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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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I’m just going to take this opportunity to remind everyone that you can and should donate to your Mastodon and Lemmy instances, even if it’s just $5 a month. That’s how we band together to keep these platforms ad-free, and I don’t know about you all, but I love that my mind isn’t being manipulated here.
Those who take issue with loss of profits without ads must take it up with big tech. They’ve have literal trillions of dollars from dominating the ad industry. They have your money. Nobody else.
Took a trip to Cuba, one of the first things I noticed was lack of billboards and advertising in general. It was quite refreshing.
Another example of that is Pyongyang. They do have billboards to Kim Jong Un, and memorials to Kim Jong Il. But, for the most part the city is free of billboards. It’s really strange if you’re used to modern western cities.
The best way to make advertising uninteresting or useless is to provide an alternative form of making money. If the default way to monetise a website, video, or whatever is ads, then ads will continue to be used. If we actually had an alternative that was as or more lucrative, that’s what would be used.
“Ban it” also means you need a way to enforce it, and even if it were banned in one country, that’s just one country. They might finally come up with an alternative, but why wait for a ban? Why not discuss and test alternatives here instead of just dreaming that a solution magically shows up?
If you just made it criminal to misrepresent what you are selling then it would be progress. Any measure of truth in advertising would be a plus. None currently exist.
I get the impression that misrepresentation is banned… And that’s why ads are often not about the product, but instead showing emotional images, playing catchy music (with brand-related lyrics), making related jokes. When what you can truthfully say is no better than the competition, you have to take a different approach…
Almost anything that can be remotely subjective (“best”, “better”, “more effective”, etc.) gets pushed into the “puffery” exception of (US) truth-in-advertising laws.
Even very objective claims that are untrue can be upheld, if they are (e.g.) based on an internal study. Even if there’s a better sourced, more repeated study with stronger claims (in the other direction) that is widely published. The companies involved just claim ignorance (which isn’t illegal) and offer to pull that claim from future campaigns (as if that addresses any of the damage caused by the false claims). Their lawyers can file continuances until the campaigns they’ve already paid for are complete anyway.
So, in theory misrepresentations is banned, but it happens and is often not punished when it does.
But, yeah, current advertising is largely not about making any sort of claim; it’s just telling a story the the customer and see themselves in, but is made somehow better (that real life) because the product/brand is present.
Bless your heart.
As much as I’d be down with this I don’t see it happening considering no one wants to pay for the services they use that are ad supported. For example everyone always seems to shit on YouTube premium but that is a currently existing way to get rid of ads on the service. Every time there’s an option between ad supported and ad free but paid people tend to just pick ad free. So while I think outlawing ads would be good at least with the current state of the world it would only be a net negative, killing off a bunch of small and big websites that rely on ads.
Youtube spends a tiny fraction of its revenue on bandwidth. It gets way more than it needs from ads and premium subscriptions. Hardly any of that revenue goes to the content creators either.
I generally agree but I think you have to acknowledge if you got rid of ads then best case scenario YouTube either limits more features like uploading or HD video behind paying or worst case scenario the platform collapses and there is nothing to replace it. For the longest time they weren’t profitable and it wasn’t until they pushed hard with ads and premium that they started to be profitable. So as much as I wish we could get rid of ads unless you wanna accept moving back technologically and losing a bunch of these online services people rely on I think ads are a needed evil for the time being. Especially when a lot of services already have ways to pay to get around ads. As at the end of the day if you don’t have ads you’re gonna have a subscription you have to pay for every major website you wanna use as they have to make money some way.
My internet connection would sure improve if they got rid of HD.
Another part of the problem I haven’t read in the comments is all the companies that rely on advertising to exist, especially media companies. Many newspapers, magazines, websites, TV channels etc would go bankrupt if they couldn’t earn money with advertising. There is a simple solution because we can ‘just pay them’ but I’m afraid we won’t. People hate advertising (someone commented “advertising is violence”, that really says it all), but still many of us choose to not get the subscription but use the ‘free’ option instead.
I’m not against banning all advertising, but I think working towards more peaceful advertising might be fruitful. Banning advertising of tabacco products and having disclaimers when financial and medical products show this can be done.
The future is not required to contain the business models of the past. More specially, I don’t believe “there are businesses that would fail” is a good argument. We need UBI or a better social safety net for the people in those businesses, but the businesses can simply fail and nothing will be lost.
That said, I think advertising can probably be reformed through a combination of removing the puffery exception, enhanced enforcement of existing truth in advertising laws, and increased civil liability for falsehoods at all layers: product (Kraft, Nestle, Tesla), production (“Mad men”), and propagation (networks, Hulu, YT)
Let those companies fail. A nee similar company will emerge from the ashes with a better business model that doesn’t rely on force fucking ads down your throat.
