Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What if we made advertising illegal?

simone.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 1001 posts

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#731

Post by amelius »

ruszki wrote: post #693
noir_lord wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You don't have to drive every argument/position to its logical extreme ...

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#732

Post by dlenski »

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…

> 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).

In many places where these signs are banned, old grandfathered-in examples have become beloved heritage landmarks.

The musée Carnavallet in Paris has a fascinating exhibit on the city's history based entirely on old business advertising signs.

An example here in Vancouver: https://vancouversun.com/news/whats-the-future-bow-mac-sign-...)

I detest a lot of modern forms of advertising as much as the next guy, but at the same time I think we'd be choking off a lot of interesting and enriching human expression by trying to remove it entirely.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#733

Post by caseyy »

halgir wrote: post #709
caseyy wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Implementatio…

I'd say don't let the perfect be the enemy of good. Banning 80% of existing advertisement practices would practically achieve all the goals bans strive for.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#734

Post by ayaros »

As ads are getting crammed into more and more aspects of our lives both online and offline, what I find particularly creepy is there's been a push by advertisers and tech companies to normalize these practices to upcoming generations. It seems like we're getting pushed towards the status quo of Futurama where we'll have ads broadcast into our dreams... As is the case with idiocracy, that wasn't an instruction manaul. I can only hope we can push the Overton window back to a place where limitatons on advertising can at least be considered.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#737

Post by zabzonk »

gamblor956 wrote: post #473
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I saw plenty of billboards in London and Paris last summer. Where is this magical place in the world that has lots of people but no billboards?

Lived in London for about half my life - very few billboards.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#738

Post by seer »

The problem with all this is that consumerism seems to drive economic power.

Particularly good advertisement in society is a cultural trait that makes it consume way more than it needs, driving individuals into debt, but that means way more business activity to capture that and then redirect all that human effort into actual power.

Butan has no advertisements and people consider themselves quite happy, but the second China or India decide they want something from it, there is nothing it can actually do.

Kinda like in the novel “the dispossessed” from Le Guin - the anarchist planet ultimately lives at the mercy of the capitalist one, and if policy changes (for example - Trump) then you are … no more.

So while I agree that ads are an unnecessary tax that should be banned, I can imagine a society that does could end up at the mercy of a society that doesn’t, given a generation or two.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#739

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

pembrook wrote: post #720
camgunz wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Out of all of HN’s biases, the violent hatred of advertising is by far one of the most misguided. Human attention is scarce. Demand for that attention is endless. Scarcity + demand creates a natural market by default, meaning you must use brutal authoritarianism to disrupt it entirely (vs just regulating with guardrails). Disrupting natural markets with authoritarianism usually ends up worse than any downsides of the…

I am willing to give you that there is hatred. I don't know if it is violent, but there is actual hatred. I do not believe it is misguided. As the OP mentions, a lot of people on this site saw how the sausage is made.

True, but each ad makes it even more scarce as humans instinctively try to filter out noise suggesting that ads do not belong in our vicinity.

I disagree, but I do not want to pursue this line of argumentation, because it is a deep rabbit hole with a lot that can trip it ( and I sadly do not have time this Sunday ).

You may be onto something. Current breed of corporations are effectively nation-states that require focus of an entity nearly as singular. Hmm.

Meh, I saw the fairness and I think I am ok with its absence from the world at large.

Hardly, "make your penis bigger" likely being most obvious example.

I think you are misunderstanding something. The reason OP even considers such a drastic move is because throwing the baby out with the water is easier than attempt at gentle removal. I will add one more thing though. I was in a meeting with non-technical audience yesterday and, oddly, advertising and face tracking in apps came up. This is all starting to trickle down to regular people, which does suggest some level of correction is coming.

It is already out of control, but adtech managed to normalize it.

Hardly, maybe you could argue for freedom of association as we are talking mostly third parties, but the business would still be able to huff and puff as much as they want.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#740

Post by LadyCailin »

dlenski wrote: post #732
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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). In many places where these signs are banned, old grandfathered-in examples have become beloved heritage landmarks. The musée Carnavallet in Paris has a fascinating exhibit on the city's history based entirely on old business advertising signs. An example here in Vancouver: https://…

I find it super interesting reading about goat and human sacrifices done by past cultures. It was a genuinely fascinating part of human culture, that humans thought that could help appease the gods to fix the weather, etc.

Just because it was done in the past, and is interesting to learn about, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t outright ban it.

Post reply on HN