The idea feels like sci-fi because you’re so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.
The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn’t been valid for decades.
I think some kind of mix approach, example some countries ban some kind of advertising. Advertising medical prescription drugs and treatments is illegal in some countries.
Alternatively companies should pay me to watch their advertisements. Organize events to pay people to watch their advertisement.
With smart glasses AR and AI we should be able to block out all billboard, posters or it could go the opposite way glasses show all kind of adverts… hmm. We need open source AR smart glasses with adblock.
I think regulation is better than abolishing it.
With most initiatives that have been made in good faith to avoid bad actors, it will usually hit the little guy the hardest.
In my country, for example, you can apply for grants for your business for developing your business. Great right? Wrong. The bureaucracy is so crazy that small businesses, whom this grant was aimed towards, cannot feasibly take the grant. It is too expensive for them to go through all the steps to get the money for the developmental aspect of the business that they would lose money as a business and not be able to recoup their losses. The grant money are so small and aren’t allowed to be used to run the business at all that it simply isn’t worth it to even try. You would essentially have to work for free for days or weeks in some cases to get this tiny portion that will now sink your company instead of developing it.
However, a big business with many employees and time and money to spare, could easily apply for the grant and get it without a sweat, despite them not needing it at all.
That is how I’d see a potential ban of ads affect the market. The big businesses who got to benefit from ads and marketing in the past will continue to do well because people know them while any and all new start ups and smaller businesses would drown and go bankrupt due to them not being allowed to make people aware of their business.
It is a bit too utopic for my taste to suggest a ban. But regulation would be a good thing in my opinion.
So this could be interpreted as ban big advertising from ads?
I think ultimately tightening of ad standards is likely the middle ground. I for one am sick of the blatant bulletin. As an industrial chemist even the freakin chemical companies do it. Like buddy, I’m a chemist, I need to know what it is to use it properly. I have now started running a campaign where if they don’t cough up the deets, I (in consultancies) don’t recommend the use of their products.
Conglomerates spend oodles of money on advertising to maintain their brands as well. They have to. Ban on advertising would dramatically shift the balance of power. More innovating and better products can come to market without needing as much capital. You’d still have channels to review and inform about new products, which would now be a (more) fair competition.
It’s also a form free market distortion that actual economic conservatives should hate.
Rather than having firms compete for who can make the best product or service, advertising instead lets them compete based on who can best psychologically manipulate the population en masse.
It’s a “rich get richer” mechanic that any halfway competent dev would’ve patched out for balance reasons a long time ago.
It’s also such a funny contradiction: a big part of the free market model rests on the idea that well informed consumers can vote with their wallet, which should reward good businesses and punish bad ones. Yet it is very difficult to argue consumers have ever been informed enough to make this work, which is in large part due to advertising flooding communication channels with noise, and also because it is unreasonable to expect a consumer to be fully informed for the hundreds of purchases they make on a daily basis.
You cannot get away from advertising, ever, in any society, in any financial system, at any point of time in history after tribal societie.
It’s a concept that you can’t just “ban”, nearly all the problems we have with it today is because it’s uncontrolled and abused. The concept itself though is as unbannable as the concept of “selling” something.
The concept:
“trying to find someone who can use something you made”
Is literally as old as humans moving away from tribal societies.
You can make the best thing in the world, but if no one knows about it, it’s still useless.
Lmao, this is absolute defeatist nonsense.
“You’ve gotta help us doc, we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”.
Because here’s the thing, you literally just can ban advertising. Ban billboards, ban tv Ads, ban social media advertising.
You can still have companies publish information about their product, but that’s not what advertising is in the context of this discussion.
Right there are plenty of ways for businesses to get consumers to choose to use their product other than advertising which are far more conducive to consumers being able to make an informed purchase decision without being manipulated. But doing so would upend the existing power structures of who gets to sell more product, so disturbing the status quo just requires more political will than anybody really has.
You can find ads for products in Roman republic era graffiti. We have had ads for thousands of years.
