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.
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.
Exactly. Under this law all these scenarios would be banned.
That’s the conversation we’re having, how to ban it.
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.
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.
Exceptions could be made for anything if we want.
What do you think? Would you ban PSAs? I might not.
100% banned. No billboards allowed.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.