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Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals y

by ok_dad 5y ago

Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals your attention and mindshare day after day. The ads I see on TV now (rarely, as I don't watch live TV much) are just so horrible. Dripping with emotions and trying to tug on your heartstrings to sell some toilet bowl cleaner or some other garbage. Social media. I feel like if it weren't for these algorithms that prioritize "engagement" over facts and polite content, my country would be a bit less polarized. I think that social media will turn out to be like cigarettes and someday we will discover that it has an extremely bad outcome; at least how it's implemented today. I have come to enjoy HN a bit more lately, as I just don't engage with the trolls or the horrible people that have opinions I disagree with vehemently. The people I think are horrible, at least, because it's a personal opinion, and other's might view me as a horrible person. I have also learned that it's best not to judge someone by one or two views overall, here, and that helps. I wish more social media could be like HN and allow a diverse set of opinions, but ban the name-calling and such that really take things into a bad place. Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion. Perhaps it's the old man in me coming out, with a rosy view of yesteryear, but I think that the quality of things are just lower, in general. I do think that things "look nicer" and are more consistent, but at a lower level of quality. 20 years ago, I had only 5 or so choices for any given product, maybe a curtain rod for example (because I just bought some). Today I can go down to several stores and pick from hundreds of curtain rod designs that look really nice, but half of them break after a few years or less. I still have some shitty looking but sturdy curtain rods from 20 years ago, no joke. Electronics are worse in some ways, but faster and more complex, so maybe that complexity is the source of the decrease in perceived quality. I can say that computers are way faster now, and it's easier to do many things, but I have less freedom than I had with older computers for sure. This is just about the end of my old man rant. Thanks for listening. "The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt..."

