Why do I have to see your street art? Why do I have to see your clothes? Why do I have to see your face? Why do I have to see your car?
However, it's widely accepted that not wanting to see something doesn't justify vandalizing someone else's art/clothes/car/whatever.
Why should it be different for ads?
In addition to that by far most things people would want to put in public spaces isn't explicitly designed to upset you like ads are. Why do we allow companies to plaster public spaces with veiled insults?
Usually buildings have private property owners. They agree to putting a bill board on their wall or they don’t. Graffiti sprayers usually don’t ask for permission — and that’s where the difference comes from.
In Europe you don’t usually have huge bill board on buildings. Rather you have lots of advertising columns on the side walks (here in Berlin we call them „Litfaßsäule“ named after the local inventor Paul Litfaß in 1854). You could argue they being a nuisance for sure but before the internet and even before radio and tv it was an important place of public communication. Actually they were an improvement because prior to advertising columns advertisers were wildly plastering anything with posters.
And yet if I agree to have someone stand on my property shouting insults at passers-by I'll get a visit from the police soon enough. This issue isn't as black and white as you make it out to be. Just because the owner of the building the billboard is attached to agrees to have it there doesn't mean no one else is affected.
There's already limits to what you can put on a billboard. Banning billboards isn't some radical new category of thing. it's simply moving that threshold down to "you can put nothing on billboards"
If it came to a honest vote on whether people would like billboards or no billboards I think the result is obvious.
A vote of people liking billboards is completely independent of the “oh, the powerful corporations use them” pearl clutching. I would hate billboards if they were just dominated by individuals using them to promote religious and political ideologies.
The only reason their usage is dominated by businesses is because businesses generate returns off of advertising. They don’t have special privilege and they certainly aren’t out of reach of individuals, clubs, non-profits, etc.
I would hope that you aren't arguing in such bad faith that you can't see that advertising is another thing entirely.
You wouldn't attack another person for their clothes. Because it's on and belongs to a person.
Banksy wouldn't give a damned if you painted over his art. Because it's not on person and belongs to no person. Same as the ad space and the abandoned building he painted over.
He attacked those who legally contributed negatively to public spaces. No one's car is doing that, and if they were, kids would just scribble "Wash Me!" over it and you would be there clapping, oblivious to this conversation until pointed out.
Are you kidding? Cars are well known for their negative contributions to public spaces, in the forms of (1) exhaust, and (2) noise.
This is part of why I'm baffled that the solution to electric cars not constantly generating terrible noise pollution is to mandate that they all include and operate noisemakers.
Yes, car noise is annoying but the alternative is much much worse. Not so for ads.
No, it isn't. When you solve a problem, the answer is not to panic and legislate that the problem must never be solved. If you have other problems, work on those.
We already have plenty of technology for dealing with roads that are dangerous. In general, we handle them by preventing pedestrians from using or crossing them, and providing over- or underpasses. This is superior in every way to adding noisemakers to cars. But it's not necessarily the best solution! It's just one that (a) we already have, and (b) is better than what you're calling a superior alternative.
The only reason anyone even considers noisemakers is that they're used to cars that make noise. But a history of doing something the wrong way is a terrible reason to avoid doing it the right way.
Because other things in public don't manipulate me into thinking a certain way in order to take money from me. People that attempt to do that are labeled as grifters and scammers, and the legal system deals with them. Why should it be different for ads?