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I wonder why society decided that advertising was so important, it was willing to let it completely dominate (and in my opinion destroy) our public spaces. Peop
by sputr 5y ago
I wonder why society decided that advertising was so important, it was willing to let it completely dominate (and in my opinion destroy) our public spaces. People who need something will find it just fine without billboards. And people buying things they don't need is not exactly in the interest of society. So why should society pay for it?
I've been working on a policy paper idea for my home country - Slovenia. Complete ban of all outdoor advertising except shopfronts and limit those.
Now, since you can't just ban it outright, there's still need for advertising, a different solution should be offered:
Every community needs to have a public billboard, setup and maintained by the local government, one per 500 residents, where 25% of the area is auctioned to commercial ads, 25% is awarded with a lottery system (to prevent money dominating too much), 25% for cultural events and 25% for nonprofits and charity.
The advertising space should be place in a crowded area (like a square). It needs some extra rules for high density area, so that space can be grouped, but not too much.
All other outdoor advertising is banned. Since a lot of companies would be effectively banned by this move, some sort of (small) compensation should be paid to them and time given, so they can pivot.
Costs of removing the advertising should be subsidized for the same reason. Any advertising facades or roofs (i.e. different colored tiles used to make the roof) can stay, but the ad has to be removed when the roof/facade is replaced.
Money coming in from the ad actions should more than cover this expense.
Possibly add an exception to "shopping center", where such advertising is permitted, but with strict rules to what such a center is (i.e. has no residents).
I know most Americans will balk at such "government overreach" but I think it could pass here if someone actually put some effort in.
- andrepd 5y agoThat's amazing, I have pretty much exactly the same ideas. Advertising is a huge business predicated entirely on manipulating people to make purchases they otherwise wouldn't, surgically exploiting weaknesses in our psyche. It's immoral, and it's economically wasteful.
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y agoPresumably selling ad space on things like buses and bus stops helps pay for those services. I’m much more sympathetic to physical ads. I can just ignore it instead of waiting to click a skip button.
- sputr 5y ago(1) Ads on busses This is the obvious spin, that anyone trying to undermine such ideas would do. So I just checked the yearly (pre-pandemic) financial report for our bus service - the buses are COVERED in adverts. From what I can tell, those ads bring in less than 2% of all income. The ads on bus stop were given in exchange for running the bike rental service, but that service isn't free to use, so the income can't be that great. (2) Ignoring ads I have a feeling that "I can just ignore it" is the critical fallacy that will undermine ideas such as mine. To know just how much they are affecting you, you have to go to a place with no ads. Honestly, if you're using ad blocking on your computer - turn it off completely. The difference in physical ads is not as big (since action blocking popups are not a thing), but even discounting those, just the saturation of "things going on" is tiring. Ignoring things is an active action that requires energy and focus... why you are giving that away freely to someone trying to manipulate you ... I do not understand. The fact that you use "waiting to click a skip button" as a comparison shows how normalized ads have become. The alternative to "fewer ads" isn't "ads being forced down your throat" but "no ads, at all".
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y agoCurious, I checked the revenue that bus ads bring in where I live. I can't find a specific line item, but it's definitely not one of the major income streams. I assume the return:reward ratio is good. They probably outsource the management of the ad space and get some millions trickle in for no effort. To know just how much they are affecting you, you have to go to a place with no ads. Honestly the only ads I ever see in real life are bus and bus stop ads. Maybe it's terrible where you live, but here, I can barely remember the last one I saw. If anything I wish the local government would have more ads. They have a bunch of activities on sometimes that I don't hear about or forget because their advertising is so poor.
- yanderekko 5y ago>I wonder why society decided that advertising was so important, it was willing to let it completely dominate (and in my opinion destroy) our public spaces. Because advertising is a form of speech, and society has decided that speech is important?
- sputr 5y agoAll freedoms are limited by the freedoms of others. You may speak what you wish, but when and how you speak it is limited. You can not scream about it in the middle of the night, since doing so bothers your neighbors. Letting anyone and everyone do what ever they want would lead to anarchy. So no society, USA included, does this. But some actors in societies have convinced the western population, especially Americans, into the fantasy of "freedom without limitation", which, just so happens to only apply to the rich and powerful, while everyone else has to contend with limitations on their freedoms.
- SyzygistSix 5y agoI think you mean chaos rather than anarchy. Anarchy involves maximizing freedom for everyone, not just one's self, among other things. The strong doing whatever they want is the exact opposite of anarchy.
- sputr 5y agoYeah, chaos would have been a better word to use.