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 cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
"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 on me, yadda yadda.
It's so transparent to me now, and I've passed this curse onto you.
Nothing else in law works this way. No definition is ironclad. This is what legislators, agencies, and courts are for. We all know this.
Ironically this is something lawyers and judges would pick up on immediately. You need an underlying principle of harm that can be applied consistently.
There are many things individuals will consider "important and valuable to them" that are harmful to others. We prevent individuals from harming others for their own self-gain because that's what societies do.
Consider that the author considers propaganda to be a form of advertising, and suggests we ban propaganda. Well, Fox News is is probably one of the most influential sources of propaganda in our era, and they're just publishing news with a strong political slant. This anti-propaganda law effectively would have to make it illegal to publish political opinion pieces. That would be absurdly draconian.
For the record, I'm strongly anti-advertising, but a complete ban on advertisement would be impossible to construct because you can't draw a sharp line between ads and free expression.
In what way could you learn about novel commercial things in the absence of advertising? Word of mouth alone?
And yes, word of mouth and non-paid advertising is absolutely capable of spreading awareness on its own.
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 decentralized market regulation of that scarcity. Instead of something that attempts to land on fairness (even if imperfect), no market at all guarantees unfairness.
Advertising puts a price on the scarce commodity of attention in broad strokes, and it not always, but generally trends toward making the highest value messages for both the audience and advertiser get seen over lower value messages in any given situation (because those are the ones that can afford the market clearing price on said advertising). I know, please respond with all of your “all these times it didn’t work like that!” throw-the-baby out-with-the-bathwater Anecdotes.
Like all markets, we should regulate advertising to ensure it doesn’t get out of control. But to ban it outright would require an extreme policing of all speech at all levels of society.
Hence why this is a non-serious, silly idea.
Ok? If that's how we define "brutal authoritarianism," I guess I'm a brutal authoritarian. There's a natural market for mob hitmen (scarce + in-demand)—are you opposed to a "brutal authoritarian" crackdown on those too?
> Disrupting natural markets with authoritarianism usually ends up worse than any downsides of the decentralized market regulation of that scarcity.
Citation very much needed. Suppliers of lead paint, asbestos, ozone-destroying aerosols, contaminated foodstuffs, etc. did not regulate themselves in a decentralized manner. In fact, take virtually any toxic contaminant or hazardous product and you'll usually find that the market colluded to cover up evidence of harm, rather than "self-regulating."
> generally trends toward making the highest value messages for both the audience and advertiser
Absolutely not. Consumers do not exert demand for certain types of ads in preference to others. There's no mechanism for ads to converge toward high audience value. It's advertiser value that is optimized for, often to the detriment of consumers (e.g. advertisements for profitable scams, which have negative value).
Even if you want to argue that advertisements inform consumers to some extent, that's probably outweighed by the extent that they misinform consumers. Consider infomercial products: Regular kitchen knives don't need an advertisement because demand is inelastic. If you're cooking, you need a knife; nobody has to promote the idea of knives. But the "slap-chop" is a product with elastic demand, and thus the marginal value of advertising is much greater for them. Hence, they can afford to buy up huge amounts of ad space to drum up demand for an essentially worthless product. The advertising ecosystem has perverse incentive to promote scams.
> But to ban it outright would require an extreme policing of all speech at all levels of society.
There are a lot of noxious and socially destructive things which are not practical to ban.
No, murder is not comparable to advertising. And no, not once did I ever say the phrase "self-regulating" nor did I argue against regulation of advertising.
Your fundamental belief (and the prevailing view on HN) that advertising is a scam and intended to "misinform" is incorrect. Apparently I need to say this again because it's hard to grasp the concept of nuance--Are some advertisements scams? Absolutely. The market is not perfectly efficient, but again, markets trend in the direction of efficiency over long periods.
Ultimately, the vast majority of advertisements you see are for the products that are the most desired by people, hence why they can profitably continue advertising over time.
Just because you aren't interested in the product, doesn't mean it's a scam . Enough people in the audience of whatever media you consume think otherwise, hence why the company is advertising there. Again, there are absolutely stupid companies wasting money on stupid ads, but they tend to get outcompeted by the smarter ones. I get it though, giving people you believe are less intelligent than you the freedom to make decisions is frustrating.
