What if we made advertising illegal?

> What if we made all advertising illegal? It's such a wild idea that I've never heard it in the public discourse.

Local jurisdictions have restricted or even forbidden outdoor advertising since it was invented.

Cities have banned billboards. Sao Paulo did it, so did parts of London: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

Hard to quantify the benefits, but I think anyone other than advertisers would say it's a vast improvement. I cannot objectively prove that these cities, public spaces are more beautiful without ads, but all of us know that it is true. Then again you have places like times square where ads are integral to character of the place.

I think one way to look at this is that--why are Meta and Google so successful? Because they are basically an index fund on the world economy right. If you want to sell soup in Jakarta you advertise on Instagram. If you want to sell paint in France you advertise on Youtube. If you want to sell T-Shirts in Boston you advertise on Facebook

So then the flipside is that without ads these sellers now have to complete head on with giant companies who have all the brand recognition. Now you need to somehow make your Etsy store viral instead of just putting it in Facebook ads

I LOVE this idea and advocate for it in private convos all the time. Banning ads and enabling (micro-)payments for accessing content that is currently ad-supported would be an unimaginable game-changer.

I used to know one of the great ad execs from Mama Bell and he told me nothing happens in this world until a person decides to trade a dollar for something.

How do they decide such things? How do people become aware of what things are available for purchase?

Another thing he said was that they knew half of their ad spend was "wasted" on people who would never buy what you have to sell.

The feeling I get from the author is that targeted advertising is the problem, which also has a 50%+ waste factor (due in large part to fraud). I suspect it is unlikely all the complexities of contemporary marketing and advertising are worth it.

Also worth considering to what extent the author's website is a form of advertisement itself.

As always there is also the gradual sunset option: slap a tax on it and increase over time.

- That's easier to get past the lobbies.

- It still surfaces unexpected consequences but reduces impact.

I liked it a whole lot better when advertising pharmaceuticals and legal services were still illegal, like it was for the better part of the 20th century.

It had always been unethical since at least the 19th century, before it was ever regulated overwhelmingly, so the regulations were mainly just codifying the common respectability that was already established from the most honest business operators.

Even if tobacco was allowed in ways that are no longer OK.

It'll get replaced with something even more annoying that isn't called advertising but is functionally identical.

People make things then talk about them. It's normal.

A careful read of this piece should show you why advertising was invented in the first place and why it's fundamental to commerce.

Unless you want to go back to buying from your neighbor or buying only what your limited circle of friends can recommend you?

I'm blown away by author's refusal to spend even a second to adversarially pressure-test his idea and try to imagine for a second what the world would realistically looked like with advertisement banned.

Like, the movie industry as a whole cannot exist without advertisement. Nobody would spend hundreds of millions of dollars on production of the scale of Odyssey, if there's no way to communicate to enough people about the movie's existence so they could come to a theater on a given date and pay to watch it.

How can someone take risks and spend time and capital inventing or building a new product if there's no reliable way to let potentially interested people know about it other than word of mouth? What about antisocial people who don't have friends and prefer to not talk to strangers? How are they supposed to ever find out about new shit that could change their lives?

Am I allowed to walk around saying "I really like product X" out loud? If not, then it feels like a freedom of speech problem. If yes, how can you be sure I'm not financially or some other way incentivized to do so by the company producing product X?

The fact that the author doesn't even attempt to engage with any of these questions makes articles like these really infuriating to read.

> The financial incentives to create addictive digital content would instantly disappear, and so would the mechanisms that allow both commercial and political actors to create personalized, reality-distorting bubbles.

It's coupled to the financial incentives of the entities operating the platforms used to create and distribute this content (Google, Meta, ...). And as we depend on them in so many aspects of our life unfortunately, they'll initially start acting as usual when being "regulated":

"We're so sorry dear $REGION_OF_THE_WORLD, your legislators declared our products as ads. Due to how we've built these products (Pixel Phone, Gmail, WhatsApp, ...), we can't sell them to you in a legal way anymore. Yes, we made a ton of money from you, but it's your government's fault that you now loose access to what feels like essential communication services."

We all know it's been different in the early 2000s, but today these distribution/communication channels only exist because there's money to be made. We can't take them for granted and just expect different content on YouTube, non-addictive TikTok and less privacy-invasive Gmail or search engines.

I'm glad the author acknowledges this:

> Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.

Changing behavior and expectations will be necessary; and I'm all here for it. I'm hosting my own emails since 2013. *DAV works just fine and I never uploaded contacts or calendar events to iCloud. I pay for search results. And even though I like the iPhone or would prefer a MacBook, I could reactive my 10yrs old "gaming PC" as a Linux workstation to fulfill my computing needs.

