14 ms·

Should billboard advertising be banned?

156 points by isomorph 4y ago

metadat 4y ago
> These ads are in the public space without any consultation about what is shown on them. > This would also apply to the sides of buses, and on the London Underground and other rail and metro systems This is a good point. The other arguments were much less persuasive.
SpikeDad 4y ago
Yes. They're a disgrace.
lucky_cloud 4y ago
A rare example where Betteridge's law does not apply. The answer is 100% yes, and we should ban other forms of advertising as well. Ban as many as possible.
- christophilus 4y ago
  I hate ads. I really do. I use ad-blockers and vastly prefer billboard-free zones. On the other hand, I like getting a paycheck, and I don’t know how our company would have ever gotten off the ground without advertising itself.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    So essentially, doing someone that's detrimental to people is fine as long as you're the one benefiting from it?
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Do you work for a for profit company or is your company feeding starving children in Africa based on word of mouth?
      - Nextgrid 4y ago
        I am working for a for-profit company - I have done so for pretty much all my life, including companies that either rely on, or are directly involved in advertising. However, I don’t try to justify it in any way (even though my current client is actually completely independent of ads). I know and agree that my contributions to that field are bad for society and try to do better whenever possible, including fighting back when my contractual obligations allow me to (and avoiding contracts that would prevent me to do so). So not really a complete “dig” to the parent comment, but rather that we might have done wrong but we should strive to do better instead of trying to justify it.
    - bittercynic 4y ago
      Consider GP's company may (at least in his opinion) make some kind of positive contribution to society, but wouldn't have the opportunity without using some advertising to get off the ground.
      - Nextgrid 4y ago
        Yes, agreed. That’s fine if that’s the case and if it is then I misunderstood and my comment doesn’t apply (see my other reply for an explanation). IMO, it’s one thing to be involved in harmful advertising, it’s another to try and justify it. I don’t mind if you are involved because you have no other choice, but if you have other options, tired to unsuccessfully steer the ship around and you’re still there, then it’s where there’s a problem.
- scarface74 4y ago
  What type of phone do you own? There is a statistically good chance you own one whose development is funded by an advertising company. There is a 100% chance you are posting to a site whose entire reason for existing is to advertise companies that it has invested in.
  - verisimilitudes 4y ago
    I own no phone. Google phones can't consistently dial emergency numbers, because they're programmed by incompetent fuckwads. I agree that Hacker News should die.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      As you continue to post on it.
      - verisimilitudes 4y ago
        Yeah, because they don't allow account deletion.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    I don't think this sort of "yet you live in society, curious" argument is particularly helpful Maybe the deeper problem is that living without enriching ad companies is a complex tax requiring research on everything you buy.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Sure, it’s easy for someone to clutch their pearls without having the courage of their convictions.
      - Bakary 4y ago
        Let's say for the sake of argument that all of the people who are not 100% consistent in everything they do all publicly recognize their hypocrisy and failures, no matter how minor, and praise the intelligence, perceptiveness, and moral uprightness of the people who pointed them out. What then? The problems still exist, still need to be dealt with. This is why it's not helpful to let the perfect be the enemy of the good or to focus on proving people to be hypocritical to shut down discussion. Even a person who is perfectly willing to make all of the sacrifices for maximum consistency would find it extremely hard if not impossible to avoid helping ad companies, since these have grown so powerful and omnipresent like Google for instance.
tmountain 4y ago
I went to Cuba and there was no advertising allowed on the roads. It was really refreshing, and it made our excursions feel a lot more engaging. The government did have some propaganda billboards on the roads, but it was ridiculous stuff like Uncle Sam getting punched in the face. I found those pretty entertaining…
twawaaay 4y ago
In the past I would say billboards are the scourge, but other than nuisance they do not harm me. On the other hand online advertising...
- recursive 4y ago
  Billboards are in public spaces.
- lolinder 4y ago
  Online advertising can be blocked by those who do not wish to participate and it isn't intentionally trying to distract people who are driving.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Try blocking advertising on Facebook, Amazon or Twitter. Report back.
    - Karunamon 4y ago
      ubo handily deals with the first and third, and everything in a shopping site is trying to advertise to you anyways by definition
      - scarface74 4y ago
        So Ubo has some magic AI that it can tell the difference between user generated content on Facebook and native ads from the same domain?
        lolinder 4y ago
        It doesn't need magic AI, it just needs an element filter in addition to a domain filter. For example, EasyList has this hide-element rule for Twitter: twitter.com##.is-promoted https://github.com/easylist/easylist/blob/master/easylist/easylist_specific_hide.txt https://github.com/easylist/easylist/blob/master/easylist/ea...
cassianoleal 4y ago
I visited São Paulo before and after the ban (I'm not sure if the ban is still in effect). The difference was staggering. The city was more alive with people. You could see more, you could feel more. The sky was clearer, people were less distracted, it was great.
piotrkaminski 4y ago
> Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for another trade organisation, the Advertising Association, says that "all advertising plays a crucial role in brand competition, drives product innovation, and fuels economic growth". You know what actually drives product innovation? Not being able to lean on advertising to drive sales, so you're actually forced to improve your product and get the benefit of positive word of mouth instead.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Exactly. Advertising is an arms race. Coca Cola doesn't spend billions on ads because nobody had heard of Coke. They do it to suppress the more innovative competition.
  - trystero 4y ago
    ...which is an argument against advertisement.
  - radicaldreamer 4y ago
    It's to remind people to buy a coke, it feeds the craving. Same thing for McDonalds and Starbucks advertising.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      Right, yes, I believe we're saying the same thing. If Coca Cola doesn't remind people to buy their product, they might buy some other product.
    - andrewinardeer 4y ago
      And to make people feel good about their purchase. BMW doesn't really need to advertise as their new cars are only affordable for a small subset of the population. They advertise to re-enforce to their customers they made a great decision parting with their money.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Coca Cola did innovate - "New Coke". It was a disaster. People like the old Coke formula much better. Some things really don't need innovation.
paxys 4y ago
Yes. Next question?
version_five 4y ago
This is stupid on so many levels. There's the obvious idea that governments shouldn't be involved in telling people what they can do on private property (I can see the argument that community associations or designated areas could have special regulations, and I expect they already do, there are no billboards on the pyramids). Almost worse (as it is always for dumb ideas of this kind) is the enforcement. Are we going to have a whole system of definitions of what is billboard (when is it just a poster), jurisprudence, inspectors, etc. The kind of 0th order thinking of '"they" should ban X' has no relationship with reality, even if it sounds like a good thing if you dont think about it (personally I hate advertising) This is the same class of stupid idea that makes no practical sense that we see in various populist political campaigns Edit: I have to admit, I didn't anticipate so many seemingly angry (and condescending - the guy talking about animal cruelty laws and "we encode complex things...", lol) replies. Anyway, the above is just my perspective, I guess if you want your tax dollars working towards something like this, there is a pathway to a billboard free future
- tayistay 4y ago
  Hmm if it’s so unenforceable, why have some cities managed to get rid of the billboards?
