Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Fixing society's ills is not profitable. There is no VC money in it, there is no going public. The fixes required are long, unpaid slogs with little reward at the end other than you made someone's life better.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

View on HN

What if we banned advertisements?

How long would google, facebook or amazon last after that?

All this tech is great. But we are kidding ourselves if we say we liked advertising or if it benefits anybody except the people putting them up.

advertising is a literal cancer on society. If it was gone even in the simplest of forms so you aren't able to legally see advertising until you turn 21 years old. Or have our kids be able to grow up until they turn 18 without seeing a single advertisement.

Especially big pharma ads!

I remember one of my professors who'd been behind the iron curtain back when there was an iron curtain saying the one thing the commies definitely got right was banning most advertising. Said when they crossed back to West Germany it was like every surface in every city was yelling at him.

I experience this in London. If I spend too long only travelling by bicycle on the paths in the parks and riversides in South West London I do not see adverts inside trains/buses or 'free' newspapers or billboards. I don't do TV and I run adblockers so it comes as a shock being advertised to for many hours when I do take a trip up town.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com