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What if we made advertising illegal?

simone.org

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#871

Post by const_cast »

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…

This is a classic case of perfect being the enemy of good.

We don't need to 1984 listen to every conversation for any hints at product endorsement. We can start with obvious things - for example, prohibiting a company from spending money on marketing. Banning ads on the air, whatever.

There's levels to this. There's really evil slot machine marketing. You know, try to get people addicted to your social media and use that addiction as a way to generate profit. And then there's not so bad marketing. Like my friend telling me he likes his new pair of pants.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#872

Post by evantbyrne »

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.

Being cheap and also having standards of what you'll watch is not hypocritical.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#873

Post by const_cast »

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…

> 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

This logic is just bad, plain and simple. You know what else has a high demand? Drugs.

So I guess fuck it, right? Sell heroin in Walmart, who cares. It's a "natural market". Of course people want to shoot up, it feels fucking amazing and humans are hard-wired to do shit that makes them feel good.

So let's just give up and do nothing. Yeah, in fact go ahead and advertise heroin on TVs. Yeah, go ahead and give it to infants too, let's get them young. After all, it's a natural market or something.

Please, I am begging you, stop bending over so severely for "markets". Sit back, and think about consequences.

If something ONLY HARMS PEOPLE, why are we doing it? Seriously, if everyone is a loser then why are we here? We don't have to make life hell just because capitalism would like it! That's a choice!

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#874

Post by brookst »

const_cast wrote: post #871
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…

This is a classic case of perfect being the enemy of good. We don't need to 1984 listen to every conversation for any hints at product endorsement. We can start with obvious things - for example, prohibiting a company from spending money on marketing. Banning ads on the air, whatever. There's levels to this. There's really evil slot machine marketing. You know, try to get people addicted to your social media and use…

I think you’d do better banning the sale of advertising than the purchase.

Demand-side is a mess and hard to draw the line. It’s not a perfect / good thing, it’s a feasibility thing.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#875

Post by zzzeek »

so if Simone.org here paid someone to help build this website of theirs, where the posts ends with "Sign up for Kōdō Simone" and a short blurb why the blog is valuable, that would be illegal, right? Because they paid someone to create an advertisement. This post claims that "community networks" are fine but where is the line between that and a paid advertisement - if I paid someone to print my business cards vs. paid them to put the card on a board? or to put up flyers around town for my band? "advertisement" is so vague I just dont understand this proposal.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#876

Post by asdf6969 »

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…

> Advertising puts a price on the scarce commodity of attention

Why should I be allowed to sell my attention any more than I can sell my own kidneys? It's even worse because I let other people sell my attention for me and get nothing back. What point are you trying to make? The market for manipulating my behaviour shouldn't exist at all so I really don't care how efficient it is

> the highest value messages for both the audience..

Obviously not. If this was true then people would pay to see more ads and everyone knows that doesn't happen

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#877

Post by const_cast »

pessimizer wrote: post #399
cogman10 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty. What? How? Advertising isn't a good or service. About the only way I could see it economically being damaging is if you subscribe to the "broken windows" theory of economics.

Advertising tells me what goods and services are available, and at what prices. This is a service.

> Advertising tells me what goods and services are available, and at what prices.

No, it doesn't actually, it does the opposite. It's attempting to make you less aware of what's available outside of the monopolies, because the monopolies shove the barrel and there's no room left.

If you take a walk through town versus watch TV for a day you will get a completely different view of what products and services are out there. This mentality is exactly why small business continue to struggle - we're made to believe they don't exist because of advertising.

The reason this works is because the human brain is pretty stupid and it can't keep everything in it all at once. You also don't get a choice in what you remember, your brain does that without your consent. So you see McDonald's 1000 times and your local butcher shop signage 5 times and you'll remember one, but not the other.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#878

Post by phtrivier »

You don't need to ban it, you need to find mechanism to prevent the worst effects.

In civilized countries, this could be done by taxation (limit the mass) and regulation (limit the excesses.)

Use the country of the advertisment target audience to decide which juridiction applies.

I'm pretty sure advertisers have to be aware of the country their targeting, given that they know me better than my spouse.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#879

Post by otterley »

ohdearsadface wrote: post #645
otterley wrote: post #22

> No one is entitled to yell at you “GET 20% OFF THIS UNDERWEAR YOU GLANCED AT YESTERDAY” with a dopamine megaphone in your bedroom. And to track 90% of your life to know when and how to say it. That's not free speech, that's harassment. The author is off their chair. Yes, even commercial speech is protected as long as it’s not fraudulent. And there are already laws prohibiting nuisances. Advertising isn’t a nuisance…

I watch crowd here since 2011, and asking cowards not to downvote will probably have opposite effect :) if you disagree with the tribe, you will be punished by the tribe. Some of the tribe can down vote you and so they will use this terrible power to silence anyone who might shake tribes life view :)

Being downvoted isn’t punishment or silencing. But I find it lazy to simply downvote something because you disagree with what is being said.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#880

Post by programjames »

const_cast wrote: post #871
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…

This is a classic case of perfect being the enemy of good. We don't need to 1984 listen to every conversation for any hints at product endorsement. We can start with obvious things - for example, prohibiting a company from spending money on marketing. Banning ads on the air, whatever. There's levels to this. There's really evil slot machine marketing. You know, try to get people addicted to your social media and use…

Well, I think the point is your friend can still tell you he likes his new pair of pants, he just can't be a paid actor.
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