If the product can’t exist without advertisement does it deserve to?
If a product wouldn’t sell if it isn’t heavily marketed I’d agree it doesn’t need to exist. But if a product is paid for by advertising other products, that is a different story. Newspapers have had advertising for ages because of the high cost of running a newspaper, many tv-channels wouldn’t be able to exist on a subscription basis. Same goes for a lot of websites online. Also no more free porn (not legally at least). Advertising pays for a lot of things in our society. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but this system cannot be changed overnight.
I think anything that can’t exist without money from advertising either shouldn’t exist, or should be subsidized by taxes, not ads.
Tricky territory when you’re talking about journalism.
No doubt. And plenty of other things. Since the government doesn’t actually have the best interests of it’s people in mind. Bring on the AI overlords, since AI doesn’t have emotional reasons to hurt us for it’s own gain, maybe it will be better. Lol
Should we allow the best of science to be used to manipulate people’s base desires? Or should we protect the average person from being taken advantage of?
Unless you are a sociopath the answer is clear. Advertising in its current form should be completely banned. Perhaps some form of non-comparative advertising could be allowed if it just stated simple facts without creating a psychological hook to subconsciously fuck with the consumer.
Who am I kidding though, give these fuckers even an inch and they will circumnavigate the globe. Ban all advertising.
I was on a car from ride sharing app recently, and there was a tablet in front of me playing ads continuously for the whole ride. Asked the driver to turn it off and he said, “I have to keep it on”. I know it’s not the requirement from the app, so honestly how dystopian is it?
The way things are going people can’t afford anything and will have ads blasting in front of them for discounts.
I wouldve left an awful review, 1 star, no tip. Thats such shit to do. Fuck that guy.
Lol, almost no one tips as is right now.
Yeah. I didn’t want to do immediately after the trip. But now I don’t see the option to do it from the history of trips.
this happened to me once and I gave them 1 star for forcing me to watch ads
before ads we need to get rid of political campaigning.
What do you mean by campaigning? Do you mean no political ads or PACs then yeah definitely agree. But if you mean all forms of campaigning then how are politicians supposed to communicate who they are and why you should vote for them to the people? And outside of politicians if political campaigning is not allowed would that also not allow grass roots movements who door knock or hold rallys about specific issues? Political campaigning is all of those things, I definitely agree we need to get big money out of it but I don’t think it should be gotten rid of all together.
Almost all forms of political campaigns. I think every candidate should be given some modest and equal amount of TV time (in a channel that is specially dedicated to this) to explain their ideology and plans for their next term and allowed to distribute one type of written booklet to communicate it and then that is it. The second you allow more than this money starts having a huge influence on results. Of course this still does not prevent huge amounts of billionaire owned social media and news outlets for disinformation campaigns so this would only be a start.
I mean I think if anything that makes it worse and easier for billionaires to control the narrative as now politicians can’t campaign for themselves which means in practice most people are gonna hear about politicians from billionaire owned media. Especially for more worker centered causes which right now tend to be championed by door knocking and more grass roots campaigning. I personally think just abolishing PACs and limiting campaign donations would be enough to make it so politicians have to actually appeal and listen to the people rather then the rich. Could also combine this with a government provider donation that you can choose whichever candidate you want to receive it to help people without the means to donate to be appealed to as well. But I feel like the moment you outlaw campaigning then how do you advocate for ballot measures you like at the state level of you can’t go out and door knock or hold rallies for it? As much as the one TV channel style thing would be an ideal idea it wouldn’t really work in reality as we already have a channel for that, C-Span, which covers government related things which no one really watches. You have to meet people where they are, and I think trying to stop that is a bad idea for getting people involved in the political process which is something we need more of.
Same thing. Include those under the same law and solve both problems at once. 💛
Advertising is one of the three major incoherent industries along with Insurance and Real Estate.
My idea: no company or person can spend more than 100 dollars on ads per year, nor can any company or person earn more than 100 dollars from advertising.
That’d be great, but the “how” is a much harder question. What counts as advertising? Because there’s a reason Google, Meta, etc. have their fingers in so many different industries: every single thing that gets attention could be leveraged for advertising, even the act of suppressing mentions of competitors.
Should I be able to say “X product has been great, I recommend it!” Only if I’m not being paid, you say? How could you possibly know?
