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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#401

Post by mgraczyk »

V8Falcon wrote: post #338
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…

My counter argument to things like this:

As you pointed out, very simple registries are already more than sufficient for government oppression. Detailed data that Facebook collects, like which brand of dog food you prefer, is neither necessary or even helpful for government oppression. The ads data is not even 1% as useful to them as things like telephone records, which the telephone companies will happily send as required by law

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#402

Post by snailmailman »

stego-tech wrote: post #234

Just from the headline alone: oh please dear god yes . The internet became usable after implementing the Pi-Hole. So much noise, so much wasted bandwidth, so many unnecessary lookups, gone with a Raspberry Pi and a few packages. While other commenters are getting into the technical weeds of things, the reality is that the OP is right. Ads don’t inform, they manipulate. They’re an abusive forced-marriage that we canno…

Youtube so badly wants me to pay for premium. But the ads they show me are almost entirely scams and questionably legal content. Ads for guns. Ads for viagra knockoffs. Ads for “stock market tips” that use AI generated celebrity impersonations. Ads for “free money the government isn’t telling you about”.

It’s constant and ever-increasing. I stopped watching a 30 minute video recently after the 5th ad break just over 10 minutes in.

On desktop uBlock still works in Firefox at least. But I’ve basically given up YouTube on iOS.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#403

Post by mgraczyk »

curiousObject wrote: post #336
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...

The Reichstag fire has absolutely nothing to do with advertising, and imagining that it does completely ignores and trivializes the entire history of pre-Nazi Germany

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#404

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#405

Post by cogman10 »

pessimizer wrote: post #399
cogman10 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Advertising tells me what goods and services are available, and at what prices. This is a service.

So does a search engine and 3rd party reviewers.

Further, any store will be pretty highly incentivized to provide a quick list of goods or services offered and likely the prices (most already do this).

I don't need the same ad repeated 20 times to know that Ford sells cars and trucks.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#406

Post by viraptor »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #388
jongjong wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising is unsolicited content which attempts to trigger or nudge a behaviour. There should be a limit on the quantity of advertising. Limited to like 100 people a day on average. We already have anti-spam laws. There would still be advertising but it would be from people from your own communities instead of big corporations.

> Advertising is unsolicited content which attempts to trigger or nudge a behaviour. So I'm listening to the radio, and one minute I'm hearing someone on NPR (or an equivalent public broadcaster) explaining how to make my back healthier; the next minute there's someone trying to convince me that some product will make my back healthier. Which one is advertising and which one is not?

> explaining HOW TO make my back healthier

> that SOME PRODUCT will make my back healthier.

Is it really that tricky?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#407

Post by dmoy »

crazygringo wrote: post #343
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…

> The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That's advertising. The line is absolutely not clear. Is ABC allowed to run commercials for its own shows? ABC is owned by Disney. Is ABC allowed to run commercials for Disney shows? Is it allowed to run commericals for Disney toys? Can ABC run commercials for Bounty paper towels, in exchange for Bounty putting ads for ABC shows on its paper…

I agree with the general thought - doing something like this would give giant mega corporations a huge leg up from verticals.

> Can ABC run commercials for Bounty paper towels, in exchange for Bounty putting ads for ABC shows on its paper towel packaging?

I was with you until this one

Under both IRS and GAAP rules, that's equivalent to money changing hands. So in a hypothetical "no money for advertising" world, that would be over the line.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#408

Post by exe34 »

sharemywin wrote: post #320
exe34 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to imagine. I hate advertising as much as the next guy - I intentionally try to associate negative thoughts with any adverts that interrupt a video I'm watching (I nearly ordered hellofresh after getting a voucher, but they've interrupted my YouTube experience too many times in the past). But how do you separate advertising from product recommendations? Would it only apply if the person doing the recom…

does youtube exist without advertisers?

peer to peer, yes.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#409

Post by appreciatorBus »

scarface_74 wrote: post #379
jononor wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The point is that advertising and propaganda are indistinguishable. Going door-to-door to talk about Jesus is the same as going door-to-door to talk about vacuums, but neither is anything like roadside billboards or programmatic advertising. We can ditch the billboards and the programmatic advertising and get a better world, even if some advertisers and propagandists still go door-to-door. At least when it’s door-to-door the advertiser/propagandist has to really work for it, and you have the option of just not opening the door.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#410

Post by 34679 »

cogman10 wrote: post #387
kragen wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a well-enough-thought-out proposal to call "radical"; it assumes that making advertising illegal would make advertising go away and that there would be no drawbacks to this. Even if we all agree that it's bad for people to say things they're paid to say instead of what they really believe, there are many possible approaches to writing specific laws to diminish that practice. Those approaches represent differ…

> it assumes that making advertising illegal would make advertising go away It would? I don't understand why you and others see this as a hard law to craft or enforce (probably not constitutional in the US). The very nature of advertising is it's meant to be seen by as many people as possible. That makes enforcement fairly easy. We already have laws on the books where paid advertising/sponsorship must be clear to the…

I thought drug laws were a fine example, but let's look at another. It's illegal to bribe politicians. Does that mean there is no grift in Washington?
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