Graffiti, you say? So it was probably illegal.
I know the rule of law is in sad shape right now, but companies still avoid doing illegal shit right out in the open, and that’s all that’s needed to cut back dramatically on advertising.
no it wasn’t illegal. Grafitti wasn’t always a crime.
People who think they have a right to deface other people’s property say the weirdest shit.
Again graffiti was not always seen as a crime. Remember many paints weren’t super permanent when applied to things like brickface for most of our history.
Yeah, and it used to be legal to dump your industrial waste in the river, now it’s not.
Laws change.
That’s a false equivalence though.
In both situation you make it illegal for corporations to do something, and punish them with fines and criminal sentences for executives if they’re caught doing so, leading to a decrease in that behaviour.
So what about the situations do you see as different that makes it a false equivalency?
Painting graffiti and dumping hazardous waste in rivers are not equivalent crimes hence the false equivalence. Did you really need that clarified?
It’s already been done. Sao Paolo Brazil banned all outdoor advertisements.
No they didn’t that’s not banning advertising but that’s regulating a specific type of advertising.
There’s a pretty big difference.
And if you have the name of your business and what you sell on your store front? That’s advertising. Or a card with your name on it to hand out to customers or coupons. That’s advertising. Or logos on clothing or a sign that sits near the road that says SALE. That is advertising.
OP was downvoted for saying the truth, regulation is important, but businesses will fail if they have no way to catch your interest.
In fact it gets worse because small businesses will never be seen because nobody will have heard of them and everyone goes to the big store everyone already knows about.
There is balance to be had…
Lemmy is essentially just like Reddit at this point. It’s just a bunch of the lowest common denominator circle jerking a lack of critical thinking.
You cannot have intelligent discussion, and group think is all that matters. Folks will not read your comment, they will find the single phrase they disagree with and hold onto it for dear life, missing the entire point.
And then ignore the whole premise and idea behind the discussion and reply in a way that makes absolutely no sense if they had average reading comprehension…
I miss the old Internet, where you could actually have discussions and pass ideas back and forth.
This is a new phenomenon here in my experience, the cynic in me says this is ad companies trying to control and shut down the conversation as Lemmy grows. Better to have your opposition not have a realistic and feasible route to their goals.
It reminds me of how close the US was to actual police reform before all the discussion became “defund the police entirely” like that was going to just suddenly fix everything and cause no other problems. Then the whole movement just basically evaporated.
I was really suprised to see downvotes for your comment. It was balanced and demonstrated nuance for the concept.
We have an example of an advertisement from 3000 BCE. This is part of the human condition of transfer of information with a hey I make a cool thing, interested in buying it?
Now as for Lemmy, I hope it doesn’t get completely bad like reddit. The worse offenders are political or ideological posts like this one.
I am still have good discussions in other areas, so here’s hoping.
I miss the old internet too.
Don’t ever—for any reason—do anything to anyone for any reason ever. No matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you’ve been… ever, for any reason whatsoever…
Should we allow the best of science to be used to manipulate people’s base desires? Or should we protect the average person from being taken advantage of?
Unless you are a sociopath the answer is clear. Advertising in its current form should be completely banned. Perhaps some form of non-comparative advertising could be allowed if it just stated simple facts without creating a psychological hook to subconsciously fuck with the consumer.
Who am I kidding though, give these fuckers even an inch and they will circumnavigate the globe. Ban all advertising.
Isn’t the problem with banning ads that you’d just gets “ads” that aren’t marked as such? Like, ads are still going to happen, they just won’t be clearly marked cause that would be illegal.
EDIT: Would love to hear how the downvoters would enforce an advertisement ban. What happens when an influencer randomly endorses a brand and then that brand also just coincidentally happens to give the influencer a “generous donation” or perhaps a life-time usage coupon?
yeah basically the word of mouth and community networks will become ads and you will get things like leave five stars and get some shit with tell your friends and get some shit.
