Ironic that the article pops up a banner "Follow @index@simone.org via your Fediverse account (like Mastodon, Pixelfed, Flipboard, Wordpress, Writefreely, Threads, or BlueSky.)" ie advertising themselves.
What if we made advertising illegal?
991–1000 of 1001 posts
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#992Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's frustrating is how the tech community keeps treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease. If you think deeper, to first principles, it’s clear that disease is capitalism. I am not advocating socialism/communism, but isn’t it strange that capitalism was never reviewed or updated according to new science about anthropology, sociology, and economics? In 100 years, about 100 countries tried it, and not one c…
> capitalism was never reviewed or updated according to new science about anthropology, sociology, and economics? If taking a human-science view, then one interesting take on capitalism is that it isn't a thing at all. It's the absence of a thing. It's a positive freedom. There can be no "science" of capitalism. It allows the direction of excess human psychological energy. It is the absence of regulation of anti-soci…
You’re right and those are interesting books. And yes, people will not be able to live with alternative to Capitalism.
That’s why, I think the only way for human race to survive is to have multi-generation transition plan, people must understand that in their life time it’s not going to get better and fair. It would happen in maybe two generations, or over 50-100 years time span.
And it would have to happen in one country first and then propagated to others.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#993Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there any concrete evidence that anything bad has ever happened as a result of advertising? … What is the steel man for "advertising bad"? Electoral politics[0], alcohol, tobacco[1], drugs, gambling, unbridled consumerism … for example [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire [1] https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/throwback-thursday-wh...
The Reichstag fire has absolutely nothing to do with advertising, and imagining that it does completely ignores and trivializes the entire history of pre-Nazi Germany
I don’t agree. I think the Reischtag stunt is very much related to advertising methods
The atrocities subsequently committed are on a whole different level though. I think we might agree on this
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#994This 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…
> "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion. It's worse than that in that it's just plainly wrong. I learn about useful products via advertising all the time -- so often, in fact, that I'm sort of bewildered that anybody could claim otherwise. We must be experiencing the world quite differently.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#995I think he missed one of the use cases for advertising: providing “free” services to people in the “third world”. I come from west Africa, majority of people can’t afford to pay for Facebook, YouTube, whatsapp etc even though these are their main means of communications. Even if they could afford it (“just a few cents is nothing” to us on here - to these people that’s how much they make in a day), they don’t use traditional banking services and certainly not access to credit and debit cards to make payments. I hate ads too, for all the reasons mentioned in the article. But I don’t see a feasible way to make these services available for the 1 billion plus people I’m describing. Open to ideas.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#996The buried lede: ```Populists exploit ad marketplaces, using them to bypass traditional media gatekeepers``` I want to believe that the author is hopelessly naive, and not a more nefarious actor. These traditional media gatekeepers are not by any means friendly to democracy; they're literal tools of the state, and actively work against the interests of the populace. I say this without a hint of irony: I trust social…
Citation needed. I'll take a free media which is held accountable for not misstating basic facts over social media any day of the week.
There are literally thousands. e.g. [1] [2] . Are you remotely serious about "free media"? There is no free media. Never was, not ever.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_United_State... [2] https://www.wallis.rochester.edu/assets/pdf/wallisseminarser...
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#997I 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. A big reason for that is influence from Edward Bernays: "Edward Louis Bernays was an American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". While credited with advancing the profession of public relations, h…
Came to this thread to post that. Everyone should read _Propaganda_. It's public domain, found in various places.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#998This is the exact type of thinking, this type of casual totalitarian social engineering, that led to the invention on the guillotine.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#999as good as it may sound, but this will never happen.
People will never pay for everything, majority don't even buy PC games, they use pirated one's. This is how humans are designed, and this is what which keeps the market afloats.
Re: What if we made advertising illegal?
#1000IMO advertising itself is ok, if not targeted by profiling user. I'm reading about bikes and I'm offered a bike or helmet? Fine by me. Problem starts, when I'm scrolling $socialWebsite and I see ton of biking ads, because some Orwellian ad network is tracking me through time & space. Then content starts to serve as means to push ads into my eyes whenever I dare to open them. If content is crap - doesn't matter - if I…
If ads are ok, how do you feel about this one https://i.imgur.com/599PMEl.jpeg
Obviously it's crap and shouldn't be allowed.
However I don't see how it affects my arguments. I'm generally ok with cars - doesn't mean I'm OK with monster trucks on every corner of my city.