bambax 5y ago
Yes all forms of advertising should be banned. But, it will never happen. So, better not to get too excited with the idea.
ciccionamente 5y ago
> but half of them break after a few years or less One of the biggest downsides is that these type of things contribute to pollute our world twice: when they are made, when they need to be trashed away. Brands that have products that in average break after a very short time should be banned or shouldn't be sold at all.
- wincy 5y ago
  That’s a good way to ensure that everything in the world is made by a very few monopolies. It took brands like Vizio ten years before their TVs broke down all the time but now they’re pretty good quality, should we have just shut them down at the beginning and never let them improve?
ericmay 5y ago
Maybe not advertising completely but at least targeted advertising. Many problems and borderline unethical business models stem from targeting.
- amelius 5y ago
  > Maybe not advertising completely but at least targeted advertising. Non-targeted advertising is still distracting. Why not ban it completely? Or perhaps allow dedicated advertising places, so everybody can be happy.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    I used to think that too but a complete ban probably doesn't work well. What else would you be banning? Bumper stickers and logos on cars (get rid of the Apple logo on the back of your Mac), yard signs for political campaigns, newspapers, I mean there's a lot there. And then once you start selectively allowing it then you also create hyper-competitive scenarios for the ads that are allowed and I'm thinking if you do that then the ads that are allowed become crazy addictive and effective because the cost to advertise would be so high. Really what is the purpose of advertising in an ideal world? I'd say it's local, and lets people know what your business is and what services you offer. So if you run an inn in a small town, having a sign hanging outside of your business to let visitors know you're an inn and open for business seems pretty good. People have been doing that for hundreds of years. The current model though is, as you say, at a minimum distracting. But I think we can grab some low-hanging fruit. If I were dictator I'd ban targeted advertising in any form. No collecting personal data. And I'd ban billboards and other large signs. Idk if this is exactly a good thing to do but I'd also explore banning in advertising in which you're not paying for the service. So if I pay for cable TV and they want to advertise to me, that's fine because I'm engaging in an interaction with the company. I shouldn't have to be subjected to ads that I don't agree to see. It's kind of a form of mind-violence IMO. Question is just where do you draw the line.
    - amelius 5y ago
      I think the problem is that we allow any kind of advertising unless there is some problem. We should turn this around: ban all advertising unless there is something for society to be gained.
TOGoS 5y ago
> I know this is an extreme view Doesn't mean it's wrong!
caust1c 5y ago
I've thought a lot about what plagues our modern world and I've come to the same conclusion. I'm at a loss for what can be done about it though. We can't very easily ban advertising. Any regulation has to be lightweight because it's nearly impossible to enforce at internet scale (as we've seen again and again). Curious if you've thought about any ways to fix the problem we're in.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  My life is as close to advertising free as possible. The only thing that I can't really do much about is advertising signs by the roadside, but other than that it isn't a problem.
  - noneeeed 5y ago
    I'm sure I remember reading about a city (somewhere in south america I think) that banned all billboards, and it was like the city was reborn.
    - handrous 5y ago
      They're banned on some stretches of interstate (maybe where they cross federal land? Not sure) and damn, it's nice. Even relatively dull and shitty landscapes are so much better without that blight.
      - duderific 5y ago
        I learned today that in California at least, they have to be designated as a Scenic Highway [1]; then advertising is not allowed. [1] https://dot.ca.gov/programs/design/lap-landscape-architecture-and-community-livability/lap-liv-i-scenic-highways https://dot.ca.gov/programs/design/lap-landscape-architectur...
    - sofetch 5y ago
      Sounds like the São Paolo Clean City Law: https://newdream.org/blog/sao-paolo-ad-ban https://newdream.org/blog/sao-paolo-ad-ban
chrismorgan 5y ago
I basically don’t encounter any ads in my day-to-day life, digital or physical. I have no TV, and use uBlock Origin (including annoyances lists) on laptop and phone. I live in a tiny rural town so that practically the only advertising posters within a 35km radius are first-party advertising on two or three Telstra public phone booths, and in the decent-sized towns 40km away in either direction there’s barely any more. The nearest billboard ads of any sort would be over a hundred kilometres away, in Horsham, Ballarat or Bendigo, and not much at that. When I go down to the big smoke (Melbourne) I find the prevalence of billboards, side-of-bus ads, &c. physically distressing—and then they make it worse by using screens for them so they can change their contents, make them glary, &c. and it’s just awful. And it becomes ever more and more intrusive; Melbourne’s trains used to be safe spaces, then they put billboards on the platforms, then scrolling billboards, then ads in the carriages, then animated billboards on the platforms, then billboards with speakers on the platforms, and I wonder just what they’ll come up with next. I really dislike the city. There’s a reason I moved out into the country. As for television ads, ugh! Maybe once every year or two I happen to be in the same room as a television that’s turned on, and how anyone can stand to watch the stuff when such ads are part of it, I don’t know. Maybe if you grow up with it you don’t realise quite how obnoxious it is? I have concluded that display advertising is just fundamentally bad and that our society would be better if it were outright banned in all its forms. I would even sympathise with vigilantes that went round demolishing and vandalising billboards on principle.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Advertising is cancer and should die, but billboards and real-world display advertising is probably the least bad version of it. I'd prefer if online advertising (and the associated data collection and privacy violations) were nuked first.
  - ufo 5y ago
    I do agree that the privacy invading stuff is a more urgent problem. But I want to add a counterpoint about the physical ads. I remember when they banned all the billboards in São Paulo and the city ended up looking much better after it. The change ended up being highly regarded by the residents.
noneeeed 5y ago
Thoroughly agree about adverts. Have you read Tim Wu's "The Attention Merchants"? On the social media thing, I find they are always better when they just show you the things you've asked to see, in chronological order. It's all this algorithmic "hey, your aunt's brother-in-law's gardener just commented on a post by someone you don't know" bullshit that causes the problem. If I just look at Twitter posts from the people I follow it's fine, it's just my friends talking about stuff, the moment I make the mistake of following a trending topic link it's a cesspit. And yeah, a lot of things seem to be cost engineered to the point where they are designed to look ok, but not last or take much punishment. But that's less about tech, and more about us as consumers, we seek to minimise cost and so that's what manufacturers go for.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  The reason behind the algorithm is again advertising. A chronological timeline makes it super-easy to tell when you've caught up. An algorithmic one can recycle posts endlessly in a different order, making you spend more time trying to make sure you've caught up - this means more opportunities for them to insert ads. The problem with social media isn't "social media", it's advertising and the fact that money is made out of "engagement". You kill that disgusting industry and so many problems would disappear overnight.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    It’s also the well studied slot-machine effect of “intermittent reinforcement” - sometimes when you refresh the page you get nothing new, sometimes when you refresh the page you get what you want - this releases more dopamine and is therefore more addictive then simply getting what you want every time.
brightstep 5y ago
Advertisements are violent, they are invasive and manipulative. Agree, they should be illegal.
tiffanyh 5y ago
How do you discover information you’re not actively looking for? Eg maybe being environmentally friendly is super important to you. You don’t even realize that today the detergent you’re using isn’t as such. Advertising allows for someone to educate you that products exist that you’re not aware of that align to your needs/wants/desires.