I understand this is not for everyone, but I hope that after the band-aid got ripped off, the digital life will improve to become easily accessible again while staying privacy friendly and pro society.

The best concert I ever went to was one I only knew about from a TV commercial. Somewhere along the way I started blocking ads and commercials aggressively and in hindsight I've noticed that (for example) there's fewer movies/concerts I'm seeing because I've cut off a mechanism for learning what's out there for subjects I'm not in the habit of actively researching.

After 30 years I've stopped watching baseball altogether because the announcers read tiny ads between pitches and at-bats and I can't stand it.

I accidentally let myself get too extreme about deciding that ads are evil. Not surprising I regret that, given the nature of extremism. For better or worse ads are a kind of information, and I should remember that I'm an adult and can tell the difference between the facts and opinions there in.

We could just start making it illegal to advertise to children. Without age verification, it's just a burden of proof with the advertiser that their ad isn't targeting children and a ban on age specific target groups for ad platforms.

I despise advertising, but anecdotally, I can think of three ads in the past week that informed me about products I didn’t know existed but would enjoy. I also learned about multiple new games releasing, sporting events that were happening, etc. The claim that ads are not at all informative is incorrect.

That being said, I also block as many ads as possible from my life, so the few I actively notice tend to be more noticeable.

Can’t. Some asshole convinced us to allow them to frame advertising as speech to get it protected by the first amendment. Clever. Tragic, but clever.

If you ask me advertising is manipulation, specifically designed to convince you to buy things you don’t want or need (if you want it or need it advertising is literally not necessary). But I’m not the boss and we have things like the constitution guiding what we can and cannot do.

I think forbidding it completely is somewhat radical, and while I am not a particular fan of advertisements, I think the real problem is personalized/targeted advertising.

Without personalized advertising, the surveillance of users would be much less lucrative. And if the same rules applied to all players, it should not have such a bad impact on the advertising market overall.

advertising IS illegal in my little corner of the world, I have never allowed advertising in my house, no tv, no radio, tinkered with browsers that block everything but HTML by default, and a whole layered process to access anything more elaborite. no subscriptions, have even gone to useing cash for most personal purchases. I do have several web sites, and all of my work comes through those, but all of that is from deliberate searches made by people looking for my services, and there is no promotions on other platforms. Works for me!

> In France, there has been some ban on advertising alcohol, cigarettes.

So technically, it's possible but of course politician's corruption is a big issue..

Don't need to ban advertising everywhere

Just need to ban advertising on the internet

When I first used the internet, advertising, i.e., commercial use, was prohibited

Imagine an empty cafeteria. You and your friend enter, get your meal, sit down, and enjoy quiet conversation. Then two other people do the same thing and, because your voices reverberate in the room, you and your friend begin to talk a little louder. As more people enter, the ambient volume increases until no one can hear themself think, never mind hear the person across the table from them.

That is how advertising seems to me. If only one person hired false witnesses, their hires might rightly be consigned to the eighth circle of Hell where they belong. But because everyone hires false witnesses, it's become an operating expense necessary to overcome the ambient lying.

i am in favor of this. of course, in America, that would mean no 1st Amendment which I am okay with doing away with as it has served its purpose.

I would say the exception would be one must speak with 100% certainty. No 'virtually no side effects' and none of this 'best burger in 200 miles'.

If they want to call piracy theft, then I reserve the right to call advertising theft of my attention

sorry, not buying it

> Think about what's happened since 2016: Populists exploit ad marketplaces, using them to bypass traditional media gatekeepers and deliver tailored messages to susceptible audiences.

I'm neither a fan of advertising nor Trump, but this reads like yet another patronizing think piece about how the wrong people get a vote and it's terrible that they use it in ways of which the author does not approve. "If only there were some way to control what these people say and hear, we would not have such problems as Trump."

The problem with controlling the flow of information, besides being morally reprehensible, is that it leads inevitably to ignoring problems that do not directly affect or concern the gatekeepers, like rural economic devastation. As well, these censorious advocates always imagine the mechanisms of control will only be used by people they agree with, never imagining the mechanisms of control will be used by their political opponents.

The author later reveals the agenda:

> “But it's free speech!” Bullshit. No one is entitled to yell at you “GET 20% OFF THIS UNDERWEAR YOU GLANCED AT YESTERDAY” with a dopamine megaphone in your bedroom. And to track 90% of your life to know when and how to say it. That's not free speech, that's harassment.

