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What if we made advertising illegal?

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Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#951

Post by spopejoy »

lambda wrote: post #827
qoez wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of winners today are those that get away with greyzone illegal practices. The same would happen in a "ads are illegal" world. People would pay for word of mouth, or even pay influential people to casually talk about it, but it'd be off the books etc.

I live in Vermont, where billboards are illegal. It's great, there is so much less visual pollution driving anywhere. And yes, some people do try to push it, renting space to park their hay carts that happen to have their business information on the side. But you know what? Those cases eventually get dealt with too, and overall, the law is a complete win, even with a few people testing the line.

This is the best and most obvious example of successful anti-advertising legislation, NYC as well prohibits billboards in most places which is a blessing.

The fact that the MTA is now plastered in flatscreen ads is an example of huge overreach, and also an example of how better funding for public utilities like the subway eliminate the "need" for advertising that the MTA claims.

Unfortunately, this is the system working as designed per the capitalists. Underfund public utilities to make the public more dependent on the for-profit private sector. Banning ads is communism for this mindset.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#952

Post by WhyNotHugo »

I'm not against this idea, but I feel like it can be really hard to execute in practice. Especially considering that many of the parties involved don't mind being maliciously compliant.

The really tough part is classifying "what counts as an ad". Of course the ones shown by Facebook and Google are ads, but let's look at some not-so-straightforward examples:

1. The community centre in my neighbourhood has a wall with lots of ads from local groups. Language practice groups (which are free), language lessons (paid), narcotics anonymous, painting classes, and a lot of other services provided by individuals or small groups. Some of them non-profit, some of them are the main source of income for those providing the service. I deliberately approached this wall looking for those ads, and we need them for this kind of groups to survive.

2. A supermarket places a large banner near the entrance with this week's offers. The products on offer are expiring soon. There's an interest in selling the goods so they are consumed and don't go bad. The interest isn't only on the supermarket's behalf: as a society, we want to minimise the amount of food that goes to waste.

3. How do we buy and sell houses if there are no ads for "houses on sale". I am aware that there are economic models where individuals don't need to buy and sell houses, but switching to such a model seems way beyond the scope of the proposal. Is an ad stuck to the window still allowed?

4. iOS shows "suggestions" in the order of "sign up for cloud storage to store my data because your phone is full". I consider this an ad. Can we write legislation which would catalogue this as an ad without false positives?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#953

Post by WhyNotHugo »

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…

> 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 painfully true.

Indeed. Marketing is essentially capitalist propaganda. It promotes capitalism and consumerism in an implicit way, and doesn't even mention it.

It's vaguely of like the statement "X is the way to serve god best". I'm saying that god exists without actually making that statement; it's implicit. If statements of this style were ubiquitous, they work as propaganda in a way far stronger that just repeating "god exists".

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#954

Post by sebastianz »

jdietrich wrote: post #133
lukev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Advertising is a zero-sum game. If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth. It's only when some actors start advertising that the others must as well, so they don't fall behind. And so billions of dollars are spent that could have gone to making better products. It's basically the prisoner's dilemma at scale.

>If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth. Most consumers don't do extensive research before making a purchasing decision, or any research at all - they buy whatever catches their eye on a store shelf or the front page of Amazon search results, they buy what they're already familiar with, they buy what they see everyone else buying. Consumer behaviour is deeply h…

> A market without advertising isn't a level playing field, but a near-unbreakable oligopoly.

Why would it be an oligopoly any more than it is now? You go to a shop (in your city, or online), trust their curation, and buy something. If it's garbage, next time you will pick another shop or curator, or discuss with your friends / colleagues. Repeat until you find a place with satisfactory curation.

Why would this dynamic be bad? Why would I as a customer be better served by banners shoved in my face by the producers with the highest pockets?

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#955

Post by willywanker »

I don't have to imagine it at least on the internet - I've been blocking all ads on all my devices very successfully since 1999. In fact now I can't stand having to look at or use anyone else's computer or smartphone (usually when they ask for free tech support).

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#956

Post by ninalanyon »

thewileyone wrote: post #937
gameman144 wrote: post #249

This feels very similar in my mind to blanket concepts like "let's ban lobbying". There are certainly specific modes or practices in lobbying that are damaging to society, but lobbying itself (specifically, informing lawmakers about your specific perspective and desires) is a valid and desirable function. Likewise, advertising on its own at its core is useful: there might be something that adds value to your life tha…

Lobbying is too ingrained in American politics. Banning lobbying would just drive in underground like with Clarence Thomas.

Just give the responsibility for policing it to the tax authorities. The lobbyist might be able to hide the money but the recipient has to spend it or it is worthless so it will be detectable and the transactions punishable.

Also, that we won't be able to make it perfect is not an argument against trying to improve.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#957

Post by ninalanyon »

wat10000 wrote: post #413
gameman144 wrote: post #249

This feels very similar in my mind to blanket concepts like "let's ban lobbying". There are certainly specific modes or practices in lobbying that are damaging to society, but lobbying itself (specifically, informing lawmakers about your specific perspective and desires) is a valid and desirable function. Likewise, advertising on its own at its core is useful: there might be something that adds value to your life tha…

Anyone who has found out about a useful product through advertising that you wouldn’t have know about otherwise, purchased it, and been pleased with your purchase, raise your hand. Anyone? This whole “advertising is useful” thing sounds like the spherical cow of marketing to me. It might make sense in abstract but it doesn’t reflect reality.

I can think of one such case in my life and I'm 69 years old. That's not enough to warrant the amount of advertising we are bombarded with.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#958

Post by Loughla »

harimau777 wrote: post #832
Loughla wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already do that. Is always in TINY print or they use weasel words that are meaningless in common use, but defendable in court. Improved health is a good one. It doesn't really mean anything.

That's exactly the sort of thing that I think should be banned. Particularly the meaningless terms like "improved health".

But that's almost impossible. If the law says that all statements made MUST be true (which it kind of already does, by the way), companies will exclusively use weasel phrases to avoid any lawsuit. Otherwise, when you're trying to sell phlaborivin and bill it as a cure for cancer, when you find the one patient that doesn't respond to treatment, you're screwed.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that saying true things is what we already require. Human nature will pervert that system and follow the letter of the law; that's the literal system we have now.

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#959

Post by _Algernon_ »

gameman144 wrote: post #289
Henchman21 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we be open to nuance when we’re being actively manipulated? Cease manipulating me and I will hear them out on the nuances, provided the advertisers can articulate it.

Someone telling you about a product is not manipulating you. Tracking or certain ad practices might be manipulative, and it's fine to push back against or ban that manipulation, but that is not at all inherent to advertising.

You might want to read up on Edward Bernays[1] if you think modern advertising is "just telling you about a product". It most decidedly is not. It is a century of of human effort poured into exploiting human evolutionary biases in order to increase sales. It's an exercise in inducing demand, not in fulfilling preexisting demand.

>What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research, which means orienting business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable. The business of business becomes pseudo-therapy; the consumer, a patient reassured by psychodramas.[2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

[2]: Technopoly by Neil Postman

Re: What if we made advertising illegal?

#960

Post by renox »

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…

>> 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?

Yet, in some countries advertising for tobacco or alcohol is banned, if it's possible to ban these advertising for these product why would it be impossible to ban every advertising.

> And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.

Uh? You can advertise in these other nation but they also won't be able to advertise in your country, so I don't understand your point.

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