The funny thing is so much of the advertising industry seems like embezzlement or fraud. So much of the time money is being pumped into this industry unnecessarily, things like Coke could not pay and suffer no loss in profit. It seems like some nonsense to keep money within first world nations or something. Just money going to a gamble which doesn't stand up to basic scrutiny as reasonable.
What if we made advertising illegal?
571–580 of 1001 posts
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#572The buried lede: ```Populists exploit ad marketplaces, using them to bypass traditional media gatekeepers``` I want to believe that the author is hopelessly naive, and not a more nefarious actor. These traditional media gatekeepers are not by any means friendly to democracy; they're literal tools of the state, and actively work against the interests of the populace. I say this without a hint of irony: I trust social…
Citation needed. I'll take a free media which is held accountable for not misstating basic facts over social media any day of the week.
Then you'll be thoroughly disappointed by US media. It's also not just about misstated facts, but facts they don't state at all when it is convenient for them.
I also say this without a hint of irony: I don't trust two shits on either side of the aisle.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#573I 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…
We cant define the beginning and end of human life/consciousness, and we've regulated it for thousands of years. That it is hard to define does not make it impossible to control
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#574Do you always answer the door for Jehovah's Witnesses, alternative gas companies, or posters? Usually, people put "No soliciting" signs on their doors and in their yard. They get irritated, if not irate, when these people ring the doorbell. How is advertising any different? Would you invite these people into your home to watch TV with you, eat dinner or drive around town?
I see it as a privacy issue.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#575Earlier 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…
Agree, that'd totally work - things like "billboards" or "ads on public transport" are possible to define and regulate. Advertising on the web would be much harder, I'd like to hear a good proposed rule on that.
Sadly, a post titled "A proposal to restrict certain forms of advertizing", and full of boring rules will be much less likely to get 800+ points on HN.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the article mentions banning “sold advertising”, which seems like a fair way to go about it. You can still advertise your own stuff, but you cannot pay a marketplace to do it for you any more. Advertising would by necessity become a lot more local.
How would I advertise my app? Or my TV brand?
You spam forums, send emails and abuse any free resources you can find. If you can find them, that is, because without ad revenue they would be closing pretty quickly.
It'd be a very different world, I anticipate a lot of paywalls and secret deals.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, personally, I think you shouldn’t even tell your friends and family. That kind of “native advertising” is ruining human relationships. People should stumble upon your product. If someone mentions it to someone else, that alone should be grounds to shutter your company. Even so-called “catchy domain names” are a deep evil that we didn’t have in the heyday of the US: the ‘70s. Your product should be named exactly…
>If someone mentions it to someone else, that alone should be grounds to shutter your company. I don't agree. It should depend on whether such a mention leads to promotion of the product. We are not barbarians to limit freedom of speech. After any mention of a product by its user, a court should be held to decide whether this mention was advertising. Because even though the user received a benefit from purchasing the…
Absolute artwork.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#578Earlier 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.
"But newspapers, TV and Youtube would die out." The missing part of this sentence is "as they exist now". There are other models that exist that could support broadcast and publications. There are other models yet to be explored or that have floundered because they've been snuffed out or avoided because the easiest (for certain values of "easy") path to dollars, right now, is advertising. It is a pipe dream, of cours…
Which models are there? The only other ones I know is patreon-like, which totally destroy the long tail.
And long-tail ones are the best. There are some great videos on youtube which are 10+ years old and do not have millions of views. I am sure many of their uploaders already forgot about them. I cannot see them existing without being supported by "something", and if that's not advertisement, than what?
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#579Isn't this article advertisement by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?
(edit: I have actually been thinking in similar terms as the article, but I do think the article is optimistic and utopian, as if a good intuition would be enough to prevent the very same forces from exploring the reform
Filtering visitors by fingerprint of the browser (cloud flare and palemoon) won't stop bots, but creates a market for more sophisticated bots)
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#580Advertising is a zero-sum game, just as most crypto and stock market activity.
It's the basis for web2 economy just like crypto is the basis for web3 economy, though. So it's hard to make a man admit something when his livelihood depends on it.