5 ms·

What you can do relatively easily is to control the physical format of advertising. For example, consider how rare "billboards" are outside of the USA. Or towns

What you can do relatively easily is to control the physical format of advertising. For example, consider how rare "billboards" are outside of the USA. Or towns in various places that prohibit signage that is not in the same plane as the edge of the building (i.e. no sticky-outy signs). Or for that matter, consider Berlin, which has banned all non-cultural advertising on public transportation. Yes, there's some edge cases that are tricky, but overall the situation doesn't seem too fraught.

cavisne 2y ago
Billboards being rare outside of the US seems quite incorrect. The developing world is full of billboards, and places in Europe like Milan have some wild Samsung billboards.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  OK, let me restate that: there are places (even a few within the USA) that have very few or no billboards, because they are banned.
  - anjel 2y ago
    Good luck getting e.g. Formula 1 to take down their sponsorship banners.
    - kristiandupont 2y ago
      You don't think F1 would follow the law?
      - LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
        Do you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Ecclestone#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Ecclestone#Controversie...
        stavros 2y ago
        I'm not sure what your argument is. I thought it was "they've done illegal things before", to which I'd say "backroom dealings aren't the same as a huge sign basically saying 'look at me breaking the law over here'", but that's so trivially obvious that I'm sure your argument can't be that.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  Anecdote: If you are driving through Canada and start seeing billboards beside the highway, you are very likely crossing a native reservation. Billboards are generally banned but native communities have more direct control over their own land use and so regularly operate billboards. (Billboards also also reasonably good as sound reflectors, reducing the highway noise in the community if positioned properly.)
- gerdesj 2y ago
  The UK, outside of cities is largely devoid of bill boards a la the US. Milan is not "Europe" either! I have driven/travelled across a lot, nearly all, European countries and the other one - the UK. You do not get those huge screens on stilts anywhere that I have seen in Europe, that seem to be common across the US. To be fair, I've only driven across about 10 US states. However, I do have Holywood's and other's output to act as a proxy and it seems that US companies do love to shout it from the hill tops at vast expense and fuck up the scenery with those bill board thingies. Try driving around La Toscana and say Florida. I've done both, multiple times and I'm a proper outsider. I love both regions quite passionately but for very different reasons. FL has way more issues in my opinion but we are discussing bill boards so let's stay on task. Billboards require power as well as the obvious physical attributes. They are an absolute eyesore and in my opinion should be abolished. Turn them into wind turbines and do some good - the basics are in place. However. I know FL quite well. It has a lovely climate (unless it is trying to kill you). Florida man almost certainly invented air conditioning and FL man being FL man took it to the max when confronted with a rather lovely climate. FL man is a thing and it turns out that CA Pres. can be weirder than anything seen before. US - remember your mates, we remember you as is and don't hold you accountable for going a bit odder than usual for a while.
  - 1659447091 2y ago
    > I do have Holywood's ... output to act as a proxy and it seems that US companies do love to shout it from the hill tops at vast expense and fuck up the scenery with those bill board thingies. This reminded me of learning the Hollywood sign was literally an advertisement (shouted from the hill top) that turned into a cultural landmark On to the point for the topic, parts of Asia (mid/large cities) are overwhelming with their advertisements which I don't think the US or EU/UK can compare either
    - gerdesj 2y ago
      Perhaps Asia could rebel against rampant adverts. My first thoughts: You might be able to make those bill boards synonymous with imperialism of some sort. That gets you loads of negative connotations for free. ... also not far from the truth.
roenxi 2y ago
That is requiring advertisers to set the HTTP evil bit. If advertising is fine, they're happy to make it obvious that something is an ad. If you ban that, suddenly it'll all be astroturf campaigns and product placement. I'd be surprised if banning billboards caused advertising budgets to drop.
- llbeansandrice 2y ago
  Are they happy? They resist any legislation to label things as ads and want them as unobtrusive as possible. They take over the platforms while there’s still astroturfing and sponsored content charading as regular content. If we ban billboards at least the the countryside will look nice
- wk_end 2y ago
  In theory, anyway, billboards are prevalent sans regulation because they’re (among) the most efficient forms of advertising. That is, if the advertisers would only be spending some money on astroturf campaigns and product placement instead of billboards, it must be because they’re less effective than billboards - otherwise they’d just put that money towards the astroturf campaigns and product placement in the first place. So banning billboards makes advertising less efficient. In theory, anyway.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    If you step on a nail you'll be less efficient at walking for a bit. Causing random harm to people isn't really the basis for a reasonable system of rules. The regulators could cause random harm to advertisers. Society can cause random harm to anyone. You're not going to make consumers (or anyone else, for that matter) better off. I'd much rather be fed efficient advertising on a billboard than have to worry about more astroturfing, that stuff is insidious. Cure substantially worse than the disease once advertisers have to deceptive and have even bigger incentives to hide than they already do. And much as the anti-ads people want to skip the point, nobody ever even established that advertising is a negative thing that advertisers need to be harmed for.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
