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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

I think the article mentions banning “sold advertising”, which seems like a fair way to go about it. You can still advertise your own stuff, but you cannot pay a marketplace to do it for you any more. Advertising would by necessity become a lot more local.

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How would I advertise my app? Or my TV brand?

Reputable review sites are better than random advertisements

How do those sites make money if advertising doesn’t exist?

A major challenge in journalism is because of the collapse in value of banner ads. No one but the very largest newspapers have sustainable businesses in the United States and they only do because of the critical mass they have reached with subscribers.

Good information is valuable. When internet didn’t exist people paid good money for newspaper and magazines because they provided good information which people found valuable.

I subscribe to a magazine that publishes tests and reviews of everything from lawn fertiliser to spices, via vacuums and mobile phones. It costs money and I trust that they are not bribed.

It seems rather certain an end to advertising would mean the death of lots of low-quality "media".

Then they can't be free, consumers need to pay for them.

Or consumers could contribute back to them making them free resources. Remember the early internet? It was free and it had no ads. That until the pop-ups and flashy banner ads showed up murkying the waters. It appears that advertising inherently wants to agressively take all out attention.

The problem here is that I'm not subscribing to a magazine that reviews lawnmowers, if I need a lawnmower once every 10 years.

Some kind of micro-transaction system is needed for this, so that I can easily buy just that one review.

If I couldn't find a reputable reviewer, I would ask my neighbors. More trustworthy than a banner ad.

Do such things exist? I am pretty sure that any review site today has many "inorganic" reviews on them, and products recommended just because vendor paid more.

The context of this thread is that vendors wouldn't be able to pay review sites.

Because its not illegal to do shenanigans and they indeed invaded all product review sites with dishonest reviews

Except that reviews are ads...

Yet another reason to ban paid ads.

You spam forums, send emails and abuse any free resources you can find. If you can find them, that is, because without ad revenue they would be closing pretty quickly.

It'd be a very different world, I anticipate a lot of paywalls and secret deals.

Post it on your windowsill? Have it show up in the search results or ‘new apps’ list on the App Store?

TV brands can be set up in a department store? Like we’ve done for ages?

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