- sha256sum 4y ago
  I come from a place that bans billboards. Arguably it’s fairly practical, no one seems upset about it and property owners seem to get by. Also there don’t seem to be issues of enforcement because everyone is more or less on the same page about it.
- soneca 4y ago
  In São Paulo it works. Not many things work around here, so I guess it is pretty practical to regulate and enforce.
- cgrealy 4y ago
  > There's the obvious idea that governments shouldn't be involved in telling people what they can do on private property The government literally tells people what to do on private property all the time. See zoning rules, smoking bans in restaurants, alcohol sales to minors, food safety laws, animal cruelty... the list is almost endless. I can't even fathom the kind of thinking that suggests that laws end on a property boundary. > Are we going to have a whole system of definitions of what is billboard Yes. It's not that hard. We encode complex things in regulations all the time.
tayistay 4y ago
It’s pretty weird that we allow advertising to attempt to distract you while you’re doing the most dangerous thing you generally do daily: driving.
- datadata 4y ago
  Ironically there are even billboards about how other distractions like texting while driving kills.
  - oehpr 4y ago
    There is literally a billboard on the highway in British Columbia that is a pair of skidmarks descending into a valley with large font that says "KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD". During the night this sign is lit like a christmas tree, very bright. I could never get over how difficult it was to ignore that stupid billboard every time I crossed it.
- exodust 4y ago
  Sometimes they contain too much information to read as you're driving by, other times they are simple but annoying like this one: https://mumbrella.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Ashley-Madison-Billboard-Sydney-mumbrella.jpg https://mumbrella.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Ashley-M... But what I find the worst these days are ultra-bright large LED screens. At night they are blindingly bright. One in particular in my area installed at a shopping plaza, is so bright I need to look away when walking by. Its "ad light" floods the whole area.
badtension 4y ago
Do we want less ads? Maybe it's just enough? How about more, like in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs Yes, this looks like the best world, can't wait for Google to implement it in Meta's metaverse. How is removing ads from public space still a question?
plutaniano 4y ago
I live in São Paulo (the city mentioned in the article) and I always find it amusing how you can tell exactly where São Paulo ends and the neighboring city (Guarulhos) begins just by the billboards. Here’s São Paulo’s welcome sign coming from Guarulhos. There are lot of billboards before it, but exactly none after. https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dw8AFJS2sNRW27PL9?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dw8AFJS2sNRW27PL9?g_st=ic
andrepd 4y ago
No. All advertising should be banned.
- scarface74 4y ago
  So you don’t take advantage of any services that are funded by advertising? Better question, do you post to a site whose entire reason for being is to advertise startups it funded?
cjcole 4y ago
Yes, please. Thank you. I'm not sure which is the better argument: that they are a safety menace due to distraction from driving (video billboards?) or that they are profoundly ugly (including but not limited to aesthetically). Either would suffice for me. The quicker the better.
pexabit 4y ago
Mass advertising has a big tragedy of the commons problem. Attention is limited, and every mass ad, digital or otherwise, takes attention away from any other mass ad. (I distinguish mass ads from advertisements for cigars in Cigar Magazine).
- badtension 4y ago
  That's why it should be used to "advertise" something that is really beneficial to society, like info on road constructions planned for the following week or directions to the nearest hospital.
karaterobot 4y ago
This article seems to want this to look like a unified movement, but it seems more like a bunch of small groups in different areas who aren't working together, and may not even agree with each other if you get them in a room together. The issue-specific people ("no car ads!", "no gambling ads!") may not go to bat for someone else's issue, and may look at the "no ads whatsoever" people as extremists who distract from their specific cause. I guess my point is this seems like a bunch of weakly-related data points, rather than a strong signal of a movement. Too bad, since I'd love to see drastically fewer ads in public spaces.
cpsns 4y ago
I lived in a place where they were banned and roadside signage highly regulated and it was awesome, some much less visual clutter and noise. Every time I would travel I’d be shocked at how much advertising there was.
bastardoperator 4y ago
It doesn't bother me. I have more important stuff to worry about.
- version_five 4y ago
  This is the most sensible comment I've read in this thread. Running to tell teacher whenever something slightly bothers you is not something we should be encouraging. Ads are annoying, wasting time worrying about them is a waste of everybody's time
  - Bakary 4y ago
    You could say the same of plenty of other nuisances, but that's death by a thousand cuts. It's not just about the ads but resisting the deeper cancer of consumerism. If you are worried about time being wasted, then don't interfere and carry on with what you consider important.
datadata 4y ago
Rather than a ban, would a very large tax for any ad spend work as a policy? This would seem to both reduce the overall number of ads, and force advertisers to allocate more resources to making better targeted ads that are more profitable per impression. My opposition to ads is not that they have no utility, but rather there is not sufficient compensation for the human attention that they (nearly) freely exploit and waste.
- 9991 4y ago
  Indemnify any car collisions that occur within eyesight of the billboards. Should clear up the issue on its own.
EA 4y ago
Driving in Ireland was a pleasant experience as there were few signs while driving from coast to coast.
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  The opposite of this is most developing countries, where free signage given out by consumer brands like Coca Cola/Pepsi/P&G are literal visual pollution in what used to be beautiful small towns and cities.
solaceb 4y ago
yes
genericone 4y ago
There are no billboards in Maui from what I could tell, which was quite pleasant. From a further search it looks like Hawaii doesn't stand for billboards at all, nor do Alaska, Maine, or Vermont.
- llimllib 4y ago
  I live in Maine, it's great not having billboards.
diebeforei485 4y ago
I don't like the massive billboards, but I do support smaller scale advertising like at bus stops.
olalonde 4y ago
Am the only one who actually enjoys billboard advertising and bright signage? That's one of my favorite things about Hong Kong, NY Times Square, etc.
- dilap 4y ago
  It can create a vibe in certain situations, but overall I find it quite annoying and exhausting to have rude billboards constantly intruding in on my attention. I think a compromise I could live w/ would be you can have outdoor advertising, but it has to just be a logo and a brand. E.g., a giant sign with the coke logo is fine. But a sign that's basically clickbait w/ a dumb joke that you won't be able to avoid reading: absolutely not allowed. Another example of outdoor advertising gone very wrong is in Monterrey, Mexico. It is a large city surrounded by gorgeous mountains, but in some places when driving can't even see them -- the road is just a wall of billboards. Very dystopian.
legitster 4y ago
> He points to the impact of Transport for London's ban on such adverts since 2019 across its entire network of tube and overground trains, buses and trams. A study last month found that the policy had prevented almost 100,000 obesity cases. How do you measure that even remotely accurately? It's certainly not as if there was some sort of confounding factor between then and now.
- Bakary 4y ago
  You don't even need a secondary reason to ban advertising. Just getting rid of advertising is its own justification.
choletentent 4y ago
I'd rather see a limited number of targeted ads on my electronic devices than a ton of random ads polluting the city I live in.
endgame 4y ago
“Advertisement is the rich asking for more money. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.” — G.K. Chesterton The correct amount of advertising in a society is not zero - we all like finding out about things which will actually help us - but it is not unbounded either. The advertising machine acts according to its incentives, and will not rest until every spare surface, every quiet moment, every gap between thoughts is up for auction. It must therefore be restrained so that other uses of space can flourish.
- moolcool 4y ago