gamblor956 2y ago
I saw plenty of billboards in London and Paris last summer. Where is this magical place in the world that has lots of people but no billboards?
- thakoppno 2y ago
  Sao Paulo https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...
  - gamblor956 2y ago
    There are many smaller billboards visible when you use Street View in Google maps. Sao Paulo may have fewer billboards, and no large billboards, but it still has billboards.
    - troupo 2y ago
      That is often the point: you don't ban all advertisement, but you heavily restrict it in size, quantity and location
- toofy 2y ago
  honolulu, well all of hawaii actually. something like 80+ percent of texas cities ban them or are phasing them out with heavy new restrictions. for example, in dallas, if you want a new billboard, you have to tear down 3. and new ones have placement and size restrictions. houston is no longer allowing any new off premises signage including billboards. the only way to erect a new billboard is if it passes permitting and the company tears down one of their old ones. and like i said, like 80% of texas towns across the state have heavy restrictions on new or outright ban them. santa fe effectively has a ban on all off premises advertising which obviously includes billboards. billboard are banned on highways in the entire country of Norway, including urban/suburban highways. the entire state of vermont. the entire state of maine, including cities. all of washington dc, including georgetown.
idle_zealot 2y ago
You start conservatively, and set up a watchdog to investigate loopholes and punish those abusing them. Fund an astroturfing campaign? Congrats, that's 10 years and a hefty fine to fund the continued operation of the watchdog. You can make promotional material and publish it, but it has to be clearly labeled and opt-in, not bundled with access to something else. The problem isn't small-time promotion that's difficult or impossible to crack down on, it's that we've built a whole attention economy. So long as we make it a bad value proposition for big players we'll have succeeded.
- msla 2y ago
  Well, you have to convince people to vote for you and your policies. How would you do that? How exactly would that work?
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    Is that supposed to be a gotcha? You campaign. Talk to people, spread your message. You don't buy ads, you hold rallies. Encourage supporters to talk to friends and family. Do interviews. Is your idea of political participation limited to purchasing Instagram ads?
    - msla 2y ago
      Rallies aren't advertisements, now. Well, I suppose that's one loophole. It isn't as if companies can't hold rallies. It isn't as if flash mobs don't exist. And "spreading your message"... what do you think going viral is, exactly? What is "viral marketing" to you?
      - chii 2y ago
        "What _I_ do isn't advertising, because _I_ have the public and society's interest at heart!"
      - tsimionescu 2y ago
        This is all very simple to dostinguish: did you pay or have any other kind of contract with the person talking about you/your product? Then it's an ad, and could be made illegal. Are you just talking to people and hoping you'll convince them to talk to others in turn? Free speech, perfectly fine.
theamk 2y ago
Agree, that'd totally work - things like "billboards" or "ads on public transport" are possible to define and regulate. Advertising on the web would be much harder, I'd like to hear a good proposed rule on that. Sadly, a post titled "A proposal to restrict certain forms of advertizing", and full of boring rules will be much less likely to get 800+ points on HN.
markdown 2y ago
Billboards are banned in the state of Hawaii.
caseyy 2y ago
That’s exactly right. Even if ad banning isn’t 100% doable, we’d be better off with it done 80%. All-or-nothing thinking is so common in HN that it’s seriously over-complicating simple problems by trying to find a perfect solution. Such an ideal solution is rarely necessary.
dlenski 2y ago
> Or towns in various places that prohibit signage that is not in the same plane as the edge of the building (i.e. no sticky-outy signs). In many places where these signs are banned, old grandfathered-in examples have become beloved heritage landmarks. The musée Carnavallet in Paris has a fascinating exhibit on the city's history based entirely on old business advertising signs. An example here in Vancouver: https://vancouversun.com/news/whats-the-future-bow-mac-sign-on-broadway-toys-r-us https://vancouversun.com/news/whats-the-future-bow-mac-sign-...) I detest a lot of modern forms of advertising as much as the next guy, but at the same time I think we'd be choking off a lot of interesting and enriching human expression by trying to remove it entirely.
- LadyCailin 2y ago
  I find it super interesting reading about goat and human sacrifices done by past cultures. It was a genuinely fascinating part of human culture, that humans thought that could help appease the gods to fix the weather, etc. Just because it was done in the past, and is interesting to learn about, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t outright ban it.
  - dlenski 2y ago
    You're comparing blood sacrifices of animals and humans to… artistic signage advertising businesses?
    - LadyCailin 2y ago
      Yes. The point is just because it has been done before and holds some interesting historical value doesn’t mean it is valuable to continue to do.
codethief 2y ago
> Or for that matter, consider Berlin, which has banned all non-cultural advertising on public transportation. Why have I not heard about this. Is this a recent thing?

