6 ms·

Philosophically, that's still not convincing. Lets take the most basic form of advertising as an example. If I put a couch in my yard with a price tag on it, I

by vlunkr 5y ago

Philosophically, that's still not convincing. Lets take the most basic form of advertising as an example. If I put a couch in my yard with a price tag on it, I'm wanting people to notice and desire to buy it, but there's no malicious intent. I have a thing I want to get rid of, maybe someone wants to buy it. If I don't do that, no one will know it's for sale. So I do think advertising is fundamentally benign, and despite what the original comment said, is absolutely part of supply and demand. People are supposed to generate supply and then sit around waiting for people to come see it? Of course there's lots of bad stuff going on in advertising. Lies, inducing FOMO, unnecessary gathering of personal data, etc. But I'm not convinced that advertising is morally wrong in it's purest form.

ballenf 5y ago
The anti-advertising stance taken to reasonable conclusion is indeed absurd. You couldn't even mention your sofa to a friend without risk of "inciting" unnatural demand in them for a sofa. And you couldn't even allow third party mentions either as are fundamentally indistinguishable in terms of effects on artificial demands. But hope isn't lost. A natural limit on advertising is completely eliminating surveillance capitalism. Even the kind enable by credit cards selling your purchase history. Or stores issuing loyalty cards.
dota_fanatic 5y ago
I like to look at this through the lens of push vs pull. I don't want people pushing things at me that I'm 100% uninterested in in the off chance that 1% of those ads is actually interesting to me and I otherwise wouldn't know it exists. I do want to be able to search a database of vendors (with degrees of trust associated with them) with objective descriptions of available goods and services at known costs, either one-time or recurring. If I'm looking for something that's completely new, I should still be able to find it by using relevant terms and weightings (cost, materials, origin of materials, shipping distance, labor chain, etc.) So, no, I do think someone using their front yard to sell a couch is bad provided we have the internet and a good marketplace built on top of it. Who wants to see human junk covering nature solely so it can impinge on others' field-of-view in order to be sold? I don't think it's bad for them to register the availability of said couch in the hypothetical regulated marketplace. And, for those who consent, they can ask to have relevant categories of ads pushed at them. But leave people like me out of it. No such consent can be obtained when you just e.g. put it on a billboard. Yes, I know what I'm saying is probably naive and would never work, or something, or that's where governance is supposed to come in, but it's a nice dream.
- glenstein 5y ago
  >I do want to be able to search a database of vendors (with degrees of trust associated with them) with objective descriptions of available goods and services at known costs, either one-time or recurring. If I'm looking for something that's completely new, I should still be able to find it by using relevant terms and weightings (cost, materials, origin of materials, shipping distance, labor chain, etc.) Exactly this. It's not necessarily wrong that advertising is justified on the grounds that it serves the interests of advertisers. But the attempt to justify it as beneficial to the consumer, well, every case where advertising is serving such a pro-consumer purpose is a case where a general purpose information directory would serve that same purpose better.
dTal 5y ago
Can we perhaps draw a distinction between "selling" and "advertising"? "Selling" is simply informing people of the availability of one half of an economic exchange. Putting a notice up that says "Sofa, $50 ONO" is no different than putting a notice up saying "will pay 50$ for sofa". "Advertising", on the other hand, attempts to persuade. It endeavours to use psychology to create a transaction when one would otherwise not have taken place. It's a sign that says "Sofa, $50. Incredible value!!". This is not ethical because if we assume that the market would have converged on the correct price in the absence of advertising, then advertising distorts the market and makes it less efficient. Note that unadorned "buying" and "selling" are mirror counterparts, but there's no buyer's counterpart to "advertising". This is because the value of money is well known and non-negotiable, while the value of the good or service is subject to influence. This is an inherent bias that always works in favor of the selling party.
- polyomino 5y ago
  >if we assume that the market would have converged on the correct price in the absence of advertising >the value of money is well known and non-negotiable I wouldn't start with these assumptions since prices fluctuate on their own for somewhat unpredictable reasons. Just because advertising is immoral in some ideal world, doesn't mean it's immoral in a real one.
  - Terry_Roll 5y ago
    The immorality is whether the product/service is any good. Perversely, the more expensive a product the more perceived quality a product has, its perhaps why German cars are so popular. People like to show off their wealth which is what makes designer brands popular. There is little point advertising monopoly products like fuel though, any advert is just going to be brand awareness maintenance in those situations, which also helps to keep the media/newspapers onboard for PR reasons to keep the bad press at bay!
- julienb_sea 5y ago
  I don't think this argument works. The acceptable price for a good is not actually clear cut. "True" market value is an equilibrium price between supply and demand. Both the supply and the demand will fluctuate and change over time, with many underlying factors influencing the aggregate number. The acceptable price is also different for different buyers, and in different regions. Advertising is just one of the factors that may affect demand alongside many others. Additionally, you can argue there are many buyer's counterparts to advertising. At its most simple, the buyer has many tools to find items they want, i.e. search engines, etc. Additionally the buyer in many cases can inform the seller of an offer (generally below their desired pricing) and the seller can choose to accept or not. In some marketplaces, the buyer can effectively put out a request-to-buy, e.g. an open offer that many potential sellers can see and one may choose to fulfill.
glenstein 5y ago
It's not convincing if you look at it through the lense of a one-off cartesian hypothetical. But that is not a systematic understanding of what advertising is that makes clear the underlying interests and incentives that drive the process. It's a process that by its nature perpetually transforming in the never ending race to compete for your attention, and the "bad stuff" is a reflection of the interests and incentives essential to the nature of what advertising is.