Yes the 90s kids shows were all vehicles to sell toys and cereals because advertising to kids directly was heavily restricted.
I’d support a ban on advertising in public spaces, but in digital spaces its a bit nonsense given it funds a lot of things people then dont need to pay for.
The web has been cleaned with uBlock Origin. Doing that IRL would be great. And for every stupid counter argument (I’ve seen those on HackerNews), I don’t tolerate brain washing.
The most stupid argument I’ve seen is from an American who said “what if you don’t know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?” Well, that’s the job of the doctor. Your society has failed if you rely on marketing to eat random chemical dangerous stuff.
“what if you don’t know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?”
lol what? No way anyone says that with a straight face
5 minutes ago on Hacker News, among a lot of stupid stuff like “your life is empty without having ads all around you.”
Reference for fun: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596333
I love that in Cyberpunk 2077 they’re is often a channel on called “just ads”. Of course in pure cyberpunk style those ads can be horrific.
There are shopping channels in many countries (or at least paid cable television) which are literally just ads. In classic cyberpunk style, it’s a reflection of the dystopian present.
They’re on HN acting like Googling and getting WebMD is uüuber rare
When I watch a US sport, I’m blown away that the ads are all medical, banking/insurance, cars, and maybe fast food. It’s so weird.
Don’t forget personal injury or liability lawyers.
And gambling.
What’s a normal selection of sports ads look like elsewhere?
Every time I watch premier league it’s just gambling ads nonstop lol
I was going to note it down as I was watching F1 at the time of writing that comment. There was a kids hospital charity, a food charity, a car, other sport, and a travel/tourism ad.
The most stupid argument I’ve seen is from an American who said “what if you don’t know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?” Well, that’s the job of the doctor.
Wow, even if we imagine some different situation where information about a new development, service or creation is needed, that’s what reviews and journalism are supposed to cover, not advertisement. (In b4: the observation that those have tragically been becoming more and more indistinguishable from advertising.)
In fact the pervasive drug commercials were illegal until the 1990s because why would you target the patient rather than the doctor?
They are still illegal in many countries.
As they should be
The most stupid argument I’ve seen is from an American who said “what if you don’t know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?”
If only there was a system of interconnected knowledge bases where new information could be published and indexed for easy lookup… Nah what am I saying, who would have interest in such a thing…
Don’t be silly, no-one knows what a library is these days! They’re all stuck on that internet thing.
The economy should exist to serve real needs of the people. All that advertisement does is create a fake desire for consumption which simply wastes respurces.
There is some awareness effect, too. If I like burgers and see a listing for a new burger place in my neighborhood, learning about a potential new place I’d like to include in my going-out rotation feels like a win. If I need a home repair and see a neighbor with a yard sign for a local contractor, that’s helpful in compiling a list of potential companies to check out.
What about word of mouth? If I want to find a good place to eat, I find asking a local “hey what’s the best restaurant around here?” to yield way better results than ads.
Getting rid of advertising in a capitalist society would be devastating for all new and small businesses. Start an IT company, tow truck company, Trash removal, plumber, electrician, pest, all dead. Really any company that isnt already known would likely die, and the current large companies would be the only ones that exist. Also what counts as advertising, am I going to jail for telling my friend about a new game I tried? That’s advertising.
You’re absolutely right. Any small business left would beg big corporations for buyouts, for pennies on the dollar. Small time influencers would skirt it by the millions. It’d make cyberpunk fiction look tame.
It might be better if some “standard catalog” was popularized, but still a calamity.
Yeah I mean a had a Lyft driver give me a card for her son the other day who opened a mobile hair salon. Is it useful for people, sure. Could he exist without advertising, absolutely not.
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There used to be a business catalog book called “yellow pages”. Now there are map applications, price comparison sites, customer review sites, and keyword search engines. All of those make advertisements unnecessary.