  Pleased and surprised to see a Chesterton quote here!
  - CobrastanJorji 4y ago
    I was thinking about flagging it, but I don't know why they posted it, so I won't.
    - colordrops 4y ago
      Why would you flag it?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - swid 4y ago
        https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence Edit to say - he was making a joke, this will help you understand
        colordrops 4y ago
        I don't see how that makes it flag-worthy.
tafda 4y ago
Santa Barbara County in California bans billboards, and Santa Barbara city has even stricter sign laws. It’s a relief to be free from the visual pollution billboards create and there are no downsides unless you own a billboard. In a more urban setting, I don’t hate billboards. The absence of billboards is a definite increase in quality of life.
- mwint 4y ago
  There’s also downsides if you own land that a billboard could be put on; your land will be less valuable. Possibly balanced out by general property value increases due to there being no billboards, but I kind of doubt it.
  - tafda 4y ago
    By the same token, any zoning is a restraint against capturing the full value of land. It is possible the stringent enforcement gets absurd ( see https://www.noozhawk.com/article/institution_ale_can_keep_its_neon_sign_20190810 https://www.noozhawk.com/article/institution_ale_can_keep_it... ). On balance I am in favor of banning most outdoor advertising.
- CodeSgt 4y ago
  I very, very rarely take conscious notice of billboards. If every one within a 100 miles of me were to disappear without a trace over night I'm honestly not sure I'd notice.
  - knappe 4y ago
    Do you ever do anything outside at night? The digital billboards are not something you'd miss. They're too bright and attention grabbing to be anything but obnoxious.
    - CodeSgt 4y ago
      Admittedly I do not, I'm very much a homebody and tend to go to bed shortly after the sun sets. I bet those would be much more noticeable.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
labrador 4y ago
I think the problem will solve itself when it's common to drive with AR glasses. The billboards will be virtual, customized for you
avazhi 4y ago
They should be banned, and not because people are automatons, but because advertisements are invariably objectively distracting and increasingly garish as firms attempt to outcompete one another for attention. It's really just a question of what kind of society we want to live in - my own view is that people should have the option not to be bombarded by hawkers, whether it's homeless people, Mormons, or corporate shills, while they move about public spaces.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  I would support some kind of Right To Not Be Accosted. I don’t know what that would look like exactly but people who want to sell or market something to me ought to have to obtain my consent first. It doesn’t seem right that you can go out and try to mind your business and be constantly under assault by things and people looking to take your attention. Like pollution laws, we should have a right to live life without all that in our environment.
  - dannyw 4y ago
    Should this apply to protests and petitions?
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      Sure. I’m not a big fan of protests, in particular ones that intrude and disrupt me trying to simply go about my life. Petitions are just variations on sales pitches, like religious proselytizing, which I also would not consent to if I had the choice.
    - avazhi 4y ago
      It should. People ought to have a right to go, again, into public spaces and mind their business. They should be free to go about without being accosted or harangued or, for example, inconvenienced because people have chained themselves to the doors of commuter trains or have decided to lay in the middle of the highway. Kind of the old 'your rights end where they interfere with my rights' kind of thing - going about my normal business in a public space is never likely to interfere with anybody, at least not in a purposeful way, whereas protests are by definition intended to interfere with my right to enjoy public spaces. They are, quite literally, intended to 'shock' normal people into changing their viewpoints or behaviour. Where I live (Melbourne, Australia) protests in the CBD often disturb private citizens in their homes.
darrinm 4y ago
Should clickbaity headlines be banned?
Carioca 4y ago
We did it in São Paulo, Brazil a long time (15 years?) ago. It was a relief and I'm always a bit bothered when I'm on cities that allow it. It might be the case that some places in some cities should still keep it, but otherwise I'm still all for it
- jen729w 4y ago
  Canberra, Australia's capital, also does not allow (most) outdoor billboard advertising. It's incredibly calming. And then it just becomes normal until you go to, say, Melbourne. And then it hits you in the face and good lord it's ugly.
Slow_Hand 4y ago
At a gut level, I would love for outdoor advertising to be banned in my city. I resent the constant intrusion into my mind when I encounter them on the street. That said, I do recognize that from the perspective of advertisers and consenting property owners having the (assumed) right to do trade however they wish, this may not be a fair or reasonable policy to enact. Truth be told, I haven't thought about this very much. But the thing that I'm MOST interested in is what will be the secondary consequences of banning outdoor advertising? If advertisers cannot use billboards or posters, how will the space change and where will their behavior be compensated for elsewhere? Are there any unwanted secondary side-effects that might occur do to this prohibition? Like online advertising intensifying, or paid sponsorships for online content creators, or perhaps something completely different?
- oneplane 4y ago
  I suppose instead of banning billboards specifically, one could ban "unwanted and unwarranted intrusions".
- dannyw 4y ago
  A city could set limits for the quantity, size, and prominence (eg no digital displays, illumination must be lower than X nits) in a reasonably fair and neutral way, so they're not banned altogether but the excesses are trimmed.
- bmicraft 4y ago
  Restricting huge intrusive ads seems very close to the building code and zoning laws which cities seem to have no problem going completely overboard with.
gumby 4y ago
One of the nice things about traveling on the Autobahn is the dearth of billboards. Basically only PSAs about drink driving or wearing a seatbelt, which I think we could do without too (the signs, not the seatbelts).
jmyeet 4y ago
IMHO it's misleading and unhelpful to talk strictly about advertising. Instead we should be talking about marketing, for which advertising is one (hugely significant) part. Marketing is a key component of building, growing and maintaining a business. There is no "build it and they will come". Many an interesting product has died on the vine because of poor or lacking marketing. Marketing is a two-way street. It's about understanding who your potential customers are, how large your market is, who your competitors are, what is important to your potentiaal customers, who buys your products, why they buy them and so on. The other side, which includes advertising, is making people aware of your product or brand. It may include a direct call to action (eg "buy this widget now") or it may just be creating a perception for your brand. A lot of Coca-Cola and even Apple advertising falls into this category. It's really disappointing to see some of the comments on this thread. Comments like "I built a business with no advertising so you don't need it either". The only way this is likely true is if you sell to a small number of businesses and your initial customers were former colleagues or otherwise known to you via networking. This is not representative of how business growth and marketing works and shouldn't be taken as such. There can and should be limits on advertising. When, where, what, that sort of thing. I personally think that advertising in children's shows for example should be banned. So should pharmaceuticals (a uniquely US problem). Some things are understandably heavily restricted (eg gambling, alcohol, tobacco, cannabis). But a ban on billboards? What does this achieve? The objections seem to be largely aesthetic. That seems highly performative.
- Bakary 4y ago
  It's not really performative. Billboards occupy a lot of space, both mental and physical. I've had the privilege to walk through ad-free cities and it's like night and day. Once you return to the rest it suddenly becomes clear how garish and vile the ads we've become used to are, and how amateurish the deal we've struck is. Billboards don't bring in that much revenue to the collective compared to what they do to cities. From your perspective, you want to grow a business and become wealthy. That's fine, but why should we participate in that goal and tolerate a significant negative externality for very little reward? The idea that your business should be able to blot the public space for profit is a false premise, just one that people have grown used to for historical reasons.