Even in your example of the slap-chop, which you say is a "worthless product," funny enough, I literally just used a similar product yesterday to dice a large amount of onions quickly. Guess I'm stupid and I need an authoritarian like you to tell me a smarter way to live.
Alternatively though, the idea that knife makers don't promote their products is just hilarious to me. The market for kitchen knives is extremely competitive and just because the advertising doesn't take the form of a 30 second TV spot from the 1990s doesn't mean they just throw their products on the market with zero promotion. How do you think certain brands even appear on the shelves of the stores you shop in? You're gonna hate this too...turns out shelf space is scarce so shelf space is a market as well, and it's more of an economic calculation than one of technical passion. Oh no not again!
Not sure those are good examples, because none of them were “regulated” or banned until there was already a decent alternative available. What is the alternative to advertising, for capturing human attention?
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.
This is true, but only for the set of messages that produce value that can be captured by the advertiser. This set is a small subset of messages that produce value. For example, a message about the benefits of excercise/socializing/climate action would produce a lot of value, but not in a form that any single advertiser can capture. So a lot of high value messages don't get produced in the current system, and might have a better chance in a more "natural" attention economy.
Advertising also increases the value of a product, so the value of things whose value can be captured by advertisers will be inflated when compared to their value in an environment without advertising.
There are alternatives, but most people choose to pay with attention, so that's where creators are being pulled to. But that doesn't mean that you're forced to consume it.
Plutonium is one of the most niche things ever. All humans and businesses desire human attention, whereas virtually nobody desires plutonium.
The amount of people who can do anything with it amounts to likely 0.000001% of the population.
This is not a good rebuttal.
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
Interesting, I perceive it exactly the other way around. I'm surprised this thread is as high up as it is, usually as per my perception, anti-advertisement sentiment gets shot down hard, presumably because a large part of the HN-crowd works for companies like google or facebook which rely on ads as a business model, or start-ups whose products are only used because users were shown ads for them.
My take: The human mind is hackable; it's just too easy and efficient to appeal to our emotions and most basic instincts. And while it was mostly fine to ignore it while it was "only" increasing consumerism, we currently see what happens when the same is applied to elections, with predictably terrible outcomes.
Your stance is still the old HN stance; the market actually works, any change that would impact the status quo is neither welcome nor needed, etc. etc. - this was the gospel for at least a decade, but we're finally awakening to the fact that hey, maybe this is actually bad, even if it made loads of money for many of us. Maybe it led us to the awful situation we're currently in, with big, ad-based monopolies, an absolute clownshow in the highest of offices and CEOs of said monopolies playing the lackeys.
Most big social developments in human history were non-serious and silly to many people before they actually happened.
I don't know if I go that far. I can see arguments for both sides of the issue. And at the same time, I know it would be impossible to do, but I could see that not having advertising would fix a lot of problems in our society. And yes, advertising is a broad term. Maybe we have clear rules around what's advertising and what's propaganda.
> you must use brutal authoritarianism to disrupt it entirely
I'm not usually a fan of brutal authoritarianism, but you're making it sound pretty good.
I am willing to give you that there is hatred. I don't know if it is violent, but there is actual hatred. I do not believe it is misguided. As the OP mentions, a lot of people on this site saw how the sausage is made.
<< Human attention is scarce.
True, but each ad makes it even more scarce as humans instinctively try to filter out noise suggesting that ads do not belong in our vicinity.
<< Demand for that attention is endless.
I disagree, but I do not want to pursue this line of argumentation, because it is a deep rabbit hole with a lot that can trip it ( and I sadly do not have time this Sunday ).
<< meaning you must use brutal authoritarianism to disrupt it entirely
You may be onto something. Current breed of corporations are effectively nation-states that require focus of an entity nearly as singular. Hmm.
<< no market at all guarantees unfairness.
Meh, I saw the fairness and I think I am ok with its absence from the world at large.
