Then we’d have a centrally-planned economy I guess. I don’t really see how a free market would work without advertising.
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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This feels like I wrote it. I've hated advertising for about as long I have been aware of it but I've been telling people we should ban it since the first time I saw one of those articles about how everything was becoming clickbait because of advertising. In all that time, the ONLY thing I have ever thought of which would be a negative effect from a ban is the difficulty of getting the word out about a small business. Any other arguments are just dumb. Advertising is inherently harmful to everyone exposed to it, even the advertisers, who have to burn money to make it happen.
As someone who had designed and attempted to sell things. On of my key takeaways has always been the lack of awareness or knowledge of my things exists.
Granted if I put a 50ft build board in the sky it wouldn’t change much. But if I did more than I did.. or am doing it would help.
I saw a metaphor in this thread comparing advertising to Smoking. But I think Sugar is a better comparison. Is it needed? No. But a little will go a long way, and some dishes wouldn’t exists without it. Add to much and it ruins the flavour of the dish and isn’t healthy for the consumer.
What is needed is balance and where everything has hyper sugar in it isn’t good for anyone. So I do we need a rethink, but eliminating it outright isn’t the solution.
I think you're drawing the wrong conclusions. Currently you need a lot of capital to market a new product. That shifts the balance of power away from entrepreneurs towards the capitalists. Marketing also has a larger impact on profits than engineering, which leads to non-engineers to gain more promotions and power.
Instead we could have reviews, testing institutions, forums where people exchange opinions. And "pay for play" would be illegal fraud. But there would be constant demand to learn and compare the quality of products, once the focus on emotional manipulation is gone.
And existing brands from conglomerates spend oodles of money to maintain their brands, so you would immediately see a shift in power towards entrepreneurs and new and better products. You'd gain far more than you'd loose.
Another issue is that we are hyperstimulating consumerism which has not just negative effects, but leads to existential risk now.
I agree for existing products. But for new products before reviews are there. It’s very very hard to make your product stand out. Or to convince buyers to try it out.
Wondering about a world where advertising is only allowed on purchasing platforms. Say the consumer wants shoes. They go on this platform to search for shoes, and at that point advertisement is allowed. On this platform you can get related ads, front page ads etc. The moment you step off that platform however no ads are allowed.
The platforms can be like digital malls. Maybe owned by the government, or possibly functioning like a decentralised platform.
Online stores would be the exact wrong place imho. Take amazon, it become a outdated and rotten because of advertising changing the ranking and fake reviews and endless duplicates of items. There is also a lack of advancement for filtering. You'd want more trustworthy reviews, information, measurements and also more community functions to help find what you really need. Advertising would run counter to all of that.
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People talk about tech giants, but Facebook and Google are actually advertising giants. They pour much more money into their advertising than they do into r&d.
Many brands have a cost structure where, for each product sold, more money goes to advertising than to the person who actually made the product. Sometimes 2 or 3 times more. That's where the battle for attention is taking us, a place where attention from customers is worth much more than the effort of the worker.
None of this is inevitable, advertising should be heavily taxed and regulated.
Sao Paolo did this in 2006.
Under the cult of the "Invisible Hand of the Free Market", the prevailing ideology of neoclassical economics and the modern global economy, advertising is not necessary. Why should a firm have to convince me to buy anything if the market dictates prices and the flow of commodities? Yet here we are.
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I’m definitely in favor of a ban of advertising in public spaces. Spaces that are owned by the collective ‘us’ should remain free of it. Like public squares, roadways, public transit, etc. Those should be commercial free.
A total ban would be wildly difficult and impractical. It would also widen certain gaps like the rural-urban divide. How would someone in a rural area know an iPhone exists, if the nearest store is a hundred miles away? Or other products that might be beneficial to them?
I live in a city of 160.000 people. And even here, we simply don’t have every store or every product available. Advertising broadens that horizon considerably.
I'd take a ban on ads in private spaces, leave my house the fuck alone...i'm trying to get some rest.
Do rural jokels not have phones already? It's not like you wouldn't have product announcements and news and forum discussing it.
Statistically, rural users always lag behind in pretty much every metric.
For example, globally, 83 percent of urban people have access to the internet, 49 percent rural. In the US, 83 percent of urban people have a smartphone. 65 percent rural. Urban people also use their phone more. And that's not even taking into account cultural differences between urban and rural settings. They simply aren’t as plugged in as you and I.
Farmer Bob isn’t going on tech forums to read up on new phone releases. But his TV will show him that phone exists and entice him to buy it.
Point isn’t about the phones as such, it’s about some things simply not reaching that rural bubble.
I think some kind of mix approach, example some countries ban some kind of advertising. Advertising medical prescription drugs and treatments is illegal in some countries.
Alternatively companies should pay me to watch their advertisements. Organize events to pay people to watch their advertisement.
With smart glasses AR and AI we should be able to block out all billboard, posters or it could go the opposite way glasses show all kind of adverts.. hmm. We need open source AR smart glasses with adblock.
I refuse to watch all advertising.
It should be text only, purely factual, and very limited.
“We are blah, selling blah for $x, at $location”