As discussed in the article, “propaganda” is illegal. So any discussion about how terrible trump is would also be illegal. Propaganda doesn’t mean false, it just means it’s trying to convince you of something. An advertisement. Heck, the article itself could be considered a form of advertising for legislation.
It’s just so trivial of a concept to say, but the moment you spend any amount of time thinking about it, it falls apart. It’s like trying to ban the Ship of Theseus from a club.
That’d be great, but the “how” is a much harder question.
As with the implementation of any obvious law, of course.
What counts as advertising? Because there’s a reason Google, Meta, etc. have their fingers in so many different industries: every single thing that gets attention could be leveraged for advertising, even the act of suppressing mentions of competitors.
Sure, maybe that’s an interesting question.
After all television commercials and magazine inserts and pop up ads and billboards are gone we can start debating the nuance of where exactly the line is drawn.
Should I be able to say “X product has been great, I recommend it!” Only if I’m not being paid, you say?
Correct!
How could you possibly know?
You would have to report that income on your taxes and if you ever get audited and that was a substantial amount of your income they will find out and go after the major players who are profiting off it illegally at tax time.
Think about gambling or alcohol. How do we know you aren’t selling unlicensed alcohol or running an unlicensed casino? We still have laws despite the uncertainty.
As discussed in the article, “propaganda” is illegal. So any discussion about how terrible trump is would also be illegal.
I feel like you’re confused about the difference between speech and propaganda. Discussion about Trump isn’t propaganda.
I know we currently do not, but it is possible to treat an individual and a business/corporation differently.
It is possible to hold an organizations speech to different standards than an individual.
The discussion of outlawing propaganda doesn’t have to have anything to do with your individual ability to express your opinion up until the point you try to organize and artificially broadcast that speech wider than you could on your own.
So, first off, any content made to change your mind is propaganda. Doesn’t matter how true or false it is, doesn’t matter if it’s cherry-picking info, doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make any claims at all, doesn’t matter if it’s paid for by a state or a religious group or a single individual. And it HAS to be defined this way, because there does not exist an impartial arbitrating party to draw a distinction for us. If we try to limit it only to information meant to mislead, then we have to figure out who decides whether something is misleading.
A poster that just says “hang in there” or “just give up” can be used as propaganda if you post it all over the place to raise or lower morale. It’s not making any claims, it’s not pushing a certain brand, it’s just trying to change what you think about. That’s propaganda.
Second, this whole thing assumes no one ever wants to see an advertisement. But if you’re arguing honestly, the reality is that sometimes you do. You want to know your favorite band is playing downtown. You want to know that the roofing company across town that does good work even exists. You want to know about whatever new silly product was made that aligns with your hobbies. In order to have an honest conversation, we need to agree that not all advertising is unwanted.
all television commercials and magazine inserts and pop up ads and billboards are gone we can start debating the nuance of where exactly the line is drawn
Would PSAs be banned? Those are nothing if not propaganda. How about billboards advertising a religious group? What if I buy a magazine because it does a great job at making me aware of products I actually do often want to buy?
You would have to report that income on your taxes
And what if I benefit in an indirect, difficult way to trace outside of being paid? Or what if it’s MY company?
know we currently do not, but it is possible to treat an individual and a business/corporation differently…It is possible to hold an organizations speech to different standards than an individual.
As a small business owner, how do I make customers aware that I exist?
until the point you try to organize and artificially broadcast that speech wider than you could on your own.
Where is that line? We’ve invented so many things that amplify our speech wider than what we could do “on our own”. A megaphone reaches more people than if I yell. A 10ft sign in my yard reaches more people than a tshirt. A social media account with 1 million followers reaches people than 1000 followers reaches more than 10 followers. Should I be able to make a flyer? Should I be able to use a printing press to copy that flyer? Should i be able to nail copes of that flyer all over the door of the catholic church and start a Reformation? Where is the line?
(It’s also worth reading up on the history of advertising in television in the UK. The idea of creating legislation to limit the prevalence of advertising is not new, and neither are the methods used to work around them.)
In summary, this is a very hard problem, but…I think the solution could be solved democratically. I don’t think the solution lies in trying to rigorously define what constitutes an ad, only for the form of an ad to morph. Rather, it lies in disincentivizing people seeing unwanted ads in the first place. The fact that people look around and see ads they don’t want to see needs to be translated directly into some kind of proportional tax.
Ex. If you poll the people, and they say “I see too many McDonalds ads” then the people (i.e. govt) should penalize McDonalds proportionally. If we poll again, and the penalty doesn’t result in people reporting seeing fewer unwanted McDonalds ads, then increase the penalty. When the penalty is high enough, it won’t be worth it for McDonalds to run so many aggressive ads, and they’ll have to reduce advertising in order for the people to report fewer unwanted ads in order for the penalty to drop. That’s the only possible implementation I see as actually working.
