It's interesting, I have been saying a much less intelligible version of this from observing my children.
They have been exposed to services without advertising, and as soon as they see an ad... "Another commercial!!!".
A part of me hopes their entire generation can develop a disdain for advertising based on the negatives they can see in their parents.
What if we made advertising illegal?
751–760 of 1001 posts
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#752I 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…
An advertisement ban is also an interesting idea from the theory of free markets perspective.
Consumer needs are met by the most efficient producers, products compete for consumers on the market. That makes a ton of sense. But ad spending inverts this relationship. Consumer needs are no longer an external condition for the market but become subject to producer intervention.
This creates a source of misalignment between incentives for producers and the public good.
I think outlawing ads would go a long way towards fixing capitalism.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#753This 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.
How would that be easier to come by?
Who would maintain such information repositories and what would the incentive be to take that on? (As they no longer could be supported by ad revenue.)
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#754Earlier 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…
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 .…
Ban farmer's markets
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#755Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's impossible. How do you even define advertising? Seems you're insistent on letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. This is precisely why judges exist. It would not be difficult to define Ads well enough to cover 99% of current advertising. Sure there will be gray areas. Advertisers will adapt. But it would make it profoundly more expensive, difficult and risky. I'm not sure I understand a concrete economi…
A sign on the front of a store is advertising. If we ban these how will you even know what stores there are downtown?
The author specifically mentioned paid 3rd party. So an individual/business can “advertise” all they want for their services, but paying other entities to “speak” for them is not allowed.
Yes, i can find all kinds of loopholes too. Thats what judges are for.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#756Earlier 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…
There was almost no advertising in my country when I was 7. I live in Poland and till 1989 it was communist puppet state of USSR (not through our choice, obviously, so the moment we could - we noped out of it). There was no point advertising because there was no competition, all the companies were nationalized and no matter how well or badly they did - their employees earned the same. If you persuaded people to buy y…
I live in Ukraine, and we still suffer from soviet limitations on advertisement and entrepreneurs. Every time when govt and parliament need to make some urgent reform, nobody could predict, what will really happen - as they could just raise taxes, or deform some industry with some unreal regulations, and only in few cases implement some adequate, for example synchronize with EU regulations.
For example, for banks appear problem, people avoid to pay credits, so need some enforcement - powers approved confiscation of property to pay credit, but with exceptions of unprotected people, so bank cannot confiscate from pensioners, when child registered in property, and few others, so literally huge percent of citizens now protected from banks, and this new law is step back, not progress.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#757Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's not only hypocritical, it's nonsensical in this discussion.
It's obvious that if advertising was made illegal, we would need to pay for all those services that we want to use. YouTube premium is the best example of how that would actually work.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#758This 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…
> Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy.
A-Are you Don Draper by any chance?
Seriously, though: you don't need marketing. What you need while searching for what product to buy is a technical specification of the product by which you can determine if the product suits your needs.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#759This is as ridiculous as asking, “What if we made agriculture illegal?” You don’t make a planet of 8 billion people work without the trappings of civilization, good and bad. You certainly don’t make it work without commerce and freedom of speech.
there are people who disagree, they are called communists. and yes, they can ban agriculture, no agriculture for you my friend.
True enough, but the math never works out in their favor either.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#760That's the best thing I've read in months if not years.