slightest difference in sports betting in sao paulo vs places with outdoors, for example.

...and did the us forbid prescription drugs ads? thats literally all i see on daytime tv.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#375

Post by cogman10 »

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…

> that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.

What? How? Advertising isn't a good or service. About the only way I could see it economically being damaging is if you subscribe to the "broken windows" theory of economics.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#376

Post by makeitdouble »

cauch wrote: post #337
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.

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…

Parent's point about ad being close to propaganda is key: people getting advertised at are often not the ones with the money.

For newspapers for instance, Exxon or Shell could be paying a lot more to have their brand painted in favorable light than the amount the newspaper readership could afford to pay in aggregate.

The same way Coca Cola's budget for advertising greenness is not matched by how many more sales they're expecting to make from these ads in any specific medium, but how much the company's bottling policy has to lose if public opinion changed too much. That's basically lobbying money.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#377

Post by cadamsdotcom »

How are you going to define advertising? Does the proposal include making it illegal to tell friends how happy you are with $PRODUCT from $COMPANY - which made a truly good product and had good customer support, and deserves to have the word spread?

Is it advertising if you say it in conversation? What about on your blog?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#378

Post by Henchman21 »

gameman144 wrote: post #289
Henchman21 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we be open to nuance when we’re being actively manipulated? Cease manipulating me and I will hear them out on the nuances, provided the advertisers can articulate it.

Someone telling you about a product is not manipulating you. Tracking or certain ad practices might be manipulative, and it's fine to push back against or ban that manipulation, but that is not at all inherent to advertising.

Feeding people lines about what “they need” or what their neighbors might be doing is manipulative. All advertising attempts to be manipulative, IMO.

But, I’ll play along for a moment: If trying to convince people they need something that oftentimes they simply don’t isn’t manipulation, then what is it? It isn’t simply informative because it’s attempting to change one’s mind.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#379

Post by scarface_74 »

jononor wrote: post #371
Ferret7446 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

One would never reach zero. And it would be challenging both to define and police laws against advertising. But to get to a world with drastically less advertisements than today seems doable.

So we want the government to decide what is advertising and propaganda? Is telling people about the wrongs of government propaganda? Is going door to door about have you made Jesus the head of your life propaganda?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#380

Post by tptacek »

econ40432 wrote: post #172
imiric wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does CNN, Fox News, ABC, New York Times and CBS use money to endorse candidates on air? Is that advertising?

Candidate endorsements (and political advertising in general) are core political speech. You can't outlaw it in the US.
Post reply on HN