- lambic 5y ago
  If it's super important to me, I'll actively look for it. Opt-in advertising is another option, I have no problem receiving advertising I've specifically agreed to receive.
- unbanned 5y ago
  Governed advertising and education channels would be an answer to this
- dogleash 5y ago
  >Advertising allows for someone to educate you that products exist that you’re not aware of This thin edge of a wedge doesn't justify more than the tiniest fraction of what the advertising industry does. You don't need to hold onto these stock answers for quieting cognitive dissonance. I've found it a huge mental relief to stop lying to myself and just admit to anyone who asks that I'm morally complicit in abusing the worlds collective psyche for money.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  There's a fundamental conflict of interest here in relying on the competitors of products you currently use to educate you on why their products are better aligned to your preferences. If this is important, subscribe to something like Consumer Reports or join a community group of environmentally concerned citizens who share recommendations with each other, which I suppose will work until the group members start getting sponsored by vendors to give paid recommendations. Outside of that, the tried and true age old method is trusted third parties. Friends, family, people you share hobbies with and have known for a long time, will give word of mouth recommendations when they know you're interesting in something and have knowledge of products you don't. It's like Ask Hacker News, but instead of asking random anonymous people on a website, ask people you know.
thepete2 5y ago
Agree. I particularly hate advertisements in public spaces. I often consciously try to avert my eyes, it's like pollution to me, just visual/mental.
cletus 5y ago
> Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion. People forget how (relatively) expensive products used to be. Example: my family had a very early VHS video recorder. I believe it cost ~$1000 in the early 1980s. I may be misremembering. But that was a lot of money then. So of course it was worth repairing. Labour was considerably less expensive in terms of percentage of outlay costs. That's why it was justified. Computers came along and you had a bunch of chips on a board, some of which were worth replacing. But each interconnect costs money. Each external package costs money. We've seen the rise of complicated SoC chips that basically do everything in one chip. These are overall cheaper to fab (compared to 2+ chips) and have lower build, integration and interconnection costs. The downside? If it stops working, you just throw it away (or at least replace the entire SoC). And if the SoC is relatively cheap, it's not worth paying someone to order a replacement and replace it (with or without soldering). So really what you're missing is tech being very expensive. Personally I prefer what we have now. There are other downsides to modern tech (eg Internet-connected TVs to insert advertising) but durability just isn't one of them.
- megaframe 5y ago
  There's also the same price but more complex issue. Hybrid engines and washing machines are far more efficient but significantly more complex. Prices are roughly the same +inflation but the added complexity reduces lifetime and repairability.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Today's tech can be cheap and repairable. Buying a PC in parts is not that more expensive than buying than a box from a retailer. The framework laptop is completely competitively priced with laptops of equivalent specs. DIY audio enthusiasts can buy speaker kits that have amazing performance for one third of the price of the "ready" one, and if a speaker or the amp goes bad, they don't need to buy a whole new kit. It's consumers themselves that got that into that mindset that is not worth to invest time into building and repairing things. We need to start attaching a cost to disposing of obsolete tech, and you can bet they will quickly remember that they too are capable of doing things.
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
I bet you'll love these before-and-after photos of Sao Paolo after their outdoor advertising ban: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret... Anti-advertising was one of the pet causes of Generation X, back before more pressing things like "the war on terror" and a financial collapse and health care crisis took the stage. And those are bigger deals, but man, advertising is just awful too.
- bmitc 5y ago
  That’s absolutely amazing. In reading that, I had to ask myself several times if it was real or not. No one seems to make such bold and decisive decisions for good anymore.
- radlad 5y ago
  Getting a bit off-topic now, but I'm reminded of the song Logos by Faded Paper Figures looking at the photos of empty signs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO_e7Qq2WKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO_e7Qq2WKg Signs on every mountain side, Line highways, stitching desert thread ... My soul goes with your logos, There's no place left to dream tonight
  - I_complete_me 5y ago
    This is what jumped into my mind: I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree Indeed, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. Ogden Nash
- barbazoo 5y ago
  I love that! Here where I live in Canada, billboards aren't allowed except on indigenous land. While I totally respect it, it's a horrible eyesore.
  - pbourke 5y ago
    Kelowna?
jstx1 5y ago
> Advertising I get a lot out of using Search, Youtube, Maps, Gmail, Drive and all of Google's other services for free. Advertising probably comes out as a net positive for me if you take all of those into account.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  I think it’s glossed over that people are neurologically different, and some people are actively distressed by advertising. I consider it a matter of accessibility, as soon as some block of color moves on the side of the screen, my attention is stolen from me. Maybe that’s a disability on my part, but it makes the web feel actively hostile.
- hidden-spyder 5y ago
  Yeah, I hate ads too, but don't think Google products or any other big internet companies would exist at the scale they do if ads went away.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
    - hidden-spyder 5y ago
      What? How can Maps, Google Search, and Youtube becoming worse be a good thing?
      - teddyh 5y ago
        “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” Or, in other words, monopolies have benefits, but also have a cost. And, usually, at least in the long run, that cost outweigh the benefits.
- 5y ago
brokenkebab 5y ago
It's really easy to avoid intrusive ads these days: don't waste any time on TV, sign out of social platforms, use Brave, or any browser with adblocking - you're 99% done with it. As for more subtle kinds of advertising, banning it would require killing media, publishing, entertainment, and even large swaths of education.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> Advertising. I know this is an extreme view I think your view isn't too extreme enough, frankly. I feel like if I took the time I could compose a lengthy essay showing that we can directly blame advertising for a significant portion of societal ills. Advertising promotes narcissism, selfishness, and entitlement; it convinces you that you need things you don't need, happiness can be bought, you what you have isn't good enough; it lies to you, it lies to you about lying to you, and it makes you think this is normal. And that's all when it isn't trying to outright scam you. > Social media. Mostly bad because of advertising. > Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion. A bit more of a stretch, but since advertisements lie and tell you the product costs less and is 'just as good', it leads to a race to the bottom.
- hidden-spyder 5y ago
  I'd read that essay.
ben-schaaf 5y ago
> Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion. Planned obsolescence is pervasive - it's hard to have endless growth when you've reached market saturation. It's also incredibly hard to go against the grain here, as it's really difficult to judge how long something will last without intimate knowledge of the product.
codazoda 5y ago
Just last night I was thinking about how much of my life is wasted watching advertising on TV. 15 minutes is worth more than a few dollars to me. I was watching a movie on the Roku Channel. Because the channel is free, it's got commercials. The more I watched, the longer the commercials got. At some point I gave up and turned it off. The movie is 132 minutes long and there are 10 stops for commercials. The last commercial was 2 minutes. I'd rather pay for a subscription than watch commercials and I will definitely not pay for a channel AND watch commercials.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  We need to start a collective action where audiences punish advertisers. How can we lower the ROI on advertising as a society? Harass customer service lines with complaints about the advertisements? Organize focused boycotts of worst offenders? Form a journalistic non-profit that investigates unethical and illegal business practices, ordering targets by ad spend? Maybe we should mock friends and acquaintances that purchase things that are advertised in annoying or manipulative ways. Ads are stupid, and being influenced by them should be socially embarrassing in the same way that participating in MLMs is.
