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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#441

Post by dr_dshiv »

WalterBright wrote: post #151
dr_dshiv wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the idea is to ban certain types of advertising. It’s a fun thought experiment and practical — it’s why some country roads don’t have billboards and some do. Going to a conference to promote your product to participants.. Do you allow the shills to shill? Well, shills gonna shill— I sure wish I promoted my businesses more. It is uncomfortable at times but that’s not really a good excuse to not promote what yo…

I agree that billboards are a form of "visual pollution" that blocks scenic views. But paying for an ad on the side of a bus isn't a problem. No, I don't think we need to argue about where the line between the two is.

We definitely need to argue about the line. This is the internet, isn’t it?

And, honestly, how do you know? I don’t think it is clear that all cars are fair game for all ads, nor that all billboards should be banned. We might not need a line, but we need criteria for value

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#442

Post by dangus »

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…

Let's talk about the modern world then. You want to get away from the grind of working for someone else and sustain yourself on your own.

Perhaps you could turn into a subsistence farmer making every home product you own on your own or in a small commune, or perhaps you and a group of employees could buy your existing employer.

But the other more realistic method is that you would start your own business so you no longer have to work for someone else.

19% of all American adults are starting or run a business. It's a very common way to make a living.

IMO the idea of removing advertising entirely would essentially entrench the status quo even further. People would only know brands like Coca-Cola, Tide, and Apple, the brands they knew about the day the ads shut off. There would be no chance for other companies to enter markets because they would have no realistic way of spreading the word about their alternatives, not even for small local businesses.

The proposal is not just radical, it's downright moronic if you've ever been in the shoes of owning your own company.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#443

Post by Toorkit »

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…

I can still remember ads on TV from when I was a kid. Mind worms, embedded deep. And it makes me angry.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#444

Post by threatofrain »

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…

But the way you frame the problem suggests it's not tech people's responsibility at all. It's a much bigger issue of governance that society as a whole must decide. Has there been any society on earth that has made the decision to ban advertising?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#445

Post by SllX »

ipaddr wrote: post #362
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…

Google and Facebook sure, you could even make the argument that their non-adtech businesses would be collateral damage, but Amazon and Microsoft have substantial non-advertising related businesses. I'm curious why you lumped them in?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#447

Post by James_K »

willsmith72 wrote: post #350

But why? The whole premise seems wrong. > The financial incentives to create addictive digital content would instantly disappear No they wouldn't.. the business model would change. Facebook sells ads to businesses and entertainment to consumers. People still want to be entertained. What about the positive effects from advertising? Many products which I never knew existed have gone on to improve my life. To kill addic…

Most users are not happy with addictive apps. The psychology of something you pay for is fundamentally different to something that's free. If your choices were paying for TikTok, or paying for actually good entertainment, I think a lot of people would do the latter.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#448

Post by sandworm101 »

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…

>> We'd just be freed from the increasingly sophisticated machinery designed to override our decision-making.

That isn't all advertising. That is the modern algorithm-dependent systems that curate ads for individual viewers. In the good old days of print ads, ads targeted at say the readership of a particular magazine, we did not suffer from the downward spiral. There is no reason websites cannot have static ads. Many do. The issue is not advertising per se.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#449

Post by hollerith »

tptacek wrote: post #235

Here's how not constitutional this idea is: municipalities can't even ban circular flyers, which is essentially junk thrown onto the doorsteps of everybody's houses, junk nobody wants, because the First Amendment proscribes those ordinances.

Billboards however are banned in Vermont and Marin County, CA.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#450

Post by amelius »

kragen wrote: post #352
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…

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…

Current administration already made a bunch of radical decisions. What's another one?
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