That’s advertising. The entire phone book was a sold adventure. Jail, prison, what is the punishment for advertising. I think people have forgotten what advertising is. I ask you you favorite movie, you answer, advertising. If you tell me Lemmy is a decent place, advertising. Any app, game, movie, music, software, hardware, car, plant, advertising. Stop talking about any object if you want ALL advertising to be illegal as the description says
I think life would feel more calm, spacious and peaceful.
100%!
The most hectic places in the world are the screens-filled streets of Tokyo and New York IMO (that’s not all the streets ofc)
Ads try to grab your attention or show off right into your face, removing them would 100% make life more tranquil.
Believe it or not, advertising on the Internet was originally highly frowned upon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel
Still is, but it used to be, too.
My adblocker agrees.
Spam != Ads.
Those lawyers crossed a line.
I’m just going to take this opportunity to remind everyone that you can and should donate to your Mastodon and Lemmy instances, even if it’s just $5 a month. That’s how we band together to keep these platforms ad-free, and I don’t know about you all, but I love that my mind isn’t being manipulated here.
Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.
It arbitrary pollutes any environment it’s conducted in, and causes secondary harms to non-participants by incentivising insecure hoarding of private information with the intent to better target individuals.
The privacy thing isn’t necessarily part of advertising though.
Advertising can be as complex as targeted algorithms built using harvested information and even AI bullshit, or as simple as a sign by the road saying “next right for MegaBurger” or even a small box with “Bob’s autoglass repair” in the paper.
It’s the volume and invasiveness that’s a problem. Ads in your mailbox, ads in your inbox, ads on your streaming service and when you turn on your Roku etc etc acting as blockers to the content you’re actually looking for.
I’m totally cool too go back to having an “autoglass” or “plumbers” section in paper and online yellow Pages etc, which target people actually looking for a service. I’m also cool with places which I subscribe to advertising me deals I might like (not so much signing me up for their shit the first time I buy from them), but the shoving crap in people’s face and information harvesting that needs to end.
Hell, I even have a collection of saved ads that were clever and entertaining I’d share with people, yet most companies go for volume (both audible and amount) over substance
Also roadside advertisements for services are also acceptable, what I mean is something like Peggy Sues dinner where they’ve got some signs to let you know which off ramp to take. Frankly speaking allowing gas stations and food places to advertise off the side of the highway is pretty reasonable to me, even in the modern era with phones the usefulness of them can very either because you don’t want to look at it while driving or it’s just got no signal.
That’d be great, but the “how” is a much harder question. What counts as advertising? Because there’s a reason Google, Meta, etc. have their fingers in so many different industries: every single thing that gets attention could be leveraged for advertising, even the act of suppressing mentions of competitors.
Should I be able to say “X product has been great, I recommend it!” Only if I’m not being paid, you say? How could you possibly know?
As discussed in the article, “propaganda” is illegal. So any discussion about how terrible trump is would also be illegal. Propaganda doesn’t mean false, it just means it’s trying to convince you of something. An advertisement. Heck, the article itself could be considered a form of advertising for legislation.
It’s just so trivial of a concept to say, but the moment you spend any amount of time thinking about it, it falls apart. It’s like trying to ban the Ship of Theseus from a club.
That’d be great, but the “how” is a much harder question.
As with the implementation of any obvious law, of course.
What counts as advertising? Because there’s a reason Google, Meta, etc. have their fingers in so many different industries: every single thing that gets attention could be leveraged for advertising, even the act of suppressing mentions of competitors.
Sure, maybe that’s an interesting question.
After all television commercials and magazine inserts and pop up ads and billboards are gone we can start debating the nuance of where exactly the line is drawn.
Should I be able to say “X product has been great, I recommend it!” Only if I’m not being paid, you say?
Correct!
How could you possibly know?
You would have to report that income on your taxes and if you ever get audited and that was a substantial amount of your income they will find out and go after the major players who are profiting off it illegally at tax time.
Think about gambling or alcohol. How do we know you aren’t selling unlicensed alcohol or running an unlicensed casino? We still have laws despite the uncertainty.