  - recursive 5y ago
    IMO The only plausible way to do this is stop consuming media that has ads present.
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    I guess contacting sales as a merchant with questions about why products aren't meeting expectations set by commercials could help, but it'd have to be a lot of people calling to make a dent. I doubt CS calls will amount to anything, they'll just add more computer voice layers. Maybe sending activist investors to company meetings would get headlines, but I dunno if anything substantive would come of it.
  - ivank 5y ago
    We could try to make competitive web services that are not funded by advertising.
evergrande 5y ago
This is an under appreciated point about web3. We can get away from the ad-based business model. Web2 has an adversarial relationship with the user, web3 is much more aligned with the user. https://www.jonstokes.com/p/web3-the-rise-of-the-aligned-web https://www.jonstokes.com/p/web3-the-rise-of-the-aligned-web
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Zoidberg voice Why not both?
systemvoltage 5y ago
I like trade shows. “Pull” advertising, not “Push”. As an engineer and a professional, I appreciate trade shows as a form of advertising in a symbiotic sense. We need great vendors. Vendors need great customers like us. The collaboration between suppliers and customers is the bedrock of how the world works. Without some form of advertising, it would be stagnant, dysfunctional and basically dead with vendor lock-ins and monopolies. Advertising allows exposure and enables a free market economy. That said, most consumer advertising is toxic and pushed down the throat. But it works otherwise Google wouldn’t exist.
lobocinza 5y ago
Ads are pointless. No matter how much human capital was invested in making targeted ads possible, only very rarely I see something that I might be interested in buying. And I can't remember a thing that I bought due to ads. They are a better signal of what to not buy.
- distantaidenn 5y ago
  Buying the product is the primary goal, but they don't expect you to act right away. It's about impressions. You see 1000 Coke ads and product placements a year. When you finely decide you want a sweet fizzy drink, well the decision has already been made for you.
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    I would be very, very surprised if this sort of subliminal effect was strong enough to make advertising worth it.
    - distantaidenn 5y ago
      I've had some work in this field -- it is as far as the marketing teams are concerned. One of my previous employers (international mega company) spent millions on advertisements each month, with no clear way to measure their direct impact. But they did it for the impressions.
      - kzzzznot 5y ago
        Luigi’s Pizzeria hires three teenagers to hand out coupons to passersby. After a few weeks of flyering, one of the three turns out to be a marketing genius. Customers keep showing up with coupons distributed by this particular kid. The other two can’t make any sense of it: how does he do it? When they ask him, he explains: "I stand in the waiting area of the pizzeria." From https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...
  - 5y ago
rio517 5y ago
I really hear you on the product quality, but that is more the result of business systems. I find it so frustrating that I struggle or fail find quality products - for everything from forzen pizza to jeans. For some cases (frozen pizza) I just opt out. Others, I just give up and accept that I'll have to replace my jeans every 2-3 years. I try to buy recommendations from Wirecutter and do slightly better, but still so annoyed that everything is made so damn cheaply.
diplodocusaur 5y ago
I came to say Advertising as well I doubt it has the effectiveness that people say it has when they are everywhere.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vanusa 5y ago
I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. It's not an extreme view at all; some cities (like São Paulo) have essentially banned billboards, for example, with decidedly positive effects. I'm quite confident that we'll eventually come to see rabid, out-of-control advertising (which is about 90 percent of it) as akin to smoking, leaded gas or asbestos - and that eventually it will be regulated accordingly.
larrydag 5y ago
yup. We should be able to opt-in instead of having to opt-out of the slew of digital ads we see daily.
ssalka 5y ago
I don't think we can ever rid ourselves fully of advertising (even acknowledging that it's annoying for users and makes the web experience markedly worse, it ultimately is useful for companies/marketers). What we can and should get rid of is targeted advertising, i.e. the more effective, invasive variety.
carabiner 5y ago
Recently, I've been buying more stuff from non-Amazon retailers. I bought a pair of basketball shorts from Macy's, and a reading light from Home Depot. I'm tired of getting burned by those weird Chinese brands (with ALLCAPS brands) on Amazon. The physical stores gave me a few choices (that were all pretty decent) and I got to inspect the product before buying, rather than roll the dice with an online order. So I'm rediscovering old shopping.
MandieD 5y ago
“Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” - Stephen Leacock, long before computers, much less the internet, were a thing.
dharmab 5y ago
I'd just like to point out there was a lot of easily broken crap back in the day, too. Durable items from the past are over represented in both our memory and in the physical world. Furthermore, truly durable items still exist. One of my favorites are my Osprey packs, which I have had for nearly a decade and expect to last for another few decades.
netizen-936824 5y ago
I agree with your sentiment, and I think that having profit incentives tied into fucking everything is actually a horrible idea and makes many things worse for living in society
magicroot75 5y ago
I work in digital advertising. I manage several billion impressions a year in ads spend and over $15M a year. I think it's easy for engineers to undervalue the importance of advertising. Without marketing, many many well-engineered products would never be discovered. This is why marketing is considered a core function of business. It speeds up the integration of new products and technologies into the general society. It seems like you're lumping all advertising for all products into the same category. It's more likely you just don't like seeing ads for products you don't like. And this is the goal of contemporary digital ads: To only show products to users who are likely to purchase them. Human beings have ideas that organize themselves into formal groupings that need to be formally promoted in order to sustain the cost of the business. Products need to rapidly scale. And marketing/advertising makes that possible. Hating advertising is like hating the dollar for being necessary to exchange value in society. We need advertising to make the products you engineer viable business ideas. Without advertising, 99.9% of good product will never be discovered.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rixed 5y ago
  Advertising is needed to protect good products from the advertising of bad products?
- _oghd 5y ago
  99.9% of products aren't needed in any way by anybody. 90% of products are created to fill an artificial demand manufactured by advertising in the first place. these products and their manufacturing comes at a massive carbon cost for meaningless gain. i also worked in digital advertising. for some of the biggest brands out there. i quit.
  - magicroot75 5y ago
    In a free market, we don't dictate what someone needs or doesn't need. We believe the individual has a right to choose amongst options that are presented with truthful claims. If someone pays for it willingly, they needed it. If we start attempting to break down all the extrinsic motivations for purchase decisions, we'd see almost ALL of them are dictated by social acceptance, comfort, and convenience. This is a feature of a wealthy nation, not a bug, that we can seek out goods and services beyond basic food/water/shelter/safety needs.
htmlcoderexe 5y ago
Spec sheet advertising, that's what I have been rambling about to anyone who'd listen. I would also add that the advertising should go ibto a catalogue of sorts, so if you're specifically out to buy things you pick one up (look it up online?) and look for tjings to buy. But you don't get pestered to buy anything when you're just out and about doing anything else, I think along with manipulation that's one of the main problems with modern advertising.

