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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#561

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

SoftTalker wrote: post #440
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…

As a fantasy it sounds nice but it immediately hits the wall of the 1st amendment.

Yeah unfortunately Citizens United really did a number on the judicial stance on funded “speech”

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#562

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

whall6 wrote: post #502
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…

Agree with this entirely. In fact, I would go as far as saying if advertising was illegal, then expressing opinions would be illegal. Everything is an advertisement.

Reductio ad absurdum? I want to live in a world where we understand the difference between opinion and sales.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#565

Post by the_cat_kittles »

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…

hey why try to do anything ever, people will just find a way around it and it will be worse than if we did nothing. lets make murder legal, fewer people will get killed i guess

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#566

Post by washmyelbows »

reboot81 wrote: post #563

The sadest part is that we the consumers pay for having things constantly popping up infront of our eyes. There should be a ”NoAds”-label on products that have chosen to not levy the ad-tax on us consumers.

The inability to get a TV/stream box without some kind of ads cooked in infuriates me to no end, and it just feels like it's getting worse

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#567

Post by NoahZuniga »

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…

Making advertising non tax deductible has the effect of making it marketing ~20% more expensive, which would lead to about 20% less marketing. But not really. It doesn't really cost YouTube anything to play an add, so YouTube ads get 20% cheaper, and you see the same amount of ads.

Also this would be hard to implement. Tax law has a hard time discriminating costs. What if all the marketing is done by an Irish subsidiary?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#568

Post by BirAdam »

Honestly, I’d have no issue with banning advertising. Truth in advertising laws don’t seem to have any effect at all, and spaced repetition combined with targeting is pretty much the most vile thing I’ve ever seen.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#569

Post by gameman144 »

wat10000 wrote: post #413
gameman144 wrote: post #249

This feels very similar in my mind to blanket concepts like "let's ban lobbying". There are certainly specific modes or practices in lobbying that are damaging to society, but lobbying itself (specifically, informing lawmakers about your specific perspective and desires) is a valid and desirable function. Likewise, advertising on its own at its core is useful: there might be something that adds value to your life tha…

Anyone who has found out about a useful product through advertising that you wouldn’t have know about otherwise, purchased it, and been pleased with your purchase, raise your hand. Anyone? This whole “advertising is useful” thing sounds like the spherical cow of marketing to me. It might make sense in abstract but it doesn’t reflect reality.

I'd be happy to give an example I gave below: rake hands.

I hate the step after raking where you have to use the rake and one hand to carry the leaves to the bin. There was an ad for "rake hands" where you just hold a small hand-formed rake in each hand and scoop them both.

Twenty bucks, vastly improved yardwork experience, and I would have literally never thought to look for something like that.

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