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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#601

Post by directevolve »

toomim wrote: post #10

This begs the question: how could you reliably distinguish advertising from other forms of free speech? The courts already distinguish "commercial speech" as a class of speech. Would we prevent all forms of commercial speech? What about a waiter asking you "would you like to try a rosé with that dish? It pairs very well together." Is that "advertising" that would need to be outlawed? What about giving out free sample…

Not all countries have the same free speech protections as America. I can easily imagine a country that simply has a bureaucracy whose approval is required to publish TV programming, or one that bans banner ads in social media, billboards, restricts shop signs in various ways, requires all packaging in the store to be black and white, etc. Advertising doesn’t have to ve banned outright. It could be killed by a thousand specific rules targeting the most obnoxious forms, provided there wasn’t a constitutional issue in the country implementing these measures.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#602

Post by beefnugs »

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…

There is no reason it has to be so immoral, annoying, and evil. There could be a whole gamified system where people who choose to voluntarily participate can find things they want to buy from people eager to sell

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#603

Post by tommica »

emacsen wrote: post #599
ChuckMcM wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder a bit if this point of view is an 'age' thing, which is to say if you're under 40 it rings true, if you're over 40 it sounds silly kind of thing. I don't know that it is, it just feels that way a bit to me. What if we outlawed surveillance capital instead? "Ad tech" is about exploiting information about individuals and their actions, what if that part of it was illegal because collecting or providing such in…

This is IMHO the right angle. Advertising is virtually impossible to stop, but more than that, is not inherently evil. Most countries include laws on how you can advertise. For example, you can't lie and make a claim that your product can't live up to, you can't use certain words or phrases, and you have to have disclaimers in some situations. In the mid-90s when Yahoo was a young company, they had a simple advertisi…

I do wonder if there is any legitimate societal value this "surveillance capitalism" or is it all just pure net-loss for the society? I get that corporations make money from it and sell data to whatever entities, but is there truly nothing of positive value in it?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#604

Post by Aeolun »

cyberax wrote: post #527
Aeolun wrote: post #490

Earlier 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?

Post it on your windowsill? Have it show up in the search results or ‘new apps’ list on the App Store?

TV brands can be set up in a department store? Like we’ve done for ages?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#605

Post by niemandhier »

OJFord wrote: post #101
niemandhier wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money. It’s advertising if mony or anything equivalent flows in any form, even after the act. Many countries have laws against corruption that are structured like that.

So if you accept GP's waiter's rosé suggestion, it was advertising, and if you don't it was not? (Schrösédinger, if you will.)

No but your doctor would have to think twice about recommending this drug that he got to know about at the company sponsored golf trip.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#606

Post by Const-me »

kragen wrote: post #345
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…

Maybe you should post a proposal for a law that's a little more specific than "is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That's advertising." Then we can see if it is in fact possible to prevent 99%, or for that matter 50%, of the harm that comes from modern advertising, without outlawing other things. Let's consider toomim's three examples: "would you like to try a rosé with that dish? It pairs very we…

I think the language is OK, it’s just that you are consistently ignoring “in order to promote a product” clause.

The first case is legal because waiter gets paid by the restaurant to serve meals, not to promote the specific brand of rose wine. Only illegal if the waiter has another, secret contract with the wine manufacturer to “recommend” specific wine.

The other two cases are legal because the money exchanged in order to receive goods. The fact the goods are then used to promote something is irrelevant.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#607

Post by simgt »

dragonwriter wrote: post #556
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…

> The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters. Advertising is just a name for a delivery mechanism for propaganda. Its not a difference of master, as is clear in the political realm where when we focus on a particular commercial delivery vehicle we talk about "campaign advertisements" but the content is still "political propagan…

> No, the mechanisms would just get even more sophisticated, to work around whatever (inherently, and unavoidably, arbitrary) lines were drawn against "advertising" while permitting the flow of information and opinions about products.

Probably, but it would make advertising much more costly thus less appealing and reduce its market size. Just like for any other prohibited activity.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#608

Post by Matumio »

toomim wrote: post #10

This begs the question: how could you reliably distinguish advertising from other forms of free speech? The courts already distinguish "commercial speech" as a class of speech. Would we prevent all forms of commercial speech? What about a waiter asking you "would you like to try a rosé with that dish? It pairs very well together." Is that "advertising" that would need to be outlawed? What about giving out free sample…

Yet we have laws against fraud, rape, and so on. Where do you draw the line for those? There are some crystal clear cases, and there are unclear cases where you could argue forever.

So it is for advertising. You don't need to draw a clear line for every case before you can make a law.

I like how it turned out with email advertising, actually: spam is defined to be whatever people put into their spam folder.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#609

Post by tsycho »

snailmailman wrote: post #402
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…

Serious question: Why don't you pay for YouTube premium?

Isn't it hypocritical to want YouTube to offer you its content for free? If the content is valuable to you, you should be willing to pay for it. If not, just stop watching YouTube.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#610

Post by kanodiaashu »

There's some fascinating research by Rachel Griffith which shows that advertising can be significantly welfare reducing for not only customers, but also for companies themselves (they just overall make lower money taken together); it is just another dimension of competition, like pricing/positioning, and adding a meaningful dimension is costly.
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