by ok_dad 5y ago

bambax 5y ago

Yes all forms of advertising should be banned. But, it will never happen. So, better not to get too excited with the idea.

ciccionamente 5y ago

> but half of them break after a few years or less One of the biggest downsides is that these type of things contribute to pollute our world twice: when they are made, when they need to be trashed away. Brands that have products that in average break after a very short time should be banned or shouldn't be sold at all.

wincy 5y ago
That’s a good way to ensure that everything in the world is made by a very few monopolies. It took brands like Vizio ten years before their TVs broke down all the time but now they’re pretty good quality, should we have just shut them down at the beginning and never let them improve?

ericmay 5y ago

Maybe not advertising completely but at least targeted advertising. Many problems and borderline unethical business models stem from targeting.

amelius 5y ago
> Maybe not advertising completely but at least targeted advertising. Non-targeted advertising is still distracting. Why not ban it completely? Or perhaps allow dedicated advertising places, so everybody can be happy.
- ericmay 5y ago
  I used to think that too but a complete ban probably doesn't work well. What else would you be banning? Bumper stickers and logos on cars (get rid of the Apple logo on the back of your Mac), yard signs for political campaigns, newspapers, I mean there's a lot there. And then once you start selectively allowing it then you also create hyper-competitive scenarios for the ads that are allowed and I'm thinking if you do that then the ads that are allowed become crazy addictive and effective because the cost to advertise would be so high. Really what is the purpose of advertising in an ideal world? I'd say it's local, and lets people know what your business is and what services you offer. So if you run an inn in a small town, having a sign hanging outside of your business to let visitors know you're an inn and open for business seems pretty good. People have been doing that for hundreds of years. The current model though is, as you say, at a minimum distracting. But I think we can grab some low-hanging fruit. If I were dictator I'd ban targeted advertising in any form. No collecting personal data. And I'd ban billboards and other large signs. Idk if this is exactly a good thing to do but I'd also explore banning in advertising in which you're not paying for the service. So if I pay for cable TV and they want to advertise to me, that's fine because I'm engaging in an interaction with the company. I shouldn't have to be subjected to ads that I don't agree to see. It's kind of a form of mind-violence IMO. Question is just where do you draw the line.
  - amelius 5y ago
    I think the problem is that we allow any kind of advertising unless there is some problem. We should turn this around: ban all advertising unless there is something for society to be gained.

TOGoS 5y ago

> I know this is an extreme view Doesn't mean it's wrong!

caust1c 5y ago

I've thought a lot about what plagues our modern world and I've come to the same conclusion. I'm at a loss for what can be done about it though. We can't very easily ban advertising. Any regulation has to be lightweight because it's nearly impossible to enforce at internet scale (as we've seen again and again). Curious if you've thought about any ways to fix the problem we're in.

jacquesm 5y ago
My life is as close to advertising free as possible. The only thing that I can't really do much about is advertising signs by the roadside, but other than that it isn't a problem.
- noneeeed 5y ago
  I'm sure I remember reading about a city (somewhere in south america I think) that banned all billboards, and it was like the city was reborn.
  - handrous 5y ago
    They're banned on some stretches of interstate (maybe where they cross federal land? Not sure) and damn, it's nice. Even relatively dull and shitty landscapes are so much better without that blight.
    - duderific 5y ago
      I learned today that in California at least, they have to be designated as a Scenic Highway [1]; then advertising is not allowed. [1] https://dot.ca.gov/programs/design/lap-landscape-architecture-and-community-livability/lap-liv-i-scenic-highways https://dot.ca.gov/programs/design/lap-landscape-architectur...
  - sofetch 5y ago
    Sounds like the São Paolo Clean City Law: https://newdream.org/blog/sao-paolo-ad-ban https://newdream.org/blog/sao-paolo-ad-ban

chrismorgan 5y ago

I basically don’t encounter any ads in my day-to-day life, digital or physical. I have no TV, and use uBlock Origin (including annoyances lists) on laptop and phone. I live in a tiny rural town so that practically the only advertising posters within a 35km radius are first-party advertising on two or three Telstra public phone booths, and in the decent-sized towns 40km away in either direction there’s barely any more. The nearest billboard ads of any sort would be over a hundred kilometres away, in Horsham, Ballarat or Bendigo, and not much at that. When I go down to the big smoke (Melbourne) I find the prevalence of billboards, side-of-bus ads, &c. physically distressing—and then they make it worse by using screens for them so they can change their contents, make them glary, &c. and it’s just awful. And it becomes ever more and more intrusive; Melbourne’s trains used to be safe spaces, then they put billboards on the platforms, then scrolling billboards, then ads in the carriages, then animated billboards on the platforms, then billboards with speakers on the platforms, and I wonder just what they’ll come up with next. I really dislike the city. There’s a reason I moved out into the country. As for television ads, ugh! Maybe once every year or two I happen to be in the same room as a television that’s turned on, and how anyone can stand to watch the stuff when such ads are part of it, I don’t know. Maybe if you grow up with it you don’t realise quite how obnoxious it is? I have concluded that display advertising is just fundamentally bad and that our society would be better if it were outright banned in all its forms. I would even sympathise with vigilantes that went round demolishing and vandalising billboards on principle.