caternoster 4y ago
Yes. Although it's difficult to define, I feel that the default public space should be unpolluted by advertising/solicitations.
legitster 4y ago
I'll be the controversial one here and say... I actually like billboard advertising? Most of them are not being built in particularly scenic areas, and they add a lot of visual interest. Especially as a chronic user of public transit, I have SO MUCH appreciated having something to look at in a subway or bus stop. Each city and location has their own flavor, and it can actually be kind of fun to see what is in other cities/countries.
- Kostchei 4y ago
  I agree that on or in public transport is fair for advertising- but I strongly dislike billboards that block interesting views of buildings, poke their brightly coloured cheeks into the skyline or glare brightly into lofts and apartments. One of the differences is that advertisers on public transport are often highly censored- where as the car-yard or similar can go for the cheapest artist, horrid paint, off-colour humour. Some advertising- like some tv, is actually quite good, as a form of art. For examples of this, - and some general roasting of the advertising industry, check out episodes of "the gruen transfer" by Australian national broadcaster ABC.
- exodust 4y ago
  Visual interest? Occasionally, but then you get ones like this... https://cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/4HGG6QN3F4YX7NLSL7M5UE244A.jpg https://cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/n...
caternoster 4y ago
Yes. Public spaces should be unpolluted by advertising
greenthrow 4y ago
Billboards are pop up window ads of real life. We solved the problem online. Lets get rid of billboards too.
brunoqc 4y ago
I wonder if they cause car accidents. There is some on the highway here with hard to read text. But just the billboard might be distracting enough.
yellowapple 4y ago
I'd be quite alright with banning (or at least heavily regulating) illuminated billboards. Those are indeed very distracting, and the light pollution concern is valid. Billboards in general, though? I live in a place with lots of billboards and they're pretty easy to ignore. I don't really see the upside here to what would constitute a freedom of speech/expression infringement. I think the more reasonable emphasis should be on regulating the light escaping from a property, not micromanaging the property itself. Limit the lumens or whatever in various protected directions (into the sky, onto roadways, etc.) and that would address the entirety of the actually-valid concerns.
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  > they're pretty easy to ignore I’m not doubting your experience but that reminds me of when people say they browse the web without adblockers. Could it just be desensitization?
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    Online ads are hard to ignore specifically because they use system resources to display - especially when they're JavaScript-heavy, but even without JS they still often entail image downloads and such that do add up. Billboards ain't really analogous; obnoxious lighting notwithstanding, they're no more obtrusive than a building or a tree or a sculpture or anything else that might exist on some plot of land - and while I'd personally prefer to see a building or tree or sculpture, I don't feel strongly enough about there being a billboard instead to desire outright criminalization (read: use of violence by the state in response) of billboards entirely.
acjohnson55 4y ago
It took a few days for me to put my finger on it, but lack of advertising was something that stood out to me when I visited Cuba almost a decade ago. Your visual environment has space to breathe. Although, another difference in Cuba was the presence of regime propaganda in some of that visual space. Growing up in Chicago's suburbs, the highways are awash in billboards. I never noticed it until living elsewhere. But in the town I grew up in, public ads were much less common. It's interesting the ways in which the commercial exploitation of the visual environment plays out differently in different societies. But I'm a fan of far less advertising in public spaces, where you can't really consent. And I think it's interesting that the ways in which the internet attention economy lays bare the commodification of attention might bring more awareness of that mm dynamic in contexts where it has been underexamined.
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
There's a big difference between passing a law banning all billboard advertising (including those who erect billboards on their own property) and banning it on publicly owned land/properties.
aaron695 4y ago
andrewbaron 4y ago
I live in Boulder where billboards are banned. It makes a huge difference towards a more peaceful life where the space and sky are open and free.
warabe 4y ago
I think ads should be mutually benefitial, for those who see ads and those who put ads. TV commercial is a shining example. Billboard only serves for those who put it.
ErikAugust 4y ago
Come to Vermont, they are banned here.
SoftTalker 4y ago
I want fewer signs in general. Fewer billboards, fewer road signs, fewer placards posted by control-freak authoritarians. I drove in Scandinavia a few years ago. They have a lot fewer road signs. Speed limits are by default and drivers are supposed to know them: 50kph in town. 80kph on rural roads. 100kph on motorways. Only if limits are different are there signs. The signs they do have are mostly iconic, so other than street names, you don't have to read words. That is also more pleasing to the eye somehow.
- jmugan 4y ago
  I was reading an article just today about a guy who got his catalytic converter stolen while parking at the airport. He told the reporter that there should at least be a sign warning of the possibility. I was thinking, "No, not more pointless signs!" They are an easy way to appear to do something about a problem.
jmugan 4y ago
Billboards are depressing, especially in the countryside. It feels like a form of theft of my attention. They hurt everyone but a small group of people, but we still can't seem to ban them.
alkonaut 4y ago
No. But cities should have strict policies around where and how it’s possible to set up billboards. In the end I’m all for advertising money spent on ads that aren’t tracking me. I’d switch the question around and ask: are there enough ads on billboards, bus stops? If not then maybe we haven’t regulated online ads enough to make the billboards attractive.
dusted 4y ago
I think all advertisement should be banned, so yes, billboard advertising should be banned.
anilgulecha 4y ago
Bangalore is another city that recently (a few years ago) banned almost all billboards. And this has been a change very much for the better. Just like your browser adblocker - you don't recognise noise & visual pollution until you live without it.
riddleronroof 4y ago
They don’t need to be, because they are obsolete. Online accounts for most. And in-person are going to change to drones / smart billboards.
Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 4y ago
within the first paragraph my alerts went on... '...and the ads are for things people can't afford, or don't need'... seriously? Did she just say that and everyone is fine with it? So... you are to save poor stupid people from being unduly influenced by advertising? This whole article reads like a dystopian mind-warp campaign of 'controlled influence' >>> "messy capitalist freedom promoting things we don't think is good for people". Who is we? People with university degrees having too much time on their hands because they got the useless ones? "Let's ban flying ads, diesel car ads, gambling ads, burger ads, the masses can't be trusted, adds for veganism, social justice, yoga, and gym memberships? ... Well... sounds good! Let's have some of those!" The latter are of course fully informative, only have your best interests at heart, are not selling a lifestyle with brand imagery abusing decades of market research to push their product for financial gains? I for one welcome our new ad-regulators. I definitely don't want to be victimized any longer by meaty burger-ads that make me fat and hurt the environment... /s That being said: I'd like less ads. As someone who uses an adblocker + noscript heavily, consumes next to no media (except books, old movies downloaded from the net), has no television, doesn't go to the cinema, doesn't follow the news, read magazines or have social media... really the only time I ever am exposed to ads might be outdoors. I'm sure they influence brand recognition without me noticing. I'd like less of them, but when someone argues for 'less ads... especially less of the wrong ones'... please go away from the hole you crawled out of and let people live their lives! Ban them outright or take measures to limit their number indiscriminately of what they're about. Or don't, but don't impose your moral standards unto me and the world!

