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I think this is deeply and fundamentally wrong. Advertising is how small and new companies can reach customers. It's how monopolies are broken. It's how progre

I think this is deeply and fundamentally wrong. Advertising is how small and new companies can reach customers. It's how monopolies are broken. It's how progress reaches the masses. Yes, it is willfully intended to change people's behavior. So are many of our posts on HN. That is an important purpose for communication!

ranger_danger 2y ago
The states that have banned billboards seem to get by just fine though.
rayiner 2y ago
You probably don’t need advertising now that the internet exists and people can just research what they need.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Advertising may have been necessary the way you're describing in the 1950's but it's now so much easier to move information around. As for all communication being a bit like advertising, a significant threshold has been crossed once you're paying to have your information elevated above that of your peers. If we didn't allow that, the noise floor would be lower, and it would be possible to achieve the benefits of advertising without the harms. For instance, suppose I'm looking for a plumber... there are only maybe fifteen within a reasonable distance. There's no need for the plumbers to pay some third party for the privilege of being first in the list. I can limit my search criteria so that the results are narrow enough that I can consider each one, and they can instead spend that money on pipes or toilets or whatever.
- 28304283409234 2y ago
  And also, in communication there is respectful and disrespectful. Screaming in my face is communication. It is not respectful.
bentobean 2y ago
You’re right. New plan: let’s ban all paid advertisements except for those that are approved by a committee of government officials. /s
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  No seriously, let's ban all advertisements. If you want that info, you can seek it out, it should not seek you.
kelnos 2y ago
I don't really care if companies -- of any size -- can reach me or not. If I want a service they provide, I will actively seek them out. Large companies already have a huge advantage over small/new companies in that they have much more money to spend on marketing and advertising. If anything, banning paid advertising helps level the playing field. People will still find out about small and new businesses if paid advertising was banned. In fact I learn about most smaller players through word of mouth and other non-paid sources.
- Kerrick 2y ago
  When you seek them out, how will you find them?
  - jrvarela56 2y ago
    Not through ads - you can be sure of that!
  - TheDong 2y ago
    In the old days, if I wanted someone to remove a tree stump in my yard, I would ask my neighbor who had a stump removed who did it for them, or open the yellow pages. In the modern age, I would open google maps (where companies can, for free, volunteer to be listed), or google.com and search. The yellow pages are ads, and in a sense a company having a webpage which is indexed by google is advertising, but advertising in an index of services is wildly different from paying an influencer on tiktok to do a dance video that just happens to have a tree stump being removed in the background, as if by accident, with the company name visible. I think anti-advertising people are largely fine with a yellow-pages-like list of companies, with a search engine that indexes company websites, with word-of-mouth questions and reports about what services exist out there. Will it be harder for a new company that spends $10 on a purse made in vietnam and $20MM on advertising to convince consumers it's a necessary fashion item worth $20k to take off? Yes, absolutely. Will it be harder for a plumber in my area to get business? Honestly, probably about the same, people who need a plumber will usually look at the list of businesses offering the service in their area, and a new plumber can easily get added to google maps and slap together a site.
Taek 2y ago
The difference between an advertisement and a post on HN is that the HN comment (presumably) is not a paid comment - people are saying things on HN because they genuinely believe them, not because someone with an agenda paid them to pretend to believe them! And that makes all the difference. I am very happy to read that an HN commenter prefers one specific brand of car - assuming that this is an unbiased comment and the commenter was not paid to say that. On the other hand, if they *were* paid to say they like a specific brand of car, they are deceiving me! They are exposing my brain to ideas and associations that are inauthentic, and making me more likely to buy a certain brand of car even though that car cannot get mentioned on its own merits, and instead needs to pay for attention. Also, I'm not sure I agree that "advertising is how monopolies are broken" - my read on the advertising industry is that larger companies today have a massive advantage over smaller companies, and that smaller businesses would be more able to succeed if advertising was removed. And the advantage more or less comes from the larger brands ability to afford to expose a larger number of people, and that exposure has superlinear effects on purchase behavior (because not only are you exposed to it, but your friends are talking about it, and their family is talking about it, etc).
horsawlarway 2y ago
Both perspectives have truth. Some ads are abusive. Some ads compel behavior that is obviously bad for the participants. Take all the sports gambling ads right now. Take loot boxes with flashing visuals for children. Some ads are fine. They are informative and useful, and can provide value. I'm my opinion, we have leaned too far towards the bad. The useful is being drowned out by ads that take advantage of any social or emotional vulnerability we have. Banking on physical rewards systems geared towards smaller, more meaningful social groups to make us give up attention, time, and money. I'm in favor of banning ads. Let's try the other end of the spectrum for a bit. To be crass: let God find his own in the ads world. The good products will still spread organically. It's still advertising. It's just not the bullshit we have today.
BobbyTables2 2y ago
Ironically the companies with the most widespread advertising are the LARGE companies! They pollute our daily lives with stupid ads. I’m really not concerned about the car I don’t have, the quality of my floor mop, or the latest prescription pharmaceutical that my primary care doctor is too stupid to even spell. I really feel for the small companies. But outside extremely industry specific mediums, they just can’t afford to advertise much. They have to be known from reputation and search engine results. So, while I see the point you are trying to make, by volume, the bulk of advertising is utter crap.
- kortilla 2y ago
  This doesn’t match my experience. Are you maybe talking about untargeted ads like in the Super Bowl? My feed on social apps and youtube is very frequently filled with small businesses near me.
dietr1ch 2y ago
You assume that advertisement is the only way of discovering business, which is not true.
wat10000 2y ago
The difference is that we’re reading these comments willingly. A great deal of advertising is imposed on people who don’t