Nextgrid 5y ago
Advertising is cancer and should die, but billboards and real-world display advertising is probably the least bad version of it. I'd prefer if online advertising (and the associated data collection and privacy violations) were nuked first.
- ufo 5y ago
  I do agree that the privacy invading stuff is a more urgent problem. But I want to add a counterpoint about the physical ads. I remember when they banned all the billboards in São Paulo and the city ended up looking much better after it. The change ended up being highly regarded by the residents.

noneeeed 5y ago

Thoroughly agree about adverts. Have you read Tim Wu's "The Attention Merchants"? On the social media thing, I find they are always better when they just show you the things you've asked to see, in chronological order. It's all this algorithmic "hey, your aunt's brother-in-law's gardener just commented on a post by someone you don't know" bullshit that causes the problem. If I just look at Twitter posts from the people I follow it's fine, it's just my friends talking about stuff, the moment I make the mistake of following a trending topic link it's a cesspit. And yeah, a lot of things seem to be cost engineered to the point where they are designed to look ok, but not last or take much punishment. But that's less about tech, and more about us as consumers, we seek to minimise cost and so that's what manufacturers go for.

Nextgrid 5y ago
The reason behind the algorithm is again advertising. A chronological timeline makes it super-easy to tell when you've caught up. An algorithmic one can recycle posts endlessly in a different order, making you spend more time trying to make sure you've caught up - this means more opportunities for them to insert ads. The problem with social media isn't "social media", it's advertising and the fact that money is made out of "engagement". You kill that disgusting industry and so many problems would disappear overnight.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  It’s also the well studied slot-machine effect of “intermittent reinforcement” - sometimes when you refresh the page you get nothing new, sometimes when you refresh the page you get what you want - this releases more dopamine and is therefore more addictive then simply getting what you want every time.

brightstep 5y ago

Advertisements are violent, they are invasive and manipulative. Agree, they should be illegal.

tiffanyh 5y ago

How do you discover information you’re not actively looking for? Eg maybe being environmentally friendly is super important to you. You don’t even realize that today the detergent you’re using isn’t as such. Advertising allows for someone to educate you that products exist that you’re not aware of that align to your needs/wants/desires.

lambic 5y ago
If it's super important to me, I'll actively look for it. Opt-in advertising is another option, I have no problem receiving advertising I've specifically agreed to receive.
unbanned 5y ago
Governed advertising and education channels would be an answer to this
dogleash 5y ago
>Advertising allows for someone to educate you that products exist that you’re not aware of This thin edge of a wedge doesn't justify more than the tiniest fraction of what the advertising industry does. You don't need to hold onto these stock answers for quieting cognitive dissonance. I've found it a huge mental relief to stop lying to myself and just admit to anyone who asks that I'm morally complicit in abusing the worlds collective psyche for money.
nonameiguess 5y ago
There's a fundamental conflict of interest here in relying on the competitors of products you currently use to educate you on why their products are better aligned to your preferences. If this is important, subscribe to something like Consumer Reports or join a community group of environmentally concerned citizens who share recommendations with each other, which I suppose will work until the group members start getting sponsored by vendors to give paid recommendations. Outside of that, the tried and true age old method is trusted third parties. Friends, family, people you share hobbies with and have known for a long time, will give word of mouth recommendations when they know you're interesting in something and have knowledge of products you don't. It's like Ask Hacker News, but instead of asking random anonymous people on a website, ask people you know.

thepete2 5y ago

Agree. I particularly hate advertisements in public spaces. I often consciously try to avert my eyes, it's like pollution to me, just visual/mental.

cletus 5y ago

> Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion. People forget how (relatively) expensive products used to be. Example: my family had a very early VHS video recorder. I believe it cost ~$1000 in the early 1980s. I may be misremembering. But that was a lot of money then. So of course it was worth repairing. Labour was considerably less expensive in terms of percentage of outlay costs. That's why it was justified. Computers came along and you had a bunch of chips on a board, some of which were worth replacing. But each interconnect costs money. Each external package costs money. We've seen the rise of complicated SoC chips that basically do everything in one chip. These are overall cheaper to fab (compared to 2+ chips) and have lower build, integration and interconnection costs. The downside? If it stops working, you just throw it away (or at least replace the entire SoC). And if the SoC is relatively cheap, it's not worth paying someone to order a replacement and replace it (with or without soldering). So really what you're missing is tech being very expensive. Personally I prefer what we have now. There are other downsides to modern tech (eg Internet-connected TVs to insert advertising) but durability just isn't one of them.

megaframe 5y ago
There's also the same price but more complex issue. Hybrid engines and washing machines are far more efficient but significantly more complex. Prices are roughly the same +inflation but the added complexity reduces lifetime and repairability.
rglullis 5y ago
Today's tech can be cheap and repairable. Buying a PC in parts is not that more expensive than buying than a box from a retailer. The framework laptop is completely competitively priced with laptops of equivalent specs. DIY audio enthusiasts can buy speaker kits that have amazing performance for one third of the price of the "ready" one, and if a speaker or the amp goes bad, they don't need to buy a whole new kit. It's consumers themselves that got that into that mindset that is not worth to invest time into building and repairing things. We need to start attaching a cost to disposing of obsolete tech, and you can bet they will quickly remember that they too are capable of doing things.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago

