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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#761

Post by owleyey3o »

WalterBright wrote: post #151
dr_dshiv wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the idea is to ban certain types of advertising. It’s a fun thought experiment and practical — it’s why some country roads don’t have billboards and some do. Going to a conference to promote your product to participants.. Do you allow the shills to shill? Well, shills gonna shill— I sure wish I promoted my businesses more. It is uncomfortable at times but that’s not really a good excuse to not promote what yo…

I agree that billboards are a form of "visual pollution" that blocks scenic views. But paying for an ad on the side of a bus isn't a problem. No, I don't think we need to argue about where the line between the two is.

> "visual pollution"

I like that framing.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#762

Post by jopsen »

It's fun thought, but probably also scary one.

The we have any robustness towards propaganda/ads is that we're being bombarded with contradicting arguments.

In a society without would be more susceptible to propaganda. Just just we outlaw it, just doesn't stop bad actors.

That there are lots of places we forbid advertising. Bill boards along the road. Content targeted minors.

We are also lots of advertising we could outlaw: regulated medicin, loans, gambling.

We could regulate what ads can say: products must be sold advertised price (fine print not allowed).

Lots of things could we that don't outlaw all advertising. Look around world you'll find many examples such regulations.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#763

Post by dismalpedigree »

flakeoil wrote: post #713
margalabargala wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you define it conservatively, then advertising will skirt through the loopholes. This would result in a better world still, without the authoritarian system you describe. No need to get it perfect the first try, just start small. For an example of this in action, drive through any of the US states that do not allow billboards.

But how do you define advertising. What about social media influencers? How to prevent someone from paying people to promote stuff? What if it is forbidden and then only a bad government can promote their agenda, but anyone else cannot.

Make paying to promote stuff is what the author asserted.

If it also results in all the social media influencers behind bars, then its a double-win.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#764

Post by mbs159 »

hanspeter wrote: post #753
Hendrikto wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Resellers maintain such information. There are many websites where you can specify the weight, height and hundreds of other parameters for your product search.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#765

Post by jopsen »

yunohn wrote: post #659
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is a valid and desirable function No I don’t think so. I would genuinely guess that 97% of the ads I see are irrelevant garbage or, more commonly, bids by products I know to raise awareness to increase the probability of their sale. I discover the vast majority of what I care about through word of mouth and I suspect I’d be fine without ads. There are so many negative externalities that it’s actually ridiculous.

And pray tell how the chain of word of mouth started for that product?

And hope chain didn't start from lie :)

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#766

Post by Lutger »

Nice. Advertisements is one of the first things I studied seriously, when still in high school almost thirty years ago. I remember arriving at the very same conclusion, even though Big (AD) Tech had yet to arrive. Any hypothetical rational and enlightened society in the future - think Star Trek - would of course not have any advertisement. It just doesn't make sense. It is a compromise, an evolutionary transition, like fascism, human sacrifices or settling conflicts with a duel of pistols.

If we - as in humanity - are still there in 500 to 1000 years, advertisement may be taught in a history class as one of the barbaric practices of the 21th century. Maybe some scholars will be able to relate it to world hunger, climate change and genocide with a mathematical precision that we are not yet capable of. That is a timeline I love to think about.

Of course, slaving away in the asteroid mines for Bezos inc., looking at hyper sexualized ads for a trip to Mars is equally likely.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#767

Post by Ygg2 »

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…

Replace attention for kidneys. Or not being killed with swords. See how you argument works out.

Just because something is highly sought after e.g. kidneys and protection from violence doesn't mean we should commoditize it. See American health care. Some resources are inflexible and allow infinite rent seeking opportunities.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#768

Post by dismalpedigree »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #754
LightBug1 wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How do farmer’s markets run afoul of this proposal? Perhaps there is advertising by the market to tell people to come, that can be eliminated. Once you are at the market there are only individual booths advertising their wares, which is fine because its not a 3rd party.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#769

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

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…

Just tax the hell out of it, to pay for the environmental damages.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#770

Post by mbs159 »

tsycho wrote: post #609
snailmailman wrote: post #402

Earlier 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.

> If the content is valuable to you, you should be willing to pay for it

But I do, by supporting those creators through Patreon. Paying for YouTube Premium sounds like a bad deal since I'm not directly supporting the creators for which I go to YouTube in the first place.

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