So, first off, any content made to change your mind is propaganda. Doesn’t matter how true or false it is, doesn’t matter if it’s cherry-picking info, doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make any claims at all
This is the second time this has been stated. I don’t know why we’re going backwards, I haven’t challenged the definition of propaganda.
doesn’t matter if it’s paid for by a state or a religious group or a single individual
Exactly. Under this law all these scenarios would be banned.
That’s the conversation we’re having, how to ban it.
A poster that just says “hang in there” or “just give up” can be used as propaganda if you post it all over the place to raise or lower morale. It’s not making any claims, it’s not pushing a certain brand, it’s just trying to change what you think about. That’s propaganda.
The law wouldn’t target things that “can be used” for propaganda, they’d target things that are used for propaganda.
If some individual wants to go around and spend his own money putting up “Hang in there” posters, that’s fine.
If they want to pay someone to hang up posters for them, that’s when they’d run into issues.
If a public space or place of business wants to put up a sign, you might make exceptions for things like emergency evacuations and informational material, but anything with “intent to advertise a brand or product” would certainly be banned.
“Hang in there” might end up being allowed or not in a workplace depending on how strict you’d like to get.
Second, this whole thing assumes no one ever wants to see an advertisement.
You want to know your favorite band is playing downtown. You want to know that the roofing company across town that does good work even exists. You want to know about whatever new silly product was made that aligns with your hobbies. In order to have an honest conversation, we need to agree that not all advertising is unwanted.
Its weird you’re acting like I’m dishonest. This is a pretty simple concept.
Unwanted advertisement are unwanted.
The companies are still allowed to create materials, and you’re allowed to view it. They just aren’t allowed to pay people to shove it in your face when you’re trying to watch TV or read the news.
Of course there’s value in knowing about products and deals, but if company’s are the ones paying for them then the companies with the most money get seen and heard the most.
That’s a problem because throwing money at ads can compensate for a sub par product. Keeping advertisements independent from the companies selling them is better for consumers as it leads to less biased info.
If you want to buy a catalog of local events, that’s fine people can make those “advertisements” and sell them. It would be illegal for the people operating them to have connections or take money from the companies, and these aren’t explicitly ads but genuine reviews basically.
You can print a list of bands and distribute it, you just can’t advertise the band in some unrelated product.
Would PSAs be banned? Those are nothing if not propaganda.
Exceptions could be made for anything if we want.
What do you think? Would you ban PSAs? I might not.
How about billboards advertising a religious group?
100% banned. No billboards allowed.
What if I buy a magazine because it does a great job at making me aware of products I actually do often want to buy?
Still exists. The magazine just can’t take money to artificially promote shitty brands who pay them so the magazine is higher quality.
(That’s obviously slightly naive, we’re crashing the entire magazine industry by passing this law, it’s too disruptive in the short term to the economy we’ve set up)
As a small business owner, how do I make customers aware that I exist?
You wouldn’t have to. Word of mouth and the community curated lists would talk about you if you’re worth talking about.
If no one can advertise then consumers are still gonna need to find the products they need and consumers will learn how to look for local businesses and the community will learn how to spotlight hidden gems.
Or maybe that’s too much effort and we all just go to walmart and you go out of business. Hopefully not, but i don’t fully know tbh, it’s untested.
Where is that line? We’ve invented so many things that amplify our speech wider than what we could do “on our own”. A megaphone reaches more people than if I yell. A 10ft sign in my yard reaches more people than a tshirt. A social media account with 1 million followers reaches people than 1000 followers reaches more than 10 followers. Should I be able to make a flyer? Should I be able to use a printing press to copy that flyer? Should i be able to nail copes of that flyer all over the door of the catholic church and start a Reformation? Where is the line?
Yep, you should be able to do all of that (except the social media one possibly depending on context) because they’re all actions of a single individual and no money is being spent of the distribution of the material.
(You can pay a printer to print the flyers but not hand out essentially).
If you want to rent a plane and drop them from the sky go ahead but you can’t do that as a business or to make money in any way.
In summary, this is a very hard problem, but…I think the solution could be solved democratically.
I agree, it would take a lot of trial and error but we could eventually figure it out.
We won’t because money is too powerful, but we could.
