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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#471

Post by epidemian »

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.

Not really, or at least i don't see how. Advertising can at most tell me which companies are spending a significant portion of their budget in ads instead of in making a good product or service.

To put it another way: where i live, ads for cheese or meat are non existent (while ads for fast food or cigarettes are very common), and yet i know that those products are available on supermarkets or other food stores. And i can find cheeses and meats of many brands, qualities and prices on those stores.

I don't see how having ads for those things would be an improvement. In fact, i suspect that ads would be used to convince people to buy products of less quality, or downright toxic, as seen on the rampant fast food and cigarette ads.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#472

Post by stego-tech »

junga wrote: post #347
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…

> Advertising is cancer, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not. That's the most "hacker" newsy thing to me. Whenever advertising critical articles come up, there's a large percentage of people commenting pro advertising. Yeah, I get it, you don't bite the hand that feeds you but come on. Does working in ad tech somehow influence your brains like the ones you are targeting?

I don't think it's exclusive to advertising. Humans in general desire stability (myself being no exception), and anything that disrupts a system they've become accustomed to can very quickly become perceived as a threat.

My theory is that the people who fight against changing the status quo are just fundamentally opposed to change itself, not necessarily supporting the system as it currently stands. They know the ins and outs of the current system, and changing it means they have to dump knowledge and re-learn things - which they're fiercely opposed to doing. The enemy you know, over the enemy you don't, in a manner of speaking.

Those of us who can visualize futures starkly different than a continuance of the present day are a threat to those people who demand indefinite complacency and an unchanging world. Unfortunately for them, the universe is chaos and change is inevitable - so finding your own stability amidst the chaos is a skill more people need, such that necessary change might be embraced.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#473

Post by gamblor956 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #386
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…

What you can do relatively easily is to control the physical format of advertising. For example, consider how rare "billboards" are outside of the USA. Or towns in various places that prohibit signage that is not in the same plane as the edge of the building (i.e. no sticky-outy signs). Or for that matter, consider Berlin, which has banned all non-cultural advertising on public transportation. Yes, there's some edge…

I saw plenty of billboards in London and Paris last summer. Where is this magical place in the world that has lots of people but no billboards?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#474

Post by gerdesj »

cavisne wrote: post #428
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you can do relatively easily is to control the physical format of advertising. For example, consider how rare "billboards" are outside of the USA. Or towns in various places that prohibit signage that is not in the same plane as the edge of the building (i.e. no sticky-outy signs). Or for that matter, consider Berlin, which has banned all non-cultural advertising on public transportation. Yes, there's some edge…

Billboards being rare outside of the US seems quite incorrect. The developing world is full of billboards, and places in Europe like Milan have some wild Samsung billboards.

The UK, outside of cities is largely devoid of bill boards a la the US. Milan is not "Europe" either!

I have driven/travelled across a lot, nearly all, European countries and the other one - the UK.

You do not get those huge screens on stilts anywhere that I have seen in Europe, that seem to be common across the US.

To be fair, I've only driven across about 10 US states. However, I do have Holywood's and other's output to act as a proxy and it seems that US companies do love to shout it from the hill tops at vast expense and fuck up the scenery with those bill board thingies.

Try driving around La Toscana and say Florida. I've done both, multiple times and I'm a proper outsider. I love both regions quite passionately but for very different reasons. FL has way more issues in my opinion but we are discussing bill boards so let's stay on task.

Billboards require power as well as the obvious physical attributes. They are an absolute eyesore and in my opinion should be abolished. Turn them into wind turbines and do some good - the basics are in place.

However. I know FL quite well. It has a lovely climate (unless it is trying to kill you). Florida man almost certainly invented air conditioning and FL man being FL man took it to the max when confronted with a rather lovely climate.

FL man is a thing and it turns out that CA Pres. can be weirder than anything seen before.

US - remember your mates, we remember you as is and don't hold you accountable for going a bit odder than usual for a while.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#475

Post by thakoppno »

gamblor956 wrote: post #473
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you can do relatively easily is to control the physical format of advertising. For example, consider how rare "billboards" are outside of the USA. Or towns in various places that prohibit signage that is not in the same plane as the edge of the building (i.e. no sticky-outy signs). Or for that matter, consider Berlin, which has banned all non-cultural advertising on public transportation. Yes, there's some edge…

I saw plenty of billboards in London and Paris last summer. Where is this magical place in the world that has lots of people but no billboards?

Sao Paulo

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#476

Post by jen729w »

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…

It's illegal here in Canberra, Australia. There's not total compliance -- people still stick an A-frame on the street, and of course real estate agents will always put something in a front lawn -- but there aren't giant billboards that you see everywhere else. It's really refreshing.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#477

Post by idle_zealot »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #386
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…

What you can do relatively easily is to control the physical format of advertising. For example, consider how rare "billboards" are outside of the USA. Or towns in various places that prohibit signage that is not in the same plane as the edge of the building (i.e. no sticky-outy signs). Or for that matter, consider Berlin, which has banned all non-cultural advertising on public transportation. Yes, there's some edge…

You start conservatively, and set up a watchdog to investigate loopholes and punish those abusing them. Fund an astroturfing campaign? Congrats, that's 10 years and a hefty fine to fund the continued operation of the watchdog. You can make promotional material and publish it, but it has to be clearly labeled and opt-in, not bundled with access to something else. The problem isn't small-time promotion that's difficult or impossible to crack down on, it's that we've built a whole attention economy. So long as we make it a bad value proposition for big players we'll have succeeded.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#478

Post by jjk166 »

michaelhoney wrote: post #400
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…

If you can’t imagine it, try a bit harder. We can build a better world, but it takes effort.

The problem is the harder you try to imagine it, the less it looks like a better world.

Letting people communicate freely is a good thing in its own right, and fundamental to so many other good things we enjoy. Getting rid of a billboard for something I am never going to buy sounds great, but it kinda sucks for the person who actually is interested in the thing that billboard is advertising. Even if there were some type of advertising that provided no benefit to any part of society, the restriction on the freedom to communicate those advertisements is something that harms all of us.

Sometimes the part of building a better world that takes the most effort is recognizing where we already have.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#479

Post by gigatree »

nofalsescotsman wrote: post #280
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…

Treating the symptoms is easier and cheaper. And let's be real, the money would rather treat symptoms than the cause. Convincing monied interests to stop advertising is not a realistic thing. This would have to be done through legislation and force. And I agree it should be done.

Neither convincing them nor compelling them through law would work. I’m surprised the author can’t see that as an ad person himself. The incentives are too strong; if you outlaw them, they’ll just be circumnavigated in more nefarious ways.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#480

Post by Gunax »

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 think you articulated the vagueness very well.

One other example I was thinking was product placement. Are these characters eating pizza? Or is it Pizza Hut®™ pizza?

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