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.
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 have hated few things in this world as much as advertising. It is one of the few industries I feel is beyond saving and produces nothing of value at all levels. I am of the opinion that advertising is like cancer, whenever it is allowed to get a foothold somewhere it will eventually kill the host. For-profit companies can not resist the easy money promised by advertising, so the only way to combat it is not have it to begin with.
I go out of my way to pay for the things I use with money and not attention if at all possible. I will nearly always favor buying from a company that does not get most of their revenue from advertising, even if it means I pay more for the product and it is a less capable product or service.
Lets try it and see what happens. No advertising seems like a reasonable response to advertising everywhere all the time.
Pretty dumb article if you spend more than a second thinking about this issue.
The entire historical premise that we “didn’t have ads” is so fucking incorrect and reeks of appeal to nature. Yeah we didn’t have tv ads but we had monarchs and elite that played the same role. How is paying of some sleezy high up salesman is different from a Google search ad? If anything the latter is more ethically apt.
I’d take democracy with ads over whatever the fuck that alternative timeline that polices “unpaid word of mouth”
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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.
Ads should be paying me for using my bandwidth.
You’ve been using bandwidth on ads?
The idea that advertising is a new invention is nonsense.
Yes, it had different forms but it was there.
Eg: What are the priests if not sales people and what are the Sunday bells if not calls to action, and what are the icons and statues if not aspirational advertising and fomo?
What are shop windows? What are branding marks?
Here is advertising in Ancient Rome
I have nothing against pull advertising so that if I need something I go somewhere and pull some advertisement to get information about a product I need or want. Window shopping, going to church seem like that.
But shoving ads down my throat, no thanks.
My point is that the premise of the article is untrue - harking to a past that never was.
Don’t church bells shove advertising down your ears? How about if I open a competing church with louder bells? What if I open a donut shop and I ring bells to notify you that a fresh batch is ready?
“No more bells then”, cool.
How about mosques? No bells, just a guy screaming from a tall balcony. And another and another.
Even in communist Russia you had propaganda ads everywhere.
There are plenty of ways currently of blocking most ads out of online media anyway - though underhanded means like product placement etc still sip through.
The word “new” is a relative term. Humans evolved around 300,000 BCE, and ancient Rome (founded in 753 BCE) is pretty “new” by that metric. You’re not wrong that people found ways to “advertise” to each other throughout recorded history, but when it comes to prehistory (or as the article states, “99.9% of [humanity’s] existence”), life was very different. There can’t have been much to advertise before people developed tradable goods.
With that said, I’m intrigued by your comprehensive interpretation of “advertising.” Now I’m wondering about things that would not have been written down/recorded, like things a town crier might have been incentivized to add to their announcements.
“Hear ye, hear ye! A joust is to be held tomorrow evening in the royal courtyard, in the King’s honor. Sir and Lady Abbington announce the birth of their new son, to be baptized at the Lord’s church this Saturday. In celebration, Mavis the Fishmonger is offering a buy-one-get-one deal on all flounder! Come on down to the market square for fantastic deals on all your seafood goods - just look for the stall with the yellow awning. Get your catch of the day at Mavis’s!”
Haha! New is a relative term but really? 300k BCE? Reverting to pre organised society to avoid advertising?
Maybe we should go to pre human times, oh wait, walk through a forest and all you see is flowers advertising themselves to insects and birds advertising their singing abilities to each other.
So long as there’s competition for resources and attention plays a role in that distribution something will find a way to attract that attention.
I didn’t reach to find that era - it was referenced from the article, even the snippet at the top of this very page:
But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence.
Then you provided examples that occured within the most recent .1% sliver of humanity’s existence. Anything more recent than ~30,000 BCE is within that .1% time frame. Ergo, Ancient Rome doesn’t count.
flowers advertising themselves to insects and birds advertising their singing abilities to each other.
This is why it’s important to define terms before beginning debates. The advertising people are referencing here is the modern kind targeted at humans in order to manipulate them. To compare that to the symbiotic relationships between flowers and their pollinators, or to animals seeking a mate, (both scenarios that benefit all parties mutually) is a false equivalence.
Anyway, I tried to keep things light-hearted in that last post, to show that I’m not looking to attack anyone. I gave you credit for providing a novel viewpoint, in an effort to build conversation. But I’m getting the impression that you’re not arguing in good faith. If you’d like have a real discussion, cool, I’m in. But if you’re looking for an argument, I recommend you look elsewhere.
Sorry, it was not my intent to offend, I’m never looking for an argument - just look at my post history.
I got that you gave credit for what you found novel, and cracked a couple of jokes which were quite amusing, even though I wasn’t sure if you were actually considering them as possibilities or just having fun but even without that part it I would just have answered on the merits of your position without argument.
I don’t usually share laughs with people I argue with and I started my reply with a laugh to show that I’m sharing your willingness to argue in good faith. Maybe it came across mean spirited.
I’m really confused about what part of my reply was confrontational. I get that most of the conversation’s content is usually non verbal so perhaps you read it in a confrontational tone that was not intended - it was more ribbing or amused incredulousness in the spirited discussion intent and not at all “how dare you” or yelling.
Now on to the merits of the discussion:
Look, pulling Ancient Rome and churches and flowers and birds as an examples has a common thread, and that is to argue my conclusion in the last comment. That in any environment of competition for resources were attention plays a role in their distribution you’ll find advertising.
If the examples from recorded human history are to be cast aside as too soon then what about pre human examples from nature.
That was the crux.
Now you find the floral and animal examples as irrelevant because you make a claim that they are symbiotic so they benefit both parties - but I don’t find that convincing as there are not just two parties, or only those examples and also that was not the point.
The point is the competition for resources where attention plays a role in the distribution and how advertising emerges between competitors and the audience that will provide them with the desired resource or the means for it.
Whether it is to the benefit or the detriment of the receiver or an unsuccessful advertiser that is not very relevant. After all not all human advertising is detrimental, most is symbiotic. Buying this pack of chewing gums vs another or none, or this mouse trap or spending your time listening to one genre of music vs another doesn’t necessarily hurt you and might even benefit you in some way.
But a more apt comparison if you want the yard stick to be non beneficial advertising are the million ways that advertising in nature has ill intent - leading one of the parties to their demise: from Venus flowers, to angler fish, to camouflage, to fake mating calls, to fake food and hundreds of other examples.
But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence
Current forms yes for sure, as most of our current communication methods are new.
But advertising in general? That simply cannot be true. Yes the earliest examples we can find are from early human civilisations a fraction of the estimated age of humanity (however you want to define it, but let’s say Homo sapiens) but if you want to argue that…
The advertising people are referencing here is the modern kind targeted at humans in order to manipulate them.
…Modern brained humans were not trying to manipulate other humans in non mutually beneficial ways, either with whatever form of communication was available or with other traps when nature does it at its most basic forms and when I see little kids do it to each other from a very young age then the onus of the argument requires to either explain in detail how are humans not a part of a nature where this naturally emerges or what a society without advertising actually looks like.
It’s a bit late over here so let’s hope my rumbling is somewhat coherent.
Ultimately some ads will become illegal as legit advertisers (large corps), get pissed off at all the dick pill ads mixed in with their content.
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.
I would argue that what this article is advocating for isn’t a definitive end to advertisement per se. Truthfully that would be impossible.
What we truly need are iron clad privacy laws that impose unbreakable regulations with destructive fines when violated by companies and organizations.
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…
Bless your heart.
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.
I don’t get a lot of ads already, and I could honestly use more in terms of new games and movies coming out. Word of mouth doesn’t work great for obscure things either.
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.
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.
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.