As discussed in the article, “propaganda” is illegal. So any discussion about how terrible trump is would also be illegal.
I feel like you’re confused about the difference between speech and propaganda. Discussion about Trump isn’t propaganda.
I know we currently do not, but it is possible to treat an individual and a business/corporation differently.
It is possible to hold an organizations speech to different standards than an individual.
The discussion of outlawing propaganda doesn’t have to have anything to do with your individual ability to express your opinion up until the point you try to organize and artificially broadcast that speech wider than you could on your own.
So, first off, any content made to change your mind is propaganda. Doesn’t matter how true or false it is, doesn’t matter if it’s cherry-picking info, doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make any claims at all, doesn’t matter if it’s paid for by a state or a religious group or a single individual. And it HAS to be defined this way, because there does not exist an impartial arbitrating party to draw a distinction for us. If we try to limit it only to information meant to mislead, then we have to figure out who decides whether something is misleading.
A poster that just says “hang in there” or “just give up” can be used as propaganda if you post it all over the place to raise or lower morale. It’s not making any claims, it’s not pushing a certain brand, it’s just trying to change what you think about. That’s propaganda.
Second, this whole thing assumes no one ever wants to see an advertisement. But if you’re arguing honestly, the reality is that sometimes you do. You want to know your favorite band is playing downtown. You want to know that the roofing company across town that does good work even exists. You want to know about whatever new silly product was made that aligns with your hobbies. In order to have an honest conversation, we need to agree that not all advertising is unwanted.
all television commercials and magazine inserts and pop up ads and billboards are gone we can start debating the nuance of where exactly the line is drawn
Would PSAs be banned? Those are nothing if not propaganda. How about billboards advertising a religious group? What if I buy a magazine because it does a great job at making me aware of products I actually do often want to buy?
You would have to report that income on your taxes
And what if I benefit in an indirect, difficult way to trace outside of being paid? Or what if it’s MY company?
know we currently do not, but it is possible to treat an individual and a business/corporation differently…It is possible to hold an organizations speech to different standards than an individual.
As a small business owner, how do I make customers aware that I exist?
until the point you try to organize and artificially broadcast that speech wider than you could on your own.
Where is that line? We’ve invented so many things that amplify our speech wider than what we could do “on our own”. A megaphone reaches more people than if I yell. A 10ft sign in my yard reaches more people than a tshirt. A social media account with 1 million followers reaches people than 1000 followers reaches more than 10 followers. Should I be able to make a flyer? Should I be able to use a printing press to copy that flyer? Should i be able to nail copes of that flyer all over the door of the catholic church and start a Reformation? Where is the line?
(It’s also worth reading up on the history of advertising in television in the UK. The idea of creating legislation to limit the prevalence of advertising is not new, and neither are the methods used to work around them.)
In summary, this is a very hard problem, but…I think the solution could be solved democratically. I don’t think the solution lies in trying to rigorously define what constitutes an ad, only for the form of an ad to morph. Rather, it lies in disincentivizing people seeing unwanted ads in the first place. The fact that people look around and see ads they don’t want to see needs to be translated directly into some kind of proportional tax.
Ex. If you poll the people, and they say “I see too many McDonalds ads” then the people (i.e. govt) should penalize McDonalds proportionally. If we poll again, and the penalty doesn’t result in people reporting seeing fewer unwanted McDonalds ads, then increase the penalty. When the penalty is high enough, it won’t be worth it for McDonalds to run so many aggressive ads, and they’ll have to reduce advertising in order for the people to report fewer unwanted ads in order for the penalty to drop. That’s the only possible implementation I see as actually working.
So, first off, any content made to change your mind is propaganda. Doesn’t matter how true or false it is, doesn’t matter if it’s cherry-picking info, doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make any claims at all
This is the second time this has been stated. I don’t know why we’re going backwards, I haven’t challenged the definition of propaganda.
doesn’t matter if it’s paid for by a state or a religious group or a single individual
Exactly. Under this law all these scenarios would be banned.