<< generally trends toward making the highest value messages for both the audience and advertiser get seen over lower value messages in any given situation
Hardly, "make your penis bigger" likely being most obvious example.
<< please respond with all of your “all these times it didn’t work like that!” throw-the-baby out-with-the-bathwater Anecdotes.
I think you are misunderstanding something. The reason OP even considers such a drastic move is because throwing the baby out with the water is easier than attempt at gentle removal. I will add one more thing though. I was in a meeting with non-technical audience yesterday and, oddly, advertising and face tracking in apps came up. This is all starting to trickle down to regular people, which does suggest some level of correction is coming.
<< we should regulate advertising to ensure it doesn’t get out of control
It is already out of control, but adtech managed to normalize it.
<< But to ban it outright would require an extreme policing of all speech at all levels of society.
Hardly, maybe you could argue for freedom of association as we are talking mostly third parties, but the business would still be able to huff and puff as much as they want.
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!
Please explain with examples from nature.
Your argument begs the question. Attention is indeed scarce, but that's because ad tech has created an attention economy.
Assuming that advertising is the best use of human attention is - how can I put this politely? - really quite eccentric.
In nature there is limited access to food, water, mates, and shelter.
Economizing is the process of dealing with scarce resources.
Or for that matter, consider Berlin, which has banned all non-cultural advertising on public transportation. Yes, there's some edge cases that are tricky, but overall the situation doesn't seem too fraught.
How would you do that?
How exactly would that work?
How exactly does it work in other countries but the US?
There's very little outside advertising in Sweden, for example, and mostly restricted to cultural advertising. Road shoulders belong to Traffic Authority, and all advertising and billboards are banned there, so you won't see the insanity pf billboard after billboard here.
So how did Sweden do that? By political will and persuasion perhaps?
Political advertising also adheres to certain rules. And while there's a lot of it in a few months before elections, it's still surprisingly contained compared to some countries
(Billboards also also reasonably good as sound reflectors, reducing the highway noise in the community if positioned properly.)
I have driven/travelled across a lot, nearly all, European countries and the other one - the UK.
You do not get those huge screens on stilts anywhere that I have seen in Europe, that seem to be common across the US.
To be fair, I've only driven across about 10 US states. However, I do have Holywood's and other's output to act as a proxy and it seems that US companies do love to shout it from the hill tops at vast expense and fuck up the scenery with those bill board thingies.
Try driving around La Toscana and say Florida. I've done both, multiple times and I'm a proper outsider. I love both regions quite passionately but for very different reasons. FL has way more issues in my opinion but we are discussing bill boards so let's stay on task.
Billboards require power as well as the obvious physical attributes. They are an absolute eyesore and in my opinion should be abolished. Turn them into wind turbines and do some good - the basics are in place.
However. I know FL quite well. It has a lovely climate (unless it is trying to kill you). Florida man almost certainly invented air conditioning and FL man being FL man took it to the max when confronted with a rather lovely climate.
FL man is a thing and it turns out that CA Pres. can be weirder than anything seen before.
US - remember your mates, we remember you as is and don't hold you accountable for going a bit odder than usual for a while.
This reminded me of learning the Hollywood sign was literally an advertisement (shouted from the hill top) that turned into a cultural landmark
On to the point for the topic, parts of Asia (mid/large cities) are overwhelming with their advertisements which I don't think the US or EU/UK can compare either
Digital billboards, sure, but traditional static billboards only need power if you want to light them at night. My guess is the majority of billboards in the US are unpowered, since it's so much cheaper. (Though likely not the majority if you weight by daily views.)
If we ban billboards at least the the countryside will look nice
Advertising already makes extensive use of astroturf campaigns and product placement.
Cable TV started out with no ads, as a major selling point over broadcast TV. Then they started advertising because they figured they could make more money that way. There's no reason to believe that advertisers will ever refrain from introducing ads when there's money to be made by doing so.
So banning billboards makes advertising less efficient. In theory, anyway.
I'd much rather be fed efficient advertising on a billboard than have to worry about more astroturfing, that stuff is insidious. Cure substantially worse than the disease once advertisers have to deceptive and have even bigger incentives to hide than they already do.