156 points by isomorph 4y ago

> These ads are in the public space without any consultation about what is shown on them. > This would also apply to the sides of buses, and on the London Underground and other rail and metro systems This is a good point. The other arguments were much less persuasive.

SpikeDad 4y ago

Yes. They're a disgrace.

lucky_cloud 4y ago

A rare example where Betteridge's law does not apply. The answer is 100% yes, and we should ban other forms of advertising as well. Ban as many as possible.

christophilus 4y ago
I hate ads. I really do. I use ad-blockers and vastly prefer billboard-free zones. On the other hand, I like getting a paycheck, and I don’t know how our company would have ever gotten off the ground without advertising itself.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  So essentially, doing someone that's detrimental to people is fine as long as you're the one benefiting from it?
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Do you work for a for profit company or is your company feeding starving children in Africa based on word of mouth?
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      I am working for a for-profit company - I have done so for pretty much all my life, including companies that either rely on, or are directly involved in advertising. However, I don’t try to justify it in any way (even though my current client is actually completely independent of ads). I know and agree that my contributions to that field are bad for society and try to do better whenever possible, including fighting back when my contractual obligations allow me to (and avoiding contracts that would prevent me to do so). So not really a complete “dig” to the parent comment, but rather that we might have done wrong but we should strive to do better instead of trying to justify it.
  - bittercynic 4y ago
    Consider GP's company may (at least in his opinion) make some kind of positive contribution to society, but wouldn't have the opportunity without using some advertising to get off the ground.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Yes, agreed. That’s fine if that’s the case and if it is then I misunderstood and my comment doesn’t apply (see my other reply for an explanation). IMO, it’s one thing to be involved in harmful advertising, it’s another to try and justify it. I don’t mind if you are involved because you have no other choice, but if you have other options, tired to unsuccessfully steer the ship around and you’re still there, then it’s where there’s a problem.
scarface74 4y ago
What type of phone do you own? There is a statistically good chance you own one whose development is funded by an advertising company. There is a 100% chance you are posting to a site whose entire reason for existing is to advertise companies that it has invested in.
- verisimilitudes 4y ago
  I own no phone. Google phones can't consistently dial emergency numbers, because they're programmed by incompetent fuckwads. I agree that Hacker News should die.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    As you continue to post on it.
    - verisimilitudes 4y ago
      Yeah, because they don't allow account deletion.
- Bakary 4y ago
  I don't think this sort of "yet you live in society, curious" argument is particularly helpful Maybe the deeper problem is that living without enriching ad companies is a complex tax requiring research on everything you buy.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Sure, it’s easy for someone to clutch their pearls without having the courage of their convictions.
    - Bakary 4y ago
      Let's say for the sake of argument that all of the people who are not 100% consistent in everything they do all publicly recognize their hypocrisy and failures, no matter how minor, and praise the intelligence, perceptiveness, and moral uprightness of the people who pointed them out. What then? The problems still exist, still need to be dealt with. This is why it's not helpful to let the perfect be the enemy of the good or to focus on proving people to be hypocritical to shut down discussion. Even a person who is perfectly willing to make all of the sacrifices for maximum consistency would find it extremely hard if not impossible to avoid helping ad companies, since these have grown so powerful and omnipresent like Google for instance.

tmountain 4y ago

I went to Cuba and there was no advertising allowed on the roads. It was really refreshing, and it made our excursions feel a lot more engaging. The government did have some propaganda billboards on the roads, but it was ridiculous stuff like Uncle Sam getting punched in the face. I found those pretty entertaining…

twawaaay 4y ago

In the past I would say billboards are the scourge, but other than nuisance they do not harm me. On the other hand online advertising...

recursive 4y ago
Billboards are in public spaces.
lolinder 4y ago
Online advertising can be blocked by those who do not wish to participate and it isn't intentionally trying to distract people who are driving.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Try blocking advertising on Facebook, Amazon or Twitter. Report back.
  - Karunamon 4y ago
    ubo handily deals with the first and third, and everything in a shopping site is trying to advertise to you anyways by definition
    - scarface74 4y ago
      So Ubo has some magic AI that it can tell the difference between user generated content on Facebook and native ads from the same domain?
      - lolinder 4y ago
        It doesn't need magic AI, it just needs an element filter in addition to a domain filter. For example, EasyList has this hide-element rule for Twitter: twitter.com##.is-promoted https://github.com/easylist/easylist/blob/master/easylist/easylist_specific_hide.txt https://github.com/easylist/easylist/blob/master/easylist/ea...

cassianoleal 4y ago

I visited São Paulo before and after the ban (I'm not sure if the ban is still in effect). The difference was staggering. The city was more alive with people. You could see more, you could feel more. The sky was clearer, people were less distracted, it was great.

piotrkaminski 4y ago

> Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for another trade organisation, the Advertising Association, says that "all advertising plays a crucial role in brand competition, drives product innovation, and fuels economic growth". You know what actually drives product innovation? Not being able to lean on advertising to drive sales, so you're actually forced to improve your product and get the benefit of positive word of mouth instead.

wpietri 4y ago
Exactly. Advertising is an arms race. Coca Cola doesn't spend billions on ads because nobody had heard of Coke. They do it to suppress the more innovative competition.
- trystero 4y ago
  ...which is an argument against advertisement.
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  It's to remind people to buy a coke, it feeds the craving. Same thing for McDonalds and Starbucks advertising.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Right, yes, I believe we're saying the same thing. If Coca Cola doesn't remind people to buy their product, they might buy some other product.
  - andrewinardeer 4y ago
    And to make people feel good about their purchase. BMW doesn't really need to advertise as their new cars are only affordable for a small subset of the population. They advertise to re-enforce to their customers they made a great decision parting with their money.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Coca Cola did innovate - "New Coke". It was a disaster. People like the old Coke formula much better. Some things really don't need innovation.

paxys 4y ago

Yes. Next question?

version_five 4y ago

This is stupid on so many levels. There's the obvious idea that governments shouldn't be involved in telling people what they can do on private property (I can see the argument that community associations or designated areas could have special regulations, and I expect they already do, there are no billboards on the pyramids). Almost worse (as it is always for dumb ideas of this kind) is the enforcement. Are we going to have a whole system of definitions of what is billboard (when is it just a poster), jurisprudence, inspectors, etc. The kind of 0th order thinking of '"they" should ban X' has no relationship with reality, even if it sounds like a good thing if you dont think about it (personally I hate advertising) This is the same class of stupid idea that makes no practical sense that we see in various populist political campaigns Edit: I have to admit, I didn't anticipate so many seemingly angry (and condescending - the guy talking about animal cruelty laws and "we encode complex things...", lol) replies. Anyway, the above is just my perspective, I guess if you want your tax dollars working towards something like this, there is a pathway to a billboard free future

tayistay 4y ago
Hmm if it’s so unenforceable, why have some cities managed to get rid of the billboards?
sha256sum 4y ago
I come from a place that bans billboards. Arguably it’s fairly practical, no one seems upset about it and property owners seem to get by. Also there don’t seem to be issues of enforcement because everyone is more or less on the same page about it.
soneca 4y ago
In São Paulo it works. Not many things work around here, so I guess it is pretty practical to regulate and enforce.
cgrealy 4y ago
> There's the obvious idea that governments shouldn't be involved in telling people what they can do on private property The government literally tells people what to do on private property all the time. See zoning rules, smoking bans in restaurants, alcohol sales to minors, food safety laws, animal cruelty... the list is almost endless. I can't even fathom the kind of thinking that suggests that laws end on a property boundary. > Are we going to have a whole system of definitions of what is billboard Yes. It's not that hard. We encode complex things in regulations all the time.