That’s the conversation we’re having, how to ban it.
A poster that just says “hang in there” or “just give up” can be used as propaganda if you post it all over the place to raise or lower morale. It’s not making any claims, it’s not pushing a certain brand, it’s just trying to change what you think about. That’s propaganda.
The law wouldn’t target things that “can be used” for propaganda, they’d target things that are used for propaganda.
If some individual wants to go around and spend his own money putting up “Hang in there” posters, that’s fine.
If they want to pay someone to hang up posters for them, that’s when they’d run into issues.
If a public space or place of business wants to put up a sign, you might make exceptions for things like emergency evacuations and informational material, but anything with “intent to advertise a brand or product” would certainly be banned.
“Hang in there” might end up being allowed or not in a workplace depending on how strict you’d like to get.
Second, this whole thing assumes no one ever wants to see an advertisement.
You want to know your favorite band is playing downtown. You want to know that the roofing company across town that does good work even exists. You want to know about whatever new silly product was made that aligns with your hobbies. In order to have an honest conversation, we need to agree that not all advertising is unwanted.
Its weird you’re acting like I’m dishonest. This is a pretty simple concept.
Unwanted advertisement are unwanted.
The companies are still allowed to create materials, and you’re allowed to view it. They just aren’t allowed to pay people to shove it in your face when you’re trying to watch TV or read the news.
Of course there’s value in knowing about products and deals, but if company’s are the ones paying for them then the companies with the most money get seen and heard the most.
That’s a problem because throwing money at ads can compensate for a sub par product. Keeping advertisements independent from the companies selling them is better for consumers as it leads to less biased info.
If you want to buy a catalog of local events, that’s fine people can make those “advertisements” and sell them. It would be illegal for the people operating them to have connections or take money from the companies, and these aren’t explicitly ads but genuine reviews basically.
You can print a list of bands and distribute it, you just can’t advertise the band in some unrelated product.
Would PSAs be banned? Those are nothing if not propaganda.
Exceptions could be made for anything if we want.
What do you think? Would you ban PSAs? I might not.
How about billboards advertising a religious group?
100% banned. No billboards allowed.
What if I buy a magazine because it does a great job at making me aware of products I actually do often want to buy?
Still exists. The magazine just can’t take money to artificially promote shitty brands who pay them so the magazine is higher quality.
(That’s obviously slightly naive, we’re crashing the entire magazine industry by passing this law, it’s too disruptive in the short term to the economy we’ve set up)
As a small business owner, how do I make customers aware that I exist?
You wouldn’t have to. Word of mouth and the community curated lists would talk about you if you’re worth talking about.
If no one can advertise then consumers are still gonna need to find the products they need and consumers will learn how to look for local businesses and the community will learn how to spotlight hidden gems.
Or maybe that’s too much effort and we all just go to walmart and you go out of business. Hopefully not, but i don’t fully know tbh, it’s untested.
Where is that line? We’ve invented so many things that amplify our speech wider than what we could do “on our own”. A megaphone reaches more people than if I yell. A 10ft sign in my yard reaches more people than a tshirt. A social media account with 1 million followers reaches people than 1000 followers reaches more than 10 followers. Should I be able to make a flyer? Should I be able to use a printing press to copy that flyer? Should i be able to nail copes of that flyer all over the door of the catholic church and start a Reformation? Where is the line?
Yep, you should be able to do all of that (except the social media one possibly depending on context) because they’re all actions of a single individual and no money is being spent of the distribution of the material.
(You can pay a printer to print the flyers but not hand out essentially).
If you want to rent a plane and drop them from the sky go ahead but you can’t do that as a business or to make money in any way.
In summary, this is a very hard problem, but…I think the solution could be solved democratically.
I agree, it would take a lot of trial and error but we could eventually figure it out.
We won’t because money is too powerful, but we could.