A fair and honest reckoning with the question would acknowledge the problems such a ban would introduce with free speech, not simply dismiss them as he does here. If you make a thing, and then you tell people about the thing, then you transgress against the advertising ban. The idea is nonsense.

For those who've said that advertising has led them to previously unknown / unrealised products or opportunities....

I've spent much time over the past few years trying to research some major purchases: household appliances, personal electronics, furniture, health-care items, data and communications services.

I'm actively looking for valid information. And despite the present insanely-advanced information ecosystem we have, it's an utter shitshow.

Advertising is all but worthless. There was a time when advertising actually contained voluntarily-supplied (as opposed to regulation-mandated) technical information on products. Even if that wasn't especially accurate or useful, it existed. For major consumer items that had largely ceased by the 1960s, for personal electronics perhaps the late 1990s / early aughts. Advertising largely relies on sex appeal and image rather than information.

Manufacturer / vendor / service-provider sites are swamped in similar emotional appeals rather than solid information, and it's tedious trying to dig through to any level of technical information. Even then, actual customer-oriented information tends to be relegated to third-party discussion sites, social media, Reddit (still occasionally useful, I very grudgingly admit: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015402>), blogs, videos, and the occasional review site (most of which are also somewhere between highly suspect and useless). May the ghods help you if you want to root or re-ROM a device, and you're directed to highly-sketch English-as-a-fourteenth-language sites.

The highly-rated (NYT Wirecutter) cooker bought a year ago: multiple repairs and three replacements later, it still won't correctly pre-heat to a set point in some baking modes. Satisfactory in most other respects, but as a heavy baker, that somewhat curbs my enthusiasm.

A personal electronics device I'd written of with some happiness on HN has gone no-op, and it's taken me most of a year to even get to the vendor offering an RMA and repair shipping address.

Upgrading household comms (voice, data), and sorting through what options are actually available, all plans, costs, features, and details of service (obligations, total costs, privacy options, etc.) has been a nightmare.

Looking at mobile devices, sorting out how much privacy is possible (my conclusion: phones themselves are inherently surveilled by multiple factors, the only reasonable option is to offload as much activity as possible from them to elsewhere); what device, OS, and software capabilities exist; what various distinctions (chipsets, frequencies, OS variants) imply as to actual capabilities and performance; and elements such as system updates or rootability; require either onerous research or are impossible to find. (One vendor has an otherwise attractive offering that is three years old, I compiled a list of releases dating to 2011 trying to estimate release cadence and possible updates, best I figure there should be a new version in the next six months or so.)

Looking at mobile service, it wasn't until I started asking visitors to run speed tests on their own providers that I realised that 6x greater speeds were available through another network. (Why is there no multi-network test tool widely available, either in software or hardware? That would make a great tool-library lending item.) "Coverage maps" obscure more than they reveal, and site-specific performance is of course highly variable.

Never mind sussing out customer support levels and treatment. Though watching a friend go through a nightmare with ... one of our current vendors ... has strongly coloured my preferences going forward. This would be the same provider with 1/6 the wireless data performance of a competitor....

Information goods (software, services, texts) are inherently complex, and even the best reviews tend to be at best topical. I'm less interested in the unboxing experience than the multi-year retrospective ... after which the original product is almost always discontinued.

Deep information is ... frequently paywalled. You probably would find Consumer Reports worthwhile to subscribe to. Perhaps a few other report sites. Ideally this would be a public service, though with funding sufficiently independent that no one Federal, State, or Local government administration transition could imperil it.

Government regulators in the US, particularly at the national level, increasingly have a trust problem. By all appearances deliberately imposed: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49044074>. State agencies lack resources to comprehensively test goods.

Increasingly, products are all but entirely unbranded. Marketing badges are slapped on, only to literally fall off shortly after purchase, if they are present at all. I find tableware, plumbing fixtures, and electronics all entirely bare of a manufacturer's mark. No-name Amazon and Temu brands are the norm. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49029594>.

It's not just that advertising is intrusive, manipulative, privacy-violating, and annoying, it's fucking useless.

But going out and hunting for information is only very slightly better.

It's a universal market for lemons, and that's not a good sign.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons>

Somewhat frequently discussed on HN itself (141 hits presently in submissions):

<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>

Outright advertising bans ... might be somewhat premature. Or not. But I'd be quite interested in proposals for extremely punishing tax levels on at least certain classes of goods and services. And am open to bans within given categories: pharmaceuticals, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and gaming, and advertising directed at children, perhaps older adults as well. Also limitations on surveillance, tracking, and direct manipulation methods and practices.