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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#701

Post by akoboldfrying »

imiric wrote: post #127
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…

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…

> is money being exchanged in order to promote a product?

So if I paint my store front's sign myself, I'm good, but if I pay a signwriter to paint it, it's illegal?

I guess I better become "friends" with a signwriter, so that they don't mind making a sign or two for me "for free". And so that I don't mind giving them a widget or two from my store sometime in the future.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#702

Post by ozornin »

dash2 wrote: post #682

This idea isn't uncommon because it's beyond the Overton window, it's uncommon because it is silly and unworkable. * Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally. In fact, the author touts as a benefit that you'd stop populists being able to talk to their audience. This is destroying the village of liberal democracy in order to save it! * Absolutely zero thought…

> how to police the boundaries

Any existing policy inevitably has a gray area, no matter how elaborate it is. That's okay if the author didn't cover corner cases in a short essay.

> You don't just magically know what to buy.

Knowing what you need is not magic. I don't remember much advertising lately that would tell me how a good can satisfy my existing needs. Mostly, they are trying to make me feel I need something I didn't need before

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#703

Post by Hendrikto »

dash2 wrote: post #682

This idea isn't uncommon because it's beyond the Overton window, it's uncommon because it is silly and unworkable. * Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally. In fact, the author touts as a benefit that you'd stop populists being able to talk to their audience. This is destroying the village of liberal democracy in order to save it! * Absolutely zero thought…

I agree with almost all your points, but this is just false:

> Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy.

We don’t need marketing, we need information. Objective information, that would be easier to come by in the absence of manipulative marketing.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#705

Post by [deleted] »

camgunz wrote: post #658
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…

I see this dynamic in tech all the time: "We'd like to pay/invest in you tremendous amounts of money to make X more efficient": yes, absolutely we know what X is and we understand scaling it is immensely valuable and fundamentally changes everything. "We'd like to regulate X, making it safer, and therefore harder or even impossible to do": that's ridiculous, you could always do X, what even is X anyway, don't tread o…

[deleted]

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#706

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

theamk wrote: post #582
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already solved elsewhere in the thread: Ban unsolicited advertising. Product recommendations in places where the consumer is explicitly visiting to get product recommendations are not unsolicited.

Can product recommendation sites place a funny video on their website, unrelated to products, just so readers can have a little rest while doing all this product comparison? Can product recommendation sites _pay_ a video creator to create a funny video for their website? It's a win-win for everyone, right? Product recommendation website gets more visitors, popular creator gets money, and visitors get to see a funny v…

What matters is solicitation, which is fairly easy to evidence. Running successful entertainment business while pretending to be a consumer advice business sounds pretty hard, since you still can’t take money for product endorsement, you can’t SEO for your real purpose, and you can’t promote your real purpose. And somewhat pointless, as you’re running a paid subscription service either way, so your funny video site would probably get more customers if it could claim to be a funny video site.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#708

Post by dash2 »

Hendrikto wrote: post #703
dash2 wrote: post #682

This idea isn't uncommon because it's beyond the Overton window, it's uncommon because it is silly and unworkable. * Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally. In fact, the author touts as a benefit that you'd stop populists being able to talk to their audience. This is destroying the village of liberal democracy in order to save it! * Absolutely zero thought…

I agree with almost all your points, but this is just false: > Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy. We don’t need marketing, we need information. Objective information, that would be easier to come by in the absence of manipulative marketing.

You are defining marketing as manipulative. In fact, marketing is just "bringing a product to market". For example, it includes having booths at a trade show. The line between objective information and "puff" is impossible to draw. I googled "strollers" and got:

Joolz strollers with ergonomic design, manoeuvrability, compactness, and storage space. compare and choose your favourite Joolz pushchair model.

Is this manipulation or information?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#709

Post by halgir »

caseyy wrote: post #695
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…

> 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.

> the definition is clear enough.

It really isn't though. There's so many different forms that we can't reduce it to "I know it when I see it" territory and depend on case-by-case enforcement.

Do we ban outdoor billboards? Product placement? Content marketing? Public relations? Sponsor logos on sports uniforms? Brand logos on retail clothing? Mailing lists?

I do love the idea, but doubt its feasibility. Implementation would have to be meticulous, and I expect the advertising industry would always be one step ahead in an endless race of interpretation. We can still try to curtail the most disruptive forms though, we don't have to destroy all advertising at once to make a positive difference.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#710

Post by dash2 »

ozornin wrote: post #702
dash2 wrote: post #682

This idea isn't uncommon because it's beyond the Overton window, it's uncommon because it is silly and unworkable. * Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally. In fact, the author touts as a benefit that you'd stop populists being able to talk to their audience. This is destroying the village of liberal democracy in order to save it! * Absolutely zero thought…

> how to police the boundaries Any existing policy inevitably has a gray area, no matter how elaborate it is. That's okay if the author didn't cover corner cases in a short essay. > You don't just magically know what to buy. Knowing what you need is not magic. I don't remember much advertising lately that would tell me how a good can satisfy my existing needs. Mostly, they are trying to make me feel I need something…

Hardly a corner case. It's such an obvious question that the failure to cover it means the author isn't serious.

Knowing what you need is not magic, but knowing which products might satisfy it is not automatic. Advertising targeting, which people quite reasonably find intrusive, exists because advertisers desperately want to find people who may potentially want to buy their product.

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