Ex. If you poll the people, and they say “I see too many McDonalds ads” then the people (i.e. govt) should penalize McDonalds proportionally. If we poll again, and the penalty doesn’t result in people reporting seeing fewer unwanted McDonalds ads, then increase the penalty. When the penalty is high enough, it won’t be worth it for McDonalds to run so many aggressive ads, and they’ll have to reduce advertising in order for the people to report fewer unwanted ads in order for the penalty to drop. That’s the only possible implementation I see as actually working.
I honestly don’t like that idea. We’re not seeing less ads, we’re just seeing more diverse ads.
Genuinely consider the implications of the fact that advertisements are effective.
Think of the most irritating, scummy, clickbait, insidious advertisement you’ve ever seen, and then consider that it objectively made the company more money than not running it.
Realize that your small business is directly losing customers because you aren’t able to compete with the marketing budgets of megacorporations.
Its not fair for your company and thus us as consumers they get to pay to hold the megaphone longer than you do and don’t compete by the quality of their products/service. It’s a bad problem.
Thanks for writing an essay so I no longer feel the need to lol. I hope your post gets more visibility.
I fucking hate advertising. I want it banned to the greatest extent that we can do so. But if we want actual change, it needs to be a lawfully applicable strategy. We don’t need to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Banning ads for medication is a great start that everyone can agree on for instance. We should work up from there.
The most insidious stuff is the content you don’t even realize is an ad, like comments and methods of boosting/lowering visibility on social media. That is a thorny issue.
The phrase “ban advertising” is reductive. Different countries have different laws around ads. For example, anime shows have bumpers in them because in Japan they are required by law to clearly indicate when advertising starts and stops.
There’s also laws against billboards, against targeting children, against specific industries, and limiting the amount of advertising available. I could see laws against targeted ads like Meta uses being implemented as well.
What counts as advertising?
Let’s say you ban ad breaks on TV / streams. In the early days of radio and TV they didn’t have ad breaks, the host of the show would just go on for a while about his favourite brand of cigarettes. In the modern world, pretty much any time you see a name brand in a TV show or movie, it’s because they’ve been paid for product placement.
So… you could solve that by never allowing the mentioning of any brand name in any form of media. That would make reviews illegal. That’s fair, I suppose, because reviews are definitely seen as a form of advertising. That’s why companies often provide review copies of things for free to journalists in the hope they might talk/write about them. Maybe you could carve out an exception allowing a brand and model to be mentioned if there are safety issues or product recalls?
Ok, so now you have a Formula 1 event, it’s on TV but you have to pay for that broadcast because it’s not ad supported. The cars, of course, don’t have any ads on them. But, are they allowed to have the manufacturer’s name and logo on them? Is it advertising if say Ferrari puts a lot of money into F1, wins a lot, and so when you watch the news you see Ferrari-red cars with Ferrari logos winning a race? Also, could the drivers wear coveralls with the Ferrari logo on them? What about fans of Ferrari, could they wear a shirt with the Ferrari logo on them if they were simply fans of the brand? What if this supposed Ferrari fan were a supermodel? Does someone have to carefully go through the finances of any very attractive person to see if they’re ever wearing a logo not because they’re a fan but because they’ve been compensated?
I’m in favour of reducing the amount of advertising we see. I think it’s a bit absurd now. But, while it’s possible to tax it or regulate it, I think it would be very hard to completely eliminate it.
Took a trip to Cuba, one of the first things I noticed was lack of billboards and advertising in general. It was quite refreshing.
Another example of that is Pyongyang. They do have billboards to Kim Jong Un, and memorials to Kim Jong Il. But, for the most part the city is free of billboards. It’s really strange if you’re used to modern western cities.
Advertising is pollution
I’ve always thought of it as waste of our mental resources. But pollution describes it even better.
Pollution specifically engineered by psychologists to maximize its impact.
Emotional pollution Mind pollution SOUL POLLUTION
Advertising might be similarly harmful as lead in drinking water.