Ex. If you poll the people, and they say “I see too many McDonalds ads” then the people (i.e. govt) should penalize McDonalds proportionally. If we poll again, and the penalty doesn’t result in people reporting seeing fewer unwanted McDonalds ads, then increase the penalty. When the penalty is high enough, it won’t be worth it for McDonalds to run so many aggressive ads, and they’ll have to reduce advertising in order for the people to report fewer unwanted ads in order for the penalty to drop. That’s the only possible implementation I see as actually working.
I honestly don’t like that idea. We’re not seeing less ads, we’re just seeing more diverse ads.
Genuinely consider the implications of the fact that advertisements are effective.
Think of the most irritating, scummy, clickbait, insidious advertisement you’ve ever seen, and then consider that it objectively made the company more money than not running it.
Realize that your small business is directly losing customers because you aren’t able to compete with the marketing budgets of megacorporations.
Its not fair for your company and thus us as consumers they get to pay to hold the megaphone longer than you do and don’t compete by the quality of their products/service. It’s a bad problem.
Thanks for writing an essay so I no longer feel the need to lol. I hope your post gets more visibility.
I fucking hate advertising. I want it banned to the greatest extent that we can do so. But if we want actual change, it needs to be a lawfully applicable strategy. We don’t need to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Banning ads for medication is a great start that everyone can agree on for instance. We should work up from there.
The most insidious stuff is the content you don’t even realize is an ad, like comments and methods of boosting/lowering visibility on social media. That is a thorny issue.
The phrase “ban advertising” is reductive. Different countries have different laws around ads. For example, anime shows have bumpers in them because in Japan they are required by law to clearly indicate when advertising starts and stops.
There’s also laws against billboards, against targeting children, against specific industries, and limiting the amount of advertising available. I could see laws against targeted ads like Meta uses being implemented as well.
What counts as advertising?
Let’s say you ban ad breaks on TV / streams. In the early days of radio and TV they didn’t have ad breaks, the host of the show would just go on for a while about his favourite brand of cigarettes. In the modern world, pretty much any time you see a name brand in a TV show or movie, it’s because they’ve been paid for product placement.
So… you could solve that by never allowing the mentioning of any brand name in any form of media. That would make reviews illegal. That’s fair, I suppose, because reviews are definitely seen as a form of advertising. That’s why companies often provide review copies of things for free to journalists in the hope they might talk/write about them. Maybe you could carve out an exception allowing a brand and model to be mentioned if there are safety issues or product recalls?
Ok, so now you have a Formula 1 event, it’s on TV but you have to pay for that broadcast because it’s not ad supported. The cars, of course, don’t have any ads on them. But, are they allowed to have the manufacturer’s name and logo on them? Is it advertising if say Ferrari puts a lot of money into F1, wins a lot, and so when you watch the news you see Ferrari-red cars with Ferrari logos winning a race? Also, could the drivers wear coveralls with the Ferrari logo on them? What about fans of Ferrari, could they wear a shirt with the Ferrari logo on them if they were simply fans of the brand? What if this supposed Ferrari fan were a supermodel? Does someone have to carefully go through the finances of any very attractive person to see if they’re ever wearing a logo not because they’re a fan but because they’ve been compensated?
I’m in favour of reducing the amount of advertising we see. I think it’s a bit absurd now. But, while it’s possible to tax it or regulate it, I think it would be very hard to completely eliminate it.
Full stop.
This is where I stopped reading the article. It’s such a red-flag.
What I was thinking up to that point, though, was
- some ads do inform about new products (Swiffer) at launch
- some ads actually demonstrate proper use of a product. None come to mind in the moment. But I have distinct memories of saying to myself, “oh! That’s how that works!”
- ad breaks educate when a broadcaster is forced to include them. How would I know about the brown bear, the ptarmigan or the crack spider without Hinterland Who’s Who? Body Break? “I’m just a bill, on Capitol Hill,” anyone?
I’m sure we could brainstorm one or two more thin positives that ads provide, but those are weak enough already. Just, non-zero.
Ngl, this is a weak ass argument. Nearly all ads are trash and just get ignored. The ad industry has caused more problems than anything specifically/especially with privacy. There is some validity to ads in the sense that it does make it easier to find new products. I would be fine with ads (to a reasonable extent) in stores to show new products they carry. But the “good” ads (one that actually provide any kind of useful information) are way overshadowed by the bad ads. Its just time to cut the balls of this monster. Im sick of AI generated ads especially. I see them on youtube a lot as youtube will let just about anybody or anything to drop an ad on their website.
Advertising is too big of an industry to ever be banned. It also keeps lots of other sectors on life support, like sports and free online content. It’s also extremely important to keep services like search engines free. Unless we transition away from capitalism ads are pretty much mandatory to keep the economy afloat. I agree they suck though. uBlock Origin until I die.