And much as the anti-ads people want to skip the point, nobody ever even established that advertising is a negative thing that advertisers need to be harmed for.
Then put them in jail, that's why we've built them.
Know what we have instead?
Peace.
Sadly, a post titled "A proposal to restrict certain forms of advertizing", and full of boring rules will be much less likely to get 800+ points on HN.
something like 80+ percent of texas cities ban them or are phasing them out with heavy new restrictions.
for example, in dallas, if you want a new billboard, you have to tear down 3. and new ones have placement and size restrictions.
houston is no longer allowing any new off premises signage including billboards. the only way to erect a new billboard is if it passes permitting and the company tears down one of their old ones.
and like i said, like 80% of texas towns across the state have heavy restrictions on new or outright ban them.
santa fe effectively has a ban on all off premises advertising which obviously includes billboards.
billboard are banned on highways in the entire country of Norway, including urban/suburban highways.
the entire state of vermont.
the entire state of maine, including cities.
all of washington dc, including georgetown.
I've seen Billboards in Honolulu, Houston, Dallas, and Washington DC within the past 2 years. I haven't been to Santa Fe recently but they had billboards the last time I was there.
In many places where these signs are banned, old grandfathered-in examples have become beloved heritage landmarks.
The musée Carnavallet in Paris has a fascinating exhibit on the city's history based entirely on old business advertising signs.
An example here in Vancouver: https://vancouversun.com/news/whats-the-future-bow-mac-sign-...)
I detest a lot of modern forms of advertising as much as the next guy, but at the same time I think we'd be choking off a lot of interesting and enriching human expression by trying to remove it entirely.
Just because it was done in the past, and is interesting to learn about, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t outright ban it.
All-or-nothing thinking is so common in HN that it’s seriously over-complicating simple problems by trying to find a perfect solution. Such an ideal solution is rarely necessary.
Why have I not heard about this. Is this a recent thing?
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 economic argument other than "anything which makes it harder for businesses to be wildly profitable off minimal value hurts the economy". But that only really holds of you define the economy by things like GDP, which really just capture how wildly profitable companies are and have almost no bearing on quality of life for the people; in other words, the argument is circular.
Assume paying for others to advertise for you is illegal. What if I hire a large staff to go out and sing the praises of my company? Walking downtown shouting to the rooftops. That is not advertising, right?
What about them wearing a sign so they don’t have to shout? Driving with a sign on a car?
Ok, now suppose some strapping young individual creates a service that pays websites to carve out a little div on their site that will display these employees songs of love? This strapping young individual now sells this service to companies wishing to more easily get the word out to more people. Is this advertising? But I am not paying someone to make the ad, my employees are doing that.
How is this different than my company posting on facebook? Where is the line?
I am not an advertising apologist. I hate ads with the power of a thousand suns. I use an ad blocker. But this idea of making advertising illegal is just a non-starter. It goes against the basic tenants of freedom of speech.
No ads in TV programming. No product placement in movies. No billboards. No subway or bus station advertising posters. No paid recommending of specific products. No promotional material for products - nothing with fictional elements. No web ads. No sponsored links. No social media ads. No paid reviews.
(you could still do some of those covertly, with "under the table" money, but then if you caught you get fined or go to jail)
No tracking consuming preferences of any kind, not even if you have an online store. Just a database of past purchases on your own store - and using them for profiling via ML should be illegal too.
If people want to find out about a product, they can see it on your company's website (seeking it directly), or get a leaflet from you. In either case no dramatized / finctional / aspirational images or video should be shown.
>And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
You're removing cancer.
Last time I checked, a product label (on the product or on the package) is not an advertisement. It's just the name of the product and/or brand, and maybe some lines about what it does. Even if you call a product label "a sort of an advertisment" it's fine.
When people complain about advertising today, do they refer to product labels? Or to their friends telling them about a product? If not, why are you bringing this up?
>Am I allowed to tell my friends I like a product? What if I put a video on youtube and accidentally include a brand name in it?
Sure, as long as you aren't getting paid for doing it (directly or via affiliate kickbacks). If you are, and you're discovered, you pay a fine - or go to jail.
