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What If We Made Advertising Illegal? (simone.org)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The idea feels like sci-fi because you're so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.

The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn't been valid for decades.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

I see advertising as a necessary evil. It helps small businesses take off and stay afloat (especially when alternatives for being funded aren't viable for them), but at the same time it basically promotes corporate greed by shoving ads down our throats.

Abolishing advertising entirely would be improbable. I just want it to be toned down to the point where we're all comfortable with it. Too much of a good thing inevitably becomes a bad thing. But too little of a good thing is also a bad thing. So things should be taken in moderation. In the case of advertising, the first statement applies; there's way too much of it, it's really in-your-face and disruptive, and we're all getting sick of it.