cavisne 2y ago

Billboards being rare outside of the US seems quite incorrect. The developing world is full of billboards, and places in Europe like Milan have some wild Samsung billboards.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
OK, let me restate that: there are places (even a few within the USA) that have very few or no billboards, because they are banned.
- anjel 2y ago
  Good luck getting e.g. Formula 1 to take down their sponsorship banners.
  - kristiandupont 2y ago
    You don't think F1 would follow the law?
    - LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
      Do you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Ecclestone#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Ecclestone#Controversie...
      - stavros 2y ago
        I'm not sure what your argument is. I thought it was "they've done illegal things before", to which I'd say "backroom dealings aren't the same as a huge sign basically saying 'look at me breaking the law over here'", but that's so trivially obvious that I'm sure your argument can't be that.
sandworm101 2y ago
Anecdote: If you are driving through Canada and start seeing billboards beside the highway, you are very likely crossing a native reservation. Billboards are generally banned but native communities have more direct control over their own land use and so regularly operate billboards. (Billboards also also reasonably good as sound reflectors, reducing the highway noise in the community if positioned properly.)
gerdesj 2y ago
The UK, outside of cities is largely devoid of bill boards a la the US. Milan is not "Europe" either! I have driven/travelled across a lot, nearly all, European countries and the other one - the UK. You do not get those huge screens on stilts anywhere that I have seen in Europe, that seem to be common across the US. To be fair, I've only driven across about 10 US states. However, I do have Holywood's and other's output to act as a proxy and it seems that US companies do love to shout it from the hill tops at vast expense and fuck up the scenery with those bill board thingies. Try driving around La Toscana and say Florida. I've done both, multiple times and I'm a proper outsider. I love both regions quite passionately but for very different reasons. FL has way more issues in my opinion but we are discussing bill boards so let's stay on task. Billboards require power as well as the obvious physical attributes. They are an absolute eyesore and in my opinion should be abolished. Turn them into wind turbines and do some good - the basics are in place. However. I know FL quite well. It has a lovely climate (unless it is trying to kill you). Florida man almost certainly invented air conditioning and FL man being FL man took it to the max when confronted with a rather lovely climate. FL man is a thing and it turns out that CA Pres. can be weirder than anything seen before. US - remember your mates, we remember you as is and don't hold you accountable for going a bit odder than usual for a while.
- 1659447091 2y ago
  > I do have Holywood's ... output to act as a proxy and it seems that US companies do love to shout it from the hill tops at vast expense and fuck up the scenery with those bill board thingies. This reminded me of learning the Hollywood sign was literally an advertisement (shouted from the hill top) that turned into a cultural landmark On to the point for the topic, parts of Asia (mid/large cities) are overwhelming with their advertisements which I don't think the US or EU/UK can compare either
  - gerdesj 2y ago
    Perhaps Asia could rebel against rampant adverts. My first thoughts: You might be able to make those bill boards synonymous with imperialism of some sort. That gets you loads of negative connotations for free. ... also not far from the truth.

roenxi 2y ago

That is requiring advertisers to set the HTTP evil bit. If advertising is fine, they're happy to make it obvious that something is an ad. If you ban that, suddenly it'll all be astroturf campaigns and product placement. I'd be surprised if banning billboards caused advertising budgets to drop.

llbeansandrice 2y ago
Are they happy? They resist any legislation to label things as ads and want them as unobtrusive as possible. They take over the platforms while there’s still astroturfing and sponsored content charading as regular content. If we ban billboards at least the the countryside will look nice
wk_end 2y ago
In theory, anyway, billboards are prevalent sans regulation because they’re (among) the most efficient forms of advertising. That is, if the advertisers would only be spending some money on astroturf campaigns and product placement instead of billboards, it must be because they’re less effective than billboards - otherwise they’d just put that money towards the astroturf campaigns and product placement in the first place. So banning billboards makes advertising less efficient. In theory, anyway.
- roenxi 2y ago
  If you step on a nail you'll be less efficient at walking for a bit. Causing random harm to people isn't really the basis for a reasonable system of rules. The regulators could cause random harm to advertisers. Society can cause random harm to anyone. You're not going to make consumers (or anyone else, for that matter) better off. I'd much rather be fed efficient advertising on a billboard than have to worry about more astroturfing, that stuff is insidious. Cure substantially worse than the disease once advertisers have to deceptive and have even bigger incentives to hide than they already do. And much as the anti-ads people want to skip the point, nobody ever even established that advertising is a negative thing that advertisers need to be harmed for.
JoshTriplett 2y ago

gamblor956 2y ago

I saw plenty of billboards in London and Paris last summer. Where is this magical place in the world that has lots of people but no billboards?