tayistay 4y ago

It’s pretty weird that we allow advertising to attempt to distract you while you’re doing the most dangerous thing you generally do daily: driving.

datadata 4y ago
Ironically there are even billboards about how other distractions like texting while driving kills.
- oehpr 4y ago
  There is literally a billboard on the highway in British Columbia that is a pair of skidmarks descending into a valley with large font that says "KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD". During the night this sign is lit like a christmas tree, very bright. I could never get over how difficult it was to ignore that stupid billboard every time I crossed it.
exodust 4y ago
Sometimes they contain too much information to read as you're driving by, other times they are simple but annoying like this one: https://mumbrella.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Ashley-Madison-Billboard-Sydney-mumbrella.jpg https://mumbrella.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Ashley-M... But what I find the worst these days are ultra-bright large LED screens. At night they are blindingly bright. One in particular in my area installed at a shopping plaza, is so bright I need to look away when walking by. Its "ad light" floods the whole area.

badtension 4y ago

Do we want less ads? Maybe it's just enough? How about more, like in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs Yes, this looks like the best world, can't wait for Google to implement it in Meta's metaverse. How is removing ads from public space still a question?

plutaniano 4y ago

I live in São Paulo (the city mentioned in the article) and I always find it amusing how you can tell exactly where São Paulo ends and the neighboring city (Guarulhos) begins just by the billboards. Here’s São Paulo’s welcome sign coming from Guarulhos. There are lot of billboards before it, but exactly none after. https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dw8AFJS2sNRW27PL9?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dw8AFJS2sNRW27PL9?g_st=ic

andrepd 4y ago

No. All advertising should be banned.

scarface74 4y ago
So you don’t take advantage of any services that are funded by advertising? Better question, do you post to a site whose entire reason for being is to advertise startups it funded?

cjcole 4y ago

Yes, please. Thank you. I'm not sure which is the better argument: that they are a safety menace due to distraction from driving (video billboards?) or that they are profoundly ugly (including but not limited to aesthetically). Either would suffice for me. The quicker the better.

pexabit 4y ago

Mass advertising has a big tragedy of the commons problem. Attention is limited, and every mass ad, digital or otherwise, takes attention away from any other mass ad. (I distinguish mass ads from advertisements for cigars in Cigar Magazine).

badtension 4y ago
That's why it should be used to "advertise" something that is really beneficial to society, like info on road constructions planned for the following week or directions to the nearest hospital.

karaterobot 4y ago

This article seems to want this to look like a unified movement, but it seems more like a bunch of small groups in different areas who aren't working together, and may not even agree with each other if you get them in a room together. The issue-specific people ("no car ads!", "no gambling ads!") may not go to bat for someone else's issue, and may look at the "no ads whatsoever" people as extremists who distract from their specific cause. I guess my point is this seems like a bunch of weakly-related data points, rather than a strong signal of a movement. Too bad, since I'd love to see drastically fewer ads in public spaces.

cpsns 4y ago

I lived in a place where they were banned and roadside signage highly regulated and it was awesome, some much less visual clutter and noise. Every time I would travel I’d be shocked at how much advertising there was.

bastardoperator 4y ago

It doesn't bother me. I have more important stuff to worry about.

version_five 4y ago
This is the most sensible comment I've read in this thread. Running to tell teacher whenever something slightly bothers you is not something we should be encouraging. Ads are annoying, wasting time worrying about them is a waste of everybody's time
- Bakary 4y ago
  You could say the same of plenty of other nuisances, but that's death by a thousand cuts. It's not just about the ads but resisting the deeper cancer of consumerism. If you are worried about time being wasted, then don't interfere and carry on with what you consider important.

datadata 4y ago

Rather than a ban, would a very large tax for any ad spend work as a policy? This would seem to both reduce the overall number of ads, and force advertisers to allocate more resources to making better targeted ads that are more profitable per impression. My opposition to ads is not that they have no utility, but rather there is not sufficient compensation for the human attention that they (nearly) freely exploit and waste.

9991 4y ago
Indemnify any car collisions that occur within eyesight of the billboards. Should clear up the issue on its own.

EA 4y ago

Driving in Ireland was a pleasant experience as there were few signs while driving from coast to coast.

radicaldreamer 4y ago
The opposite of this is most developing countries, where free signage given out by consumer brands like Coca Cola/Pepsi/P&G are literal visual pollution in what used to be beautiful small towns and cities.

solaceb 4y ago

yes

genericone 4y ago

There are no billboards in Maui from what I could tell, which was quite pleasant. From a further search it looks like Hawaii doesn't stand for billboards at all, nor do Alaska, Maine, or Vermont.

llimllib 4y ago
I live in Maine, it's great not having billboards.

diebeforei485 4y ago

I don't like the massive billboards, but I do support smaller scale advertising like at bus stops.

olalonde 4y ago

Am the only one who actually enjoys billboard advertising and bright signage? That's one of my favorite things about Hong Kong, NY Times Square, etc.

dilap 4y ago
It can create a vibe in certain situations, but overall I find it quite annoying and exhausting to have rude billboards constantly intruding in on my attention. I think a compromise I could live w/ would be you can have outdoor advertising, but it has to just be a logo and a brand. E.g., a giant sign with the coke logo is fine. But a sign that's basically clickbait w/ a dumb joke that you won't be able to avoid reading: absolutely not allowed. Another example of outdoor advertising gone very wrong is in Monterrey, Mexico. It is a large city surrounded by gorgeous mountains, but in some places when driving can't even see them -- the road is just a wall of billboards. Very dystopian.

legitster 4y ago

> He points to the impact of Transport for London's ban on such adverts since 2019 across its entire network of tube and overground trains, buses and trams. A study last month found that the policy had prevented almost 100,000 obesity cases. How do you measure that even remotely accurately? It's certainly not as if there was some sort of confounding factor between then and now.