You try to paint a "it's impossible" all or nothing scenario around marginal advertising and edge cases. Doesn't matter. If we can get rid of 90% of overt advertising - tv ads, streaming ads, posters, billboads, radio jingles, that's enough, even if "you put a video on youtube and accidentally include a brand name in it".
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.
This isn't some piece of rigidly-defined software instruction that also is somehow write-once execute-forever amend-never.
If it also results in all the social media influencers behind bars, then its a double-win.
If you live in a conservative state, what are the chances that they say advocacy for Planned Parenthood is advertising and say that advocacy for pro-life is freedom of religion?
And how would that work over the Internet? Are you going to block foreign websites?
I can give you a real world example. Florida requires age verification for porn sites. Sites not based in the US including the ones owned by MindGeek just ignored it.
I don't see how you reached this conclusion, unless you think advertising/propaganda yields bet positive outcomes more than net negative, which seems contentious.
Here's one way it could be false: the wisdom of the crowds only really works when groups of people independently reach their own conclusions, because people who don't understand an issue are randomly distributed around the correct answer and so they all cancel each other out, leaving only the people who do understand an issue to cluster around the correct decision.
Propaganda/advertising works directly against this, thus undercutting the usefulness of the wisdom of crowds.
It's hilarious that you think that advertising is actually necessary for economic prosperity. If anything, it's probably a net drain on it.
TV brands can be set up in a department store? Like we’ve done for ages?
A major challenge in journalism is because of the collapse in value of banner ads. No one but the very largest newspapers have sustainable businesses in the United States and they only do because of the critical mass they have reached with subscribers.
It'd be a very different world, I anticipate a lot of paywalls and secret deals.
One of these is good and one is bad.
If humans can't decide, we can train a LLM to be the arbiter.
Almost everyone can tell when they’re being advertised to. And almost everyone can tell when they advertise. Effectiveness of such bans would depend on enforcement, the definition is clear enough.
It really isn't though. There's so many different forms that we can't reduce it to "I know it when I see it" territory and depend on case-by-case enforcement.
Do we ban outdoor billboards? Product placement? Content marketing? Public relations? Sponsor logos on sports uniforms? Brand logos on retail clothing? Mailing lists?
I do love the idea, but doubt its feasibility. Implementation would have to be meticulous, and I expect the advertising industry would always be one step ahead in an endless race of interpretation. We can still try to curtail the most disruptive forms though, we don't have to destroy all advertising at once to make a positive difference.
Content marketing, public relations, mailing lists - no
"we don't have to destroy all advertising at once to make a positive difference"
You nailed it man. My first response even to the headline let alone the article was to reflect on the first line spoken by my professor in my first marketing class: "Marketing is about educating the consumer." Advertising is just one way we attempt to do that, and taken to an extreme, I have no idea how you could ever make it stop. The article is clearly focused on one part of advertising, but even then, someone will always build a better mousetrap.
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 ... what a shame.
You don't define "advertising". You look for things that advertisers do and see if they can be made illegal or unprofitable.
Formula 1 cars used to have displays for tobacco products. At one point, the law in Europe started saying "you can not do that", so tobacco advertisements disappeared.
There should be a limit on the quantity of advertising. Limited to like 100 people a day on average. We already have anti-spam laws.
There would still be advertising but it would be from people from your own communities instead of big corporations.
So I'm listening to the radio, and one minute I'm hearing someone on NPR (or an equivalent public broadcaster) explaining how to make my back healthier; the next minute there's someone trying to convince me that some product will make my back healthier.
Which one is advertising and which one is not?
> that SOME PRODUCT will make my back healthier.
Is it really that tricky?
It's worth analyzing why a society wants that and who benefits from it.
The article almost explicitly states that this is precisely the goal. We all understand who those populists in 2016 are, who "bypass traditional media gatekeepers and deliver tailored messages to susceptible audiences".
So I think we are not talking about authoritarianism here, but full-fledged totalitarianism. Such a policy is a powerful lever of control, allowing government to obtain even more levers. And in the end people still vote "wrongly" (spoiler: they are voting "wrongly" not because of some Russian advertisement on facebook), but the government at that point will not care anymore how people vote because that will not affect anything.
