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Comment by daxterspeed | Hacker News Reader

Posts like these feed my belief that advertising should be criminalized. In physical form it litters the world in more and more ways in order to grab our attention. I don't think there's many deaths associated with billboards along roads - but these billboards have been getting new "features", such as animations, in their battle for drivers' attention.

In digital form ads get even more malicious - trying to reverse-engineer people's thoughts in order to place the most "actionable" ad in front of right person at the right time.

I don't really expect any government to begin to take action against ads at large - but I wish more people would take a good look at all the bad things advertising does to us all.

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Same here. It's a rather extremist view these days, but lately we're seeing just how damaging advertising can be to society. They are terrible because they certainly do work, and they're being vastly improved over time. The past few years have seen enormous developments in adtech.

If we extrapolate this, there will be a point where humans have designed such an effective persuasion engine that certain concepts of society simply don't work the same anymore, such as democracy or the free market. It will be a permanent change. We won't be able to close pandora's box, and we will simply have to adapt as a society without these features. There will be parts of us that we aren't prepared to lose, losses that we never even considered the possibility of.

It will be a loss of innocence that I don't think a lot of people are expecting at all. Most people don't think that something like advertising can significantly change what it is to be human, but technology has fundamentally changed us before. We should be more mindful of it before we allow it to happen.

Bear in mind that it doesn't require perfect persuasion of 100% of people in order to break a system such as democracy. All we would have to do is some slight statistical hacking or nudging, and we could make it so that certain outcomes are functionally impossible. It is probably already happening to some degree.

You might be interested in Sao Paulo's clean city law [1].

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

Nowadays we have bus' stops and clocks with ads all over the city.

not to mention an investigation on bribes to have your billboards allowed.

I think instead of broadly criminalizing, imposing steep fines for various hostile-to-the-individual advertising tactics would be more fair and effective:

Like, make impose a $1/impression fee on every ad that uses:

- Claims the product will cause an emotion in the user

- Use of superlatives or exaggeration

- Sex to sell

- ...

this quickly escalates into "poisoning the youth" arguments that work in china to censor works of media. Not saying anything cant be done but to say certain means of appealing to the consumer should be banned has been a much larger thing in practice.

In Tokyo where I live, you can see so-called as-tracks all over the town.

Some of them are advertising for prostituting job seeking site. Here is the link. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YNuJxB2NDhs

It is just disturbing, and I just cannot stop imagining what children would think by seeing these kind of ads. Japan is really sloppy country in terms of ads. There must be powerful regulations on this matter.

As a minimum, most (all western?) countries have harse rules for advertising to children. Can we start by making a blanket ban on advertising childrens stuff, or to children?

I'm very curious to understand why you feel this way.

After all, a very big and important part of our lives is influencing other people (potential and actual boyfriends/girlfriends, kids, friends, investors, students, patients, juries, professional peers, hiring managers, subordinates, voters, etc). I'm sure you don't want to criminalize all of that.

So how do you distinguish advertising as the type of influence that is especially bad?

There seems a world of difference to me.

One is like sending an email, the other like sending bulk email spam. No-one wants the latter in their world, and the world would be a better place without it.

I understand your example, and feel the same. But I don't think you mean that every ad you see is spam?

I got an ad on Facebook from an online recruiter because Facebook saw from my activity that I'm in the job market. It resulted in half a dozen onsite interviews, and made my job search so much better.

I got many useful ads from Google, for example about apps and games that come out, related to my interests.

I hope you don't mean to ban those?

Then how do you distinguish good ads from bad? And you can't just say it's obvious: the government regulator would need a clear rule to decide what's legal and what's not.

I don't mean to ban anything. Well, maybe crass billboards like a huge one overlooking a bay not far from where I live, dominating the skyline.

No, I've never seen a Google or FB ad I wish hadn't been there. Sure, how aren't all ads like spam? It sounds to me like you're in advertising. At least, I've never heard someone who wasn't in advertising defend it, promote it, as you do - comparing it to trying to influence friends or loved ones (!), suggesting it's hard to differentiate from that...

Ok well, I'm happy for you that ads aren't a totally malignant presence in your life as they are for so many people, that you fear the absence of helpful ads etc. I eliminated TV, newspaper ads from my life a while ago, have never listened to radio with ads, so most of my days are ad-free. Although I don't get out much. Am no expert, I guess it's up to you to distinguish good from bad, but sure, defining lines between good and bad X isn't easy - and is continually changing, not to mention gamed - that's why we have judges, juries etc, and not computers deciding these things - because the spirit of the law is the important thing, not the letter of the law. Sorry I didn't put enough time into writing this.

I'm not in ads. I guess everyone has their own personal preferences. I hate generic ads, I literally cannot listen to the radio or watch TV because of ads. But I find personalized ads much more acceptable, and occasionally even useful as I said. Mostly though, I view ads as a cost, which I'm willing to pay to get cool services. Until they get too annoying.

I know other people who prefer no personalization because they feel it invades privacy. And I know yet other people who just don't want any ads.

I'm comparing ads to influencing friends and family and others around us not because I think ads are good, but because I'm curious about how people develop dislike for ads.

When you said "No, I've never seen a Google or FB ad I wish hadn't been there", did you make a typo? I think you meant the opposite? Or did I misunderstand you?

Lets assume I own a shop. Can I have a window display? Can I have a sign over the door saying what my shop is called and what it sells?

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