What if we made advertising illegal? • Hacker News Board

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#691

Post by barnabee » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:18 AM UTC

aucisson_masque wrote: post #671

SebastianKra wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Likewise, advertising on its own at its core is useful: there might be something that adds value to your life that someone else is trying to provide and the only missing link is that you don't know about it. Journalists exist. The best way to learn about new products is through influencers/reviewers/experts in their field. I'd even say its superior, which is why advertising companies ~sponsor~ bribe influencers to…

> The best way to learn about new products is through influencers/reviewers/experts in their field. I'd even say its superior, which is why advertising companies ~sponsor~ bribe influencers to promote their products. In the same sentence, you give a possible solution and the reason why it wouldn't work. Ban ads and companies are going to pay more and more for sponsored content to the point you can't differentiate wha…

Sponsored content should be considered an ad too and banned in this scenario.

Many “influencers” would have to go back to being amateurs. That’s ok. Some would accept backhanders, but they risk prosecution, which is actually possible [0].

[0] https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/government-orders-maori-infl...

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#692

Post by andai » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

From what I can tell, the problem isn't advertising so much as surveillance.

Surveillance is much worse, and banning it also solves the worst aspects of advertising.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#693

Post by ruszki » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #534

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…

That parallel between propaganda and advertising is why I have a pathological hatred of advertising, I block it in all forms possible, to the extent that if I can’t block it I won’t use the product. I simply hate been manipulated. So much so that I forget what the modern tech landscape is like for the average user til I use one of their devices. We’ve (collectively we for techies) helped create a dystopia.

Isn't Hacker News for advertising for Y Combinator and topics which are important to Y Combinator?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#694

Post by hliyan » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:21 AM UTC

senderista wrote: post #189

So some of the most critical public goods of our age, which are currently mostly ad-funded, like web search, video hosting, email hosting, smartphone navigation, etc. would become publicly funded? Great, I'd like to live in that world too. But this article says nothing about how to get there (actually it considers the demise of Google et al to be an argument in favor without even considering the fact that in the abse…

1) Advertising is profitable for companies. Which means that you as a consumer ultimately pay the advertiser more than what they paid to advertise their product to you.

2) Wikipedia is not ad-driven, and remains as useful, if not more useful than any ad-driven competitor.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#695

Post by caseyy » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:28 AM UTC

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…

> How do you even define advertising?

Almost everyone can tell when they’re being advertised to. And almost everyone can tell when they advertise. Effectiveness of such bans would depend on enforcement, the definition is clear enough.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#696

Post by bambax » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:28 AM UTC

Although I almost never see any ads at all online thanks to uBlock Origin on all of my devices, I agree that making it illegal would be a net benefit for society. It would be hard! But worth it.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#697

Post by hliyan » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:31 AM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #284

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 is a tricky and uncomfortable truth that human minds are hackable. On the flip side, we've had many thousands of years of adversarial training, so it's not as if protections don't exist—at least for a very classical modes of attack.

This his how I look at it. If a lesser computing device's vulnerabilities were exploited to alter its intended behaviour, especially for financial gain, it would be considered hacking and criminal penalties would apply. Why that applies to a mobile phone, and not to a far more critical computing device (the human brain) is the question.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#698

Post by febusravenga » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:31 AM UTC

tjpnz wrote: post #623

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've built something that converts human attention into money with increasingly terrifying efficiency, but we're all trapped in a prisoner's dilemma where nobody can unilaterally disarm. We still get a choice about where we work, and we could choose not to put glorified ad companies on a pedestal.

I explicitly refused project related to mobile location data crunching few years ago. I told it loudly to my manager then, I was already thinking I'm too arogant. But it was outlr market, it worked out we've found other project.

Now I would probably bend my neck and accept it. It's just not everyone has choice.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#699

Post by LightBug1 » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:37 AM UTC

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…

No public facing advertising. At all.

No sponsored advertising. At all.

If advertising "skirts through the loopholes", fine - at least we'll recognise it as underground (like darknet now). The liberal version, I don't even understand how you got there so won't comment. That was wild.

And you seem to ignore the issue the OP mentions about not being able to unilaterally disarm.

It's easy if you try. But you won't try ... what a shame.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#700

Post by caseyy » Sun, Apr 06, 2025, 9:38 AM UTC

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…

That’s exactly right. Even if ad banning isn’t 100% doable, we’d be better off with it done 80%.

All-or-nothing thinking is so common in HN that it’s seriously over-complicating simple problems by trying to find a perfect solution. Such an ideal solution is rarely necessary.