by vlunkr 5y ago

ballenf 5y ago

The anti-advertising stance taken to reasonable conclusion is indeed absurd. You couldn't even mention your sofa to a friend without risk of "inciting" unnatural demand in them for a sofa. And you couldn't even allow third party mentions either as are fundamentally indistinguishable in terms of effects on artificial demands. But hope isn't lost. A natural limit on advertising is completely eliminating surveillance capitalism. Even the kind enable by credit cards selling your purchase history. Or stores issuing loyalty cards.

dota_fanatic 5y ago

I like to look at this through the lens of push vs pull. I don't want people pushing things at me that I'm 100% uninterested in in the off chance that 1% of those ads is actually interesting to me and I otherwise wouldn't know it exists. I do want to be able to search a database of vendors (with degrees of trust associated with them) with objective descriptions of available goods and services at known costs, either one-time or recurring. If I'm looking for something that's completely new, I should still be able to find it by using relevant terms and weightings (cost, materials, origin of materials, shipping distance, labor chain, etc.) So, no, I do think someone using their front yard to sell a couch is bad provided we have the internet and a good marketplace built on top of it. Who wants to see human junk covering nature solely so it can impinge on others' field-of-view in order to be sold? I don't think it's bad for them to register the availability of said couch in the hypothetical regulated marketplace. And, for those who consent, they can ask to have relevant categories of ads pushed at them. But leave people like me out of it. No such consent can be obtained when you just e.g. put it on a billboard. Yes, I know what I'm saying is probably naive and would never work, or something, or that's where governance is supposed to come in, but it's a nice dream.

glenstein 5y ago
>I do want to be able to search a database of vendors (with degrees of trust associated with them) with objective descriptions of available goods and services at known costs, either one-time or recurring. If I'm looking for something that's completely new, I should still be able to find it by using relevant terms and weightings (cost, materials, origin of materials, shipping distance, labor chain, etc.) Exactly this. It's not necessarily wrong that advertising is justified on the grounds that it serves the interests of advertisers. But the attempt to justify it as beneficial to the consumer, well, every case where advertising is serving such a pro-consumer purpose is a case where a general purpose information directory would serve that same purpose better.

dTal 5y ago

Can we perhaps draw a distinction between "selling" and "advertising"? "Selling" is simply informing people of the availability of one half of an economic exchange. Putting a notice up that says "Sofa, $50 ONO" is no different than putting a notice up saying "will pay 50$ for sofa". "Advertising", on the other hand, attempts to persuade. It endeavours to use psychology to create a transaction when one would otherwise not have taken place. It's a sign that says "Sofa, $50. Incredible value!!". This is not ethical because if we assume that the market would have converged on the correct price in the absence of advertising, then advertising distorts the market and makes it less efficient. Note that unadorned "buying" and "selling" are mirror counterparts, but there's no buyer's counterpart to "advertising". This is because the value of money is well known and non-negotiable, while the value of the good or service is subject to influence. This is an inherent bias that always works in favor of the selling party.

polyomino 5y ago
>if we assume that the market would have converged on the correct price in the absence of advertising >the value of money is well known and non-negotiable I wouldn't start with these assumptions since prices fluctuate on their own for somewhat unpredictable reasons. Just because advertising is immoral in some ideal world, doesn't mean it's immoral in a real one.
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  The immorality is whether the product/service is any good. Perversely, the more expensive a product the more perceived quality a product has, its perhaps why German cars are so popular. People like to show off their wealth which is what makes designer brands popular. There is little point advertising monopoly products like fuel though, any advert is just going to be brand awareness maintenance in those situations, which also helps to keep the media/newspapers onboard for PR reasons to keep the bad press at bay!
julienb_sea 5y ago
I don't think this argument works. The acceptable price for a good is not actually clear cut. "True" market value is an equilibrium price between supply and demand. Both the supply and the demand will fluctuate and change over time, with many underlying factors influencing the aggregate number. The acceptable price is also different for different buyers, and in different regions. Advertising is just one of the factors that may affect demand alongside many others. Additionally, you can argue there are many buyer's counterparts to advertising. At its most simple, the buyer has many tools to find items they want, i.e. search engines, etc. Additionally the buyer in many cases can inform the seller of an offer (generally below their desired pricing) and the seller can choose to accept or not. In some marketplaces, the buyer can effectively put out a request-to-buy, e.g. an open offer that many potential sellers can see and one may choose to fulfill.

glenstein 5y ago

It's not convincing if you look at it through the lense of a one-off cartesian hypothetical. But that is not a systematic understanding of what advertising is that makes clear the underlying interests and incentives that drive the process. It's a process that by its nature perpetually transforming in the never ending race to compete for your attention, and the "bad stuff" is a reflection of the interests and incentives essential to the nature of what advertising is.