Bakary 4y ago
You don't even need a secondary reason to ban advertising. Just getting rid of advertising is its own justification.

choletentent 4y ago

I'd rather see a limited number of targeted ads on my electronic devices than a ton of random ads polluting the city I live in.

endgame 4y ago

“Advertisement is the rich asking for more money. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.” — G.K. Chesterton The correct amount of advertising in a society is not zero - we all like finding out about things which will actually help us - but it is not unbounded either. The advertising machine acts according to its incentives, and will not rest until every spare surface, every quiet moment, every gap between thoughts is up for auction. It must therefore be restrained so that other uses of space can flourish.

moolcool 4y ago
Pleased and surprised to see a Chesterton quote here!
- CobrastanJorji 4y ago
  I was thinking about flagging it, but I don't know why they posted it, so I won't.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    Why would you flag it?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - swid 4y ago
      https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence Edit to say - he was making a joke, this will help you understand
      - colordrops 4y ago
        I don't see how that makes it flag-worthy.

tafda 4y ago

Santa Barbara County in California bans billboards, and Santa Barbara city has even stricter sign laws. It’s a relief to be free from the visual pollution billboards create and there are no downsides unless you own a billboard. In a more urban setting, I don’t hate billboards. The absence of billboards is a definite increase in quality of life.

mwint 4y ago
There’s also downsides if you own land that a billboard could be put on; your land will be less valuable. Possibly balanced out by general property value increases due to there being no billboards, but I kind of doubt it.
- tafda 4y ago
  By the same token, any zoning is a restraint against capturing the full value of land. It is possible the stringent enforcement gets absurd ( see https://www.noozhawk.com/article/institution_ale_can_keep_its_neon_sign_20190810 https://www.noozhawk.com/article/institution_ale_can_keep_it... ). On balance I am in favor of banning most outdoor advertising.
CodeSgt 4y ago
I very, very rarely take conscious notice of billboards. If every one within a 100 miles of me were to disappear without a trace over night I'm honestly not sure I'd notice.
- knappe 4y ago
  Do you ever do anything outside at night? The digital billboards are not something you'd miss. They're too bright and attention grabbing to be anything but obnoxious.
  - CodeSgt 4y ago
    Admittedly I do not, I'm very much a homebody and tend to go to bed shortly after the sun sets. I bet those would be much more noticeable.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

labrador 4y ago

I think the problem will solve itself when it's common to drive with AR glasses. The billboards will be virtual, customized for you

avazhi 4y ago

They should be banned, and not because people are automatons, but because advertisements are invariably objectively distracting and increasingly garish as firms attempt to outcompete one another for attention. It's really just a question of what kind of society we want to live in - my own view is that people should have the option not to be bombarded by hawkers, whether it's homeless people, Mormons, or corporate shills, while they move about public spaces.

ryandrake 4y ago
I would support some kind of Right To Not Be Accosted. I don’t know what that would look like exactly but people who want to sell or market something to me ought to have to obtain my consent first. It doesn’t seem right that you can go out and try to mind your business and be constantly under assault by things and people looking to take your attention. Like pollution laws, we should have a right to live life without all that in our environment.
- dannyw 4y ago
  Should this apply to protests and petitions?
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    Sure. I’m not a big fan of protests, in particular ones that intrude and disrupt me trying to simply go about my life. Petitions are just variations on sales pitches, like religious proselytizing, which I also would not consent to if I had the choice.
  - avazhi 4y ago
    It should. People ought to have a right to go, again, into public spaces and mind their business. They should be free to go about without being accosted or harangued or, for example, inconvenienced because people have chained themselves to the doors of commuter trains or have decided to lay in the middle of the highway. Kind of the old 'your rights end where they interfere with my rights' kind of thing - going about my normal business in a public space is never likely to interfere with anybody, at least not in a purposeful way, whereas protests are by definition intended to interfere with my right to enjoy public spaces. They are, quite literally, intended to 'shock' normal people into changing their viewpoints or behaviour. Where I live (Melbourne, Australia) protests in the CBD often disturb private citizens in their homes.

darrinm 4y ago

Should clickbaity headlines be banned?

Carioca 4y ago

We did it in São Paulo, Brazil a long time (15 years?) ago. It was a relief and I'm always a bit bothered when I'm on cities that allow it. It might be the case that some places in some cities should still keep it, but otherwise I'm still all for it

jen729w 4y ago
Canberra, Australia's capital, also does not allow (most) outdoor billboard advertising. It's incredibly calming. And then it just becomes normal until you go to, say, Melbourne. And then it hits you in the face and good lord it's ugly.

Slow_Hand 4y ago

At a gut level, I would love for outdoor advertising to be banned in my city. I resent the constant intrusion into my mind when I encounter them on the street. That said, I do recognize that from the perspective of advertisers and consenting property owners having the (assumed) right to do trade however they wish, this may not be a fair or reasonable policy to enact. Truth be told, I haven't thought about this very much. But the thing that I'm MOST interested in is what will be the secondary consequences of banning outdoor advertising? If advertisers cannot use billboards or posters, how will the space change and where will their behavior be compensated for elsewhere? Are there any unwanted secondary side-effects that might occur do to this prohibition? Like online advertising intensifying, or paid sponsorships for online content creators, or perhaps something completely different?

oneplane 4y ago
I suppose instead of banning billboards specifically, one could ban "unwanted and unwarranted intrusions".
dannyw 4y ago
A city could set limits for the quantity, size, and prominence (eg no digital displays, illumination must be lower than X nits) in a reasonably fair and neutral way, so they're not banned altogether but the excesses are trimmed.
bmicraft 4y ago
Restricting huge intrusive ads seems very close to the building code and zoning laws which cities seem to have no problem going completely overboard with.

gumby 4y ago

One of the nice things about traveling on the Autobahn is the dearth of billboards. Basically only PSAs about drink driving or wearing a seatbelt, which I think we could do without too (the signs, not the seatbelts).

jmyeet 4y ago

IMHO it's misleading and unhelpful to talk strictly about advertising. Instead we should be talking about marketing, for which advertising is one (hugely significant) part. Marketing is a key component of building, growing and maintaining a business. There is no "build it and they will come". Many an interesting product has died on the vine because of poor or lacking marketing. Marketing is a two-way street. It's about understanding who your potential customers are, how large your market is, who your competitors are, what is important to your potentiaal customers, who buys your products, why they buy them and so on. The other side, which includes advertising, is making people aware of your product or brand. It may include a direct call to action (eg "buy this widget now") or it may just be creating a perception for your brand. A lot of Coca-Cola and even Apple advertising falls into this category. It's really disappointing to see some of the comments on this thread. Comments like "I built a business with no advertising so you don't need it either". The only way this is likely true is if you sell to a small number of businesses and your initial customers were former colleagues or otherwise known to you via networking. This is not representative of how business growth and marketing works and shouldn't be taken as such. There can and should be limits on advertising. When, where, what, that sort of thing. I personally think that advertising in children's shows for example should be banned. So should pharmaceuticals (a uniquely US problem). Some things are understandably heavily restricted (eg gambling, alcohol, tobacco, cannabis). But a ban on billboards? What does this achieve? The objections seem to be largely aesthetic. That seems highly performative.