This is just the perfect solution fallacy.
Nobody in this conversation thinks there's a set of laws that would work perfectly to prevent all advertising. That doesn't mean it can't be a hell of a lot better than it is. Playing whack-a-mole with loopholes and making careful regulations to avoid inhibiting human rights is still a huge improvement over letting corporations trample human rights at will.
I've been on the advertising, is an evil parasite around useful transactions bandwagon for a while and thought this was really hard to define properly.
So far my best take is around that what's good is being discoverable instead of something that you run into. This allows people to do what they want, without the evil side of unconsciously or in-competitively driving them to your business/deals.
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.
Demand-side is a mess and hard to draw the line. It’s not a perfect / good thing, it’s a feasibility thing.
With all the modern techniques (used by neurosciences) in the modern advertising is pretty all entrainment and brain washing at this point any way. So no harm in making all that illegal. I'm pretty ok with a world with no advertising, and just function by word of mouth and network of trust.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
What is your evidence that there is any economic advantage at all to have unregulated advertising?
I'm fairly sure advertising is regulated in all sovereign states. And I am also quite certain that the jurisdictions in which gambling advertisement is illegal fare better economically than those in which it is illegal. It only makes sense: gambling is not productive, the less of it you have the better your population spend their money on productive things, the more advertising you have the more people spend on gambling (otherwise what is the point of advertising?), if you forbid gamling advertising there will be less gambling advertising (if not, what is your complaint even?).
Nothing about this statement of yours makes sense.
> I can't because a world with magic and world peace is more realistic and believable.
I don't know, in my country advertising tobacco products is forbidden since at least 20 years, how did they pull this magic trick?? go figure
This is why every time you go to the shops you have to carry your own standard weights and balance scale! The idea that society could regulate the weight and volume of every product in every shop is simply preposterous!
We can draw the line between an aggressive blow and a firm handshake. We can distinguish that.
We will figure out how to distinguish manipulatory mindfucking from regular conversation too.
a) did not exist 100 years ago
b) can be limited in effectiveness by removing that technology
Does advertising confer an economic advantage?
"How do you define it?" is an oft-repeated and weak argument against regulation used by online commenters who likely are defending a self-interest in maintaining tha status quo behaviour of so-called "tech" companies.
Online advertising services are obviously capable of being defined as these are bought by advertisers and sold by so-called "tech" companies every day. These so-called "tech" companies define "products" and "services", offered for "free", all the time. The commercial purpose is facilitation of online advertising. This can be regulated.
Before the internet was opened to the public, commercial use was prohibited. Today, HN commenters would no doubt try to suggest that defining what is and is not "commercial use" would be "impossible". But it's too late. It was already done.
The uncomfortable truth for so-called "tech" companies is that _any_ regulation that affects the ability to collect data, conduct surveillance and assist the injection of advertising into people's "user experience" could have a significant impact on their "business model". Hence they try to argue _any_ regulation is unworkable. All-or-nothing. Perfect, 100% solution or nothing at all.
But regulation does not have to define _all_ advertising. It may only define advertising that meets certain criteria. All-or-nothing thinking is nonsensical in this context. By analogy, when so-called "tech" companies propose alleged "solutions" for privacy issues, do they propose one solution that offers total, complete "privacy". How do we even define "privacy". What they propose is usually some incremental improvement.
It is possible to limit online advertising through rules and regulations. Of course this is a unacceptable proposition for so-called "tech" companies. Their only viable "business model" depends on usurping the bandwidth of internet subscribers for surreptitious, unwanted data collection, real-time surveillance and online advertising.
Cigarette advertising “bans” are not legislated, IIRC, but a result of the various consolidated settlements of the 1990s-era lawsuits against the tobacco companies. They’re essentially voluntary, and it’s not obvious that a genuine ban would survive constitutional scrutiny. It might: Commercial speech is among the least protected forms of speech.
But at some point a line is crossed: Painting “Read the New York Times” on the side of a barn you own is bread & butter freedom of expression.