I bet you'll love these before-and-after photos of Sao Paolo after their outdoor advertising ban: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret... Anti-advertising was one of the pet causes of Generation X, back before more pressing things like "the war on terror" and a financial collapse and health care crisis took the stage. And those are bigger deals, but man, advertising is just awful too.

bmitc 5y ago
That’s absolutely amazing. In reading that, I had to ask myself several times if it was real or not. No one seems to make such bold and decisive decisions for good anymore.
radlad 5y ago
Getting a bit off-topic now, but I'm reminded of the song Logos by Faded Paper Figures looking at the photos of empty signs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO_e7Qq2WKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO_e7Qq2WKg Signs on every mountain side, Line highways, stitching desert thread ... My soul goes with your logos, There's no place left to dream tonight
- I_complete_me 5y ago
  This is what jumped into my mind: I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree Indeed, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. Ogden Nash
barbazoo 5y ago
I love that! Here where I live in Canada, billboards aren't allowed except on indigenous land. While I totally respect it, it's a horrible eyesore.
- pbourke 5y ago
  Kelowna?

jstx1 5y ago

> Advertising I get a lot out of using Search, Youtube, Maps, Gmail, Drive and all of Google's other services for free. Advertising probably comes out as a net positive for me if you take all of those into account.

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jazzyjackson 5y ago
I think it’s glossed over that people are neurologically different, and some people are actively distressed by advertising. I consider it a matter of accessibility, as soon as some block of color moves on the side of the screen, my attention is stolen from me. Maybe that’s a disability on my part, but it makes the web feel actively hostile.
hidden-spyder 5y ago
Yeah, I hate ads too, but don't think Google products or any other big internet companies would exist at the scale they do if ads went away.
- teddyh 5y ago
  Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
  - hidden-spyder 5y ago
    What? How can Maps, Google Search, and Youtube becoming worse be a good thing?
    - teddyh 5y ago
      “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” Or, in other words, monopolies have benefits, but also have a cost. And, usually, at least in the long run, that cost outweigh the benefits.
5y ago

brokenkebab 5y ago

It's really easy to avoid intrusive ads these days: don't waste any time on TV, sign out of social platforms, use Brave, or any browser with adblocking - you're 99% done with it. As for more subtle kinds of advertising, banning it would require killing media, publishing, entertainment, and even large swaths of education.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

> Advertising. I know this is an extreme view I think your view isn't too extreme enough, frankly. I feel like if I took the time I could compose a lengthy essay showing that we can directly blame advertising for a significant portion of societal ills. Advertising promotes narcissism, selfishness, and entitlement; it convinces you that you need things you don't need, happiness can be bought, you what you have isn't good enough; it lies to you, it lies to you about lying to you, and it makes you think this is normal. And that's all when it isn't trying to outright scam you. > Social media. Mostly bad because of advertising. > Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion. A bit more of a stretch, but since advertisements lie and tell you the product costs less and is 'just as good', it leads to a race to the bottom.

hidden-spyder 5y ago
I'd read that essay.

ben-schaaf 5y ago

> Most products today are less durable and are generally worse than "yesterday", in my opinion. Planned obsolescence is pervasive - it's hard to have endless growth when you've reached market saturation. It's also incredibly hard to go against the grain here, as it's really difficult to judge how long something will last without intimate knowledge of the product.

codazoda 5y ago

Just last night I was thinking about how much of my life is wasted watching advertising on TV. 15 minutes is worth more than a few dollars to me. I was watching a movie on the Roku Channel. Because the channel is free, it's got commercials. The more I watched, the longer the commercials got. At some point I gave up and turned it off. The movie is 132 minutes long and there are 10 stops for commercials. The last commercial was 2 minutes. I'd rather pay for a subscription than watch commercials and I will definitely not pay for a channel AND watch commercials.

cwkoss 5y ago
We need to start a collective action where audiences punish advertisers. How can we lower the ROI on advertising as a society? Harass customer service lines with complaints about the advertisements? Organize focused boycotts of worst offenders? Form a journalistic non-profit that investigates unethical and illegal business practices, ordering targets by ad spend? Maybe we should mock friends and acquaintances that purchase things that are advertised in annoying or manipulative ways. Ads are stupid, and being influenced by them should be socially embarrassing in the same way that participating in MLMs is.
- recursive 5y ago
  IMO The only plausible way to do this is stop consuming media that has ads present.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  I guess contacting sales as a merchant with questions about why products aren't meeting expectations set by commercials could help, but it'd have to be a lot of people calling to make a dent. I doubt CS calls will amount to anything, they'll just add more computer voice layers. Maybe sending activist investors to company meetings would get headlines, but I dunno if anything substantive would come of it.
- ivank 5y ago
  We could try to make competitive web services that are not funded by advertising.

evergrande 5y ago

This is an under appreciated point about web3. We can get away from the ad-based business model. Web2 has an adversarial relationship with the user, web3 is much more aligned with the user. https://www.jonstokes.com/p/web3-the-rise-of-the-aligned-web https://www.jonstokes.com/p/web3-the-rise-of-the-aligned-web

smoldesu 5y ago
Zoidberg voice Why not both?

systemvoltage 5y ago

I like trade shows. “Pull” advertising, not “Push”. As an engineer and a professional, I appreciate trade shows as a form of advertising in a symbiotic sense. We need great vendors. Vendors need great customers like us. The collaboration between suppliers and customers is the bedrock of how the world works. Without some form of advertising, it would be stagnant, dysfunctional and basically dead with vendor lock-ins and monopolies. Advertising allows exposure and enables a free market economy. That said, most consumer advertising is toxic and pushed down the throat. But it works otherwise Google wouldn’t exist.