thakoppno 2y ago
Sao Paulo https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...
- gamblor956 2y ago
  There are many smaller billboards visible when you use Street View in Google maps. Sao Paulo may have fewer billboards, and no large billboards, but it still has billboards.
  - troupo 2y ago
    That is often the point: you don't ban all advertisement, but you heavily restrict it in size, quantity and location
toofy 2y ago
honolulu, well all of hawaii actually. something like 80+ percent of texas cities ban them or are phasing them out with heavy new restrictions. for example, in dallas, if you want a new billboard, you have to tear down 3. and new ones have placement and size restrictions. houston is no longer allowing any new off premises signage including billboards. the only way to erect a new billboard is if it passes permitting and the company tears down one of their old ones. and like i said, like 80% of texas towns across the state have heavy restrictions on new or outright ban them. santa fe effectively has a ban on all off premises advertising which obviously includes billboards. billboard are banned on highways in the entire country of Norway, including urban/suburban highways. the entire state of vermont. the entire state of maine, including cities. all of washington dc, including georgetown.

idle_zealot 2y ago

You start conservatively, and set up a watchdog to investigate loopholes and punish those abusing them. Fund an astroturfing campaign? Congrats, that's 10 years and a hefty fine to fund the continued operation of the watchdog. You can make promotional material and publish it, but it has to be clearly labeled and opt-in, not bundled with access to something else. The problem isn't small-time promotion that's difficult or impossible to crack down on, it's that we've built a whole attention economy. So long as we make it a bad value proposition for big players we'll have succeeded.

msla 2y ago
Well, you have to convince people to vote for you and your policies. How would you do that? How exactly would that work?
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  Is that supposed to be a gotcha? You campaign. Talk to people, spread your message. You don't buy ads, you hold rallies. Encourage supporters to talk to friends and family. Do interviews. Is your idea of political participation limited to purchasing Instagram ads?
  - msla 2y ago
    Rallies aren't advertisements, now. Well, I suppose that's one loophole. It isn't as if companies can't hold rallies. It isn't as if flash mobs don't exist. And "spreading your message"... what do you think going viral is, exactly? What is "viral marketing" to you?
    - chii 2y ago
      "What _I_ do isn't advertising, because _I_ have the public and society's interest at heart!"
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      This is all very simple to dostinguish: did you pay or have any other kind of contract with the person talking about you/your product? Then it's an ad, and could be made illegal. Are you just talking to people and hoping you'll convince them to talk to others in turn? Free speech, perfectly fine.

theamk 2y ago

Agree, that'd totally work - things like "billboards" or "ads on public transport" are possible to define and regulate. Advertising on the web would be much harder, I'd like to hear a good proposed rule on that. Sadly, a post titled "A proposal to restrict certain forms of advertizing", and full of boring rules will be much less likely to get 800+ points on HN.

markdown 2y ago

Billboards are banned in the state of Hawaii.

caseyy 2y ago

That’s exactly right. Even if ad banning isn’t 100% doable, we’d be better off with it done 80%. All-or-nothing thinking is so common in HN that it’s seriously over-complicating simple problems by trying to find a perfect solution. Such an ideal solution is rarely necessary.

dlenski 2y ago

> Or towns in various places that prohibit signage that is not in the same plane as the edge of the building (i.e. no sticky-outy signs). In many places where these signs are banned, old grandfathered-in examples have become beloved heritage landmarks. The musée Carnavallet in Paris has a fascinating exhibit on the city's history based entirely on old business advertising signs. An example here in Vancouver: https://vancouversun.com/news/whats-the-future-bow-mac-sign-on-broadway-toys-r-us https://vancouversun.com/news/whats-the-future-bow-mac-sign-...) I detest a lot of modern forms of advertising as much as the next guy, but at the same time I think we'd be choking off a lot of interesting and enriching human expression by trying to remove it entirely.

LadyCailin 2y ago
I find it super interesting reading about goat and human sacrifices done by past cultures. It was a genuinely fascinating part of human culture, that humans thought that could help appease the gods to fix the weather, etc. Just because it was done in the past, and is interesting to learn about, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t outright ban it.
- dlenski 2y ago
  You're comparing blood sacrifices of animals and humans to… artistic signage advertising businesses?
  - LadyCailin 2y ago
    Yes. The point is just because it has been done before and holds some interesting historical value doesn’t mean it is valuable to continue to do.

codethief 2y ago

> Or for that matter, consider Berlin, which has banned all non-cultural advertising on public transportation. Why have I not heard about this. Is this a recent thing?