Okay, then don't make that illegal.
I don't understand this mentality of "everything is the same as everything else so we can't do anything".
Sure, it's all just scale. But scale matters. Scale is why I can do a science experiment at home and it's cool, but I can't make a nuclear warhead. Seems for just about everything we've been able to find that line and work around it. This "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" approach to society is toxic, and we need to stop.
Sure, there will always be bad cases and loopholes - even bans on murder don't work 100% - but there's a reason "bans" are still a viable mechanism.
Fraud, threats, impersonation, etc etc.
There is such a disturbing element of society that seems to want to "save democracy" by any means necessary. By "save democracy" they mean get the election results they want, in other words it has nothing at all to do with democracy.
They just want power.
"We should ban advertising so the people I agree with can have absolute power" is really what these insane people are saying.
It's quite easy though. Just remove incentives to advertise. Remote the possibility of profit. Will it destroy the economy? Of course, but the advertising will cease.
I grew up in a communist country. There was some advertising (in TV, radio, magazines; very little outdoor), but since all the profits went to the state anyway, there was no real competition, and also often shortages, the advertising was not really serious. It didn't influence people a lot. It was harmless.
Of course there was a lot of communist propaganda in the media, in the schools and workplaces, outdoor banners etc., and that is advertising too. But also this was already at the stage when nobody took it seriously anymore.
> I can't because a world with magic and world peace is more realistic and believable.
What? I have world peace on my devices right now with the help of Ublock Origin.
If my county bans billboards, as the county next to me have, I will see no ads except for on paper I choose to.
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.
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 your washing powder instead of the other available washing powder - that just means the queues for your washing powder will be longer.
There was A LOT of communist and anti western propaganda tho. But no advertising is perfectly possible.
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.
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.
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.
Further, any store will be pretty highly incentivized to provide a quick list of goods or services offered and likely the prices (most already do this).
I don't need the same ad repeated 20 times to know that Ford sells cars and trucks.
Not only that, but the Ford ad of a vehicle driving cinematically across a landscape before disgorging a laughing and implausibly photogenic family does nothing to inform you about the relative merits of the vehicle. Anything specific mentioned in the advert is as likely to be flimflam or only technical truth as not, so nothing mentioned in the advert can be taken as useful purchase-informing fact without further research.
To put it another way: where i live, ads for cheese or meat are non existent (while ads for fast food or cigarettes are very common), and yet i know that those products are available on supermarkets or other food stores. And i can find cheeses and meats of many brands, qualities and prices on those stores.
I don't see how having ads for those things would be an improvement. In fact, i suspect that ads would be used to convince people to buy products of less quality, or downright toxic, as seen on the rampant fast food and cigarette ads.
Can you imagine a realistic way around this issue?
Letting people communicate freely is a good thing in its own right, and fundamental to so many other good things we enjoy. Getting rid of a billboard for something I am never going to buy sounds great, but it kinda sucks for the person who actually is interested in the thing that billboard is advertising. Even if there were some type of advertising that provided no benefit to any part of society, the restriction on the freedom to communicate those advertisements is something that harms all of us.
Sometimes the part of building a better world that takes the most effort is recognizing where we already have.
I would argue that paid advertisement is a force distorting free speech. In a town square, if you can pay to have the loudest megaphone to speak over everyone else, soon everyone would either just shut up and leave or not be able to speak properly, leaving your voice the only voice in the conversation. Why should money be able to buy you that power?
why shouldn't it?
If somebody believes that their message is important enough to outbid everybody else, their message ought to be the one that is displayed.
and it also sucks for the billboard's location owner, who is drawing a revenue from it.
People who proclaim that doing XYZ to make the world better, is not really considering the entirety of the world - just their corner. To claim that it would make the world better, they must show evidence that it doesn't hurt somebody else (who just happens to be in a different tribe to the proposer).
And it’s kind of great for the (dozens, hundreds, thousand, millions) of people to pass by the location who don’t have some eye soar blocking their view.
Your argument is basically that there are some people who benefit from advertising—I promise you anyone antagonistic toward advertising has considered this fact.