lobocinza 5y ago

Ads are pointless. No matter how much human capital was invested in making targeted ads possible, only very rarely I see something that I might be interested in buying. And I can't remember a thing that I bought due to ads. They are a better signal of what to not buy.

distantaidenn 5y ago
Buying the product is the primary goal, but they don't expect you to act right away. It's about impressions. You see 1000 Coke ads and product placements a year. When you finely decide you want a sweet fizzy drink, well the decision has already been made for you.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  I would be very, very surprised if this sort of subliminal effect was strong enough to make advertising worth it.
  - distantaidenn 5y ago
    I've had some work in this field -- it is as far as the marketing teams are concerned. One of my previous employers (international mega company) spent millions on advertisements each month, with no clear way to measure their direct impact. But they did it for the impressions.
    - kzzzznot 5y ago
      Luigi’s Pizzeria hires three teenagers to hand out coupons to passersby. After a few weeks of flyering, one of the three turns out to be a marketing genius. Customers keep showing up with coupons distributed by this particular kid. The other two can’t make any sense of it: how does he do it? When they ask him, he explains: "I stand in the waiting area of the pizzeria." From https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...
- 5y ago

rio517 5y ago

I really hear you on the product quality, but that is more the result of business systems. I find it so frustrating that I struggle or fail find quality products - for everything from forzen pizza to jeans. For some cases (frozen pizza) I just opt out. Others, I just give up and accept that I'll have to replace my jeans every 2-3 years. I try to buy recommendations from Wirecutter and do slightly better, but still so annoyed that everything is made so damn cheaply.

diplodocusaur 5y ago

I came to say Advertising as well I doubt it has the effectiveness that people say it has when they are everywhere.

deleted 5y ago

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vanusa 5y ago

I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. It's not an extreme view at all; some cities (like São Paulo) have essentially banned billboards, for example, with decidedly positive effects. I'm quite confident that we'll eventually come to see rabid, out-of-control advertising (which is about 90 percent of it) as akin to smoking, leaded gas or asbestos - and that eventually it will be regulated accordingly.

larrydag 5y ago

yup. We should be able to opt-in instead of having to opt-out of the slew of digital ads we see daily.

ssalka 5y ago

I don't think we can ever rid ourselves fully of advertising (even acknowledging that it's annoying for users and makes the web experience markedly worse, it ultimately is useful for companies/marketers). What we can and should get rid of is targeted advertising, i.e. the more effective, invasive variety.

carabiner 5y ago

Recently, I've been buying more stuff from non-Amazon retailers. I bought a pair of basketball shorts from Macy's, and a reading light from Home Depot. I'm tired of getting burned by those weird Chinese brands (with ALLCAPS brands) on Amazon. The physical stores gave me a few choices (that were all pretty decent) and I got to inspect the product before buying, rather than roll the dice with an online order. So I'm rediscovering old shopping.

MandieD 5y ago

“Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” - Stephen Leacock, long before computers, much less the internet, were a thing.

dharmab 5y ago

I'd just like to point out there was a lot of easily broken crap back in the day, too. Durable items from the past are over represented in both our memory and in the physical world. Furthermore, truly durable items still exist. One of my favorites are my Osprey packs, which I have had for nearly a decade and expect to last for another few decades.

netizen-936824 5y ago

I agree with your sentiment, and I think that having profit incentives tied into fucking everything is actually a horrible idea and makes many things worse for living in society

magicroot75 5y ago

I work in digital advertising. I manage several billion impressions a year in ads spend and over $15M a year. I think it's easy for engineers to undervalue the importance of advertising. Without marketing, many many well-engineered products would never be discovered. This is why marketing is considered a core function of business. It speeds up the integration of new products and technologies into the general society. It seems like you're lumping all advertising for all products into the same category. It's more likely you just don't like seeing ads for products you don't like. And this is the goal of contemporary digital ads: To only show products to users who are likely to purchase them. Human beings have ideas that organize themselves into formal groupings that need to be formally promoted in order to sustain the cost of the business. Products need to rapidly scale. And marketing/advertising makes that possible. Hating advertising is like hating the dollar for being necessary to exchange value in society. We need advertising to make the products you engineer viable business ideas. Without advertising, 99.9% of good product will never be discovered.

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rixed 5y ago
Advertising is needed to protect good products from the advertising of bad products?
_oghd 5y ago
99.9% of products aren't needed in any way by anybody. 90% of products are created to fill an artificial demand manufactured by advertising in the first place. these products and their manufacturing comes at a massive carbon cost for meaningless gain. i also worked in digital advertising. for some of the biggest brands out there. i quit.
- magicroot75 5y ago
  In a free market, we don't dictate what someone needs or doesn't need. We believe the individual has a right to choose amongst options that are presented with truthful claims. If someone pays for it willingly, they needed it. If we start attempting to break down all the extrinsic motivations for purchase decisions, we'd see almost ALL of them are dictated by social acceptance, comfort, and convenience. This is a feature of a wealthy nation, not a bug, that we can seek out goods and services beyond basic food/water/shelter/safety needs.

htmlcoderexe 5y ago

Spec sheet advertising, that's what I have been rambling about to anyone who'd listen. I would also add that the advertising should go ibto a catalogue of sorts, so if you're specifically out to buy things you pick one up (look it up online?) and look for tjings to buy. But you don't get pestered to buy anything when you're just out and about doing anything else, I think along with manipulation that's one of the main problems with modern advertising.