Bakary 4y ago
It's not really performative. Billboards occupy a lot of space, both mental and physical. I've had the privilege to walk through ad-free cities and it's like night and day. Once you return to the rest it suddenly becomes clear how garish and vile the ads we've become used to are, and how amateurish the deal we've struck is. Billboards don't bring in that much revenue to the collective compared to what they do to cities. From your perspective, you want to grow a business and become wealthy. That's fine, but why should we participate in that goal and tolerate a significant negative externality for very little reward? The idea that your business should be able to blot the public space for profit is a false premise, just one that people have grown used to for historical reasons.

caternoster 4y ago

Yes. Although it's difficult to define, I feel that the default public space should be unpolluted by advertising/solicitations.

legitster 4y ago

I'll be the controversial one here and say... I actually like billboard advertising? Most of them are not being built in particularly scenic areas, and they add a lot of visual interest. Especially as a chronic user of public transit, I have SO MUCH appreciated having something to look at in a subway or bus stop. Each city and location has their own flavor, and it can actually be kind of fun to see what is in other cities/countries.

Kostchei 4y ago
I agree that on or in public transport is fair for advertising- but I strongly dislike billboards that block interesting views of buildings, poke their brightly coloured cheeks into the skyline or glare brightly into lofts and apartments. One of the differences is that advertisers on public transport are often highly censored- where as the car-yard or similar can go for the cheapest artist, horrid paint, off-colour humour. Some advertising- like some tv, is actually quite good, as a form of art. For examples of this, - and some general roasting of the advertising industry, check out episodes of "the gruen transfer" by Australian national broadcaster ABC.
exodust 4y ago
Visual interest? Occasionally, but then you get ones like this... https://cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/4HGG6QN3F4YX7NLSL7M5UE244A.jpg https://cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/n...

caternoster 4y ago

Yes. Public spaces should be unpolluted by advertising

greenthrow 4y ago

Billboards are pop up window ads of real life. We solved the problem online. Lets get rid of billboards too.

brunoqc 4y ago

I wonder if they cause car accidents. There is some on the highway here with hard to read text. But just the billboard might be distracting enough.

yellowapple 4y ago

I'd be quite alright with banning (or at least heavily regulating) illuminated billboards. Those are indeed very distracting, and the light pollution concern is valid. Billboards in general, though? I live in a place with lots of billboards and they're pretty easy to ignore. I don't really see the upside here to what would constitute a freedom of speech/expression infringement. I think the more reasonable emphasis should be on regulating the light escaping from a property, not micromanaging the property itself. Limit the lumens or whatever in various protected directions (into the sky, onto roadways, etc.) and that would address the entirety of the actually-valid concerns.

NegativeLatency 4y ago
> they're pretty easy to ignore I’m not doubting your experience but that reminds me of when people say they browse the web without adblockers. Could it just be desensitization?
- yellowapple 4y ago
  Online ads are hard to ignore specifically because they use system resources to display - especially when they're JavaScript-heavy, but even without JS they still often entail image downloads and such that do add up. Billboards ain't really analogous; obnoxious lighting notwithstanding, they're no more obtrusive than a building or a tree or a sculpture or anything else that might exist on some plot of land - and while I'd personally prefer to see a building or tree or sculpture, I don't feel strongly enough about there being a billboard instead to desire outright criminalization (read: use of violence by the state in response) of billboards entirely.

acjohnson55 4y ago

It took a few days for me to put my finger on it, but lack of advertising was something that stood out to me when I visited Cuba almost a decade ago. Your visual environment has space to breathe. Although, another difference in Cuba was the presence of regime propaganda in some of that visual space. Growing up in Chicago's suburbs, the highways are awash in billboards. I never noticed it until living elsewhere. But in the town I grew up in, public ads were much less common. It's interesting the ways in which the commercial exploitation of the visual environment plays out differently in different societies. But I'm a fan of far less advertising in public spaces, where you can't really consent. And I think it's interesting that the ways in which the internet attention economy lays bare the commodification of attention might bring more awareness of that mm dynamic in contexts where it has been underexamined.

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

There's a big difference between passing a law banning all billboard advertising (including those who erect billboards on their own property) and banning it on publicly owned land/properties.

aaron695 4y ago

andrewbaron 4y ago

I live in Boulder where billboards are banned. It makes a huge difference towards a more peaceful life where the space and sky are open and free.

warabe 4y ago

I think ads should be mutually benefitial, for those who see ads and those who put ads. TV commercial is a shining example. Billboard only serves for those who put it.

ErikAugust 4y ago

Come to Vermont, they are banned here.

SoftTalker 4y ago

I want fewer signs in general. Fewer billboards, fewer road signs, fewer placards posted by control-freak authoritarians. I drove in Scandinavia a few years ago. They have a lot fewer road signs. Speed limits are by default and drivers are supposed to know them: 50kph in town. 80kph on rural roads. 100kph on motorways. Only if limits are different are there signs. The signs they do have are mostly iconic, so other than street names, you don't have to read words. That is also more pleasing to the eye somehow.

jmugan 4y ago
I was reading an article just today about a guy who got his catalytic converter stolen while parking at the airport. He told the reporter that there should at least be a sign warning of the possibility. I was thinking, "No, not more pointless signs!" They are an easy way to appear to do something about a problem.

jmugan 4y ago

Billboards are depressing, especially in the countryside. It feels like a form of theft of my attention. They hurt everyone but a small group of people, but we still can't seem to ban them.

alkonaut 4y ago

No. But cities should have strict policies around where and how it’s possible to set up billboards. In the end I’m all for advertising money spent on ads that aren’t tracking me. I’d switch the question around and ask: are there enough ads on billboards, bus stops? If not then maybe we haven’t regulated online ads enough to make the billboards attractive.

dusted 4y ago

I think all advertisement should be banned, so yes, billboard advertising should be banned.

anilgulecha 4y ago

Bangalore is another city that recently (a few years ago) banned almost all billboards. And this has been a change very much for the better. Just like your browser adblocker - you don't recognise noise & visual pollution until you live without it.

riddleronroof 4y ago

They don’t need to be, because they are obsolete. Online accounts for most. And in-person are going to change to drones / smart billboards.

Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 4y ago

within the first paragraph my alerts went on... '...and the ads are for things people can't afford, or don't need'... seriously? Did she just say that and everyone is fine with it? So... you are to save poor stupid people from being unduly influenced by advertising? This whole article reads like a dystopian mind-warp campaign of 'controlled influence' >>> "messy capitalist freedom promoting things we don't think is good for people". Who is we? People with university degrees having too much time on their hands because they got the useless ones? "Let's ban flying ads, diesel car ads, gambling ads, burger ads, the masses can't be trusted, adds for veganism, social justice, yoga, and gym memberships? ... Well... sounds good! Let's have some of those!" The latter are of course fully informative, only have your best interests at heart, are not selling a lifestyle with brand imagery abusing decades of market research to push their product for financial gains? I for one welcome our new ad-regulators. I definitely don't want to be victimized any longer by meaty burger-ads that make me fat and hurt the environment... /s That being said: I'd like less ads. As someone who uses an adblocker + noscript heavily, consumes next to no media (except books, old movies downloaded from the net), has no television, doesn't go to the cinema, doesn't follow the news, read magazines or have social media... really the only time I ever am exposed to ads might be outdoors. I'm sure they influence brand recognition without me noticing. I'd like less of them, but when someone argues for 'less ads... especially less of the wrong ones'... please go away from the hole you crawled out of and let people live their lives! Ban them outright or take measures to limit their number indiscriminately of what they're about. Or don't, but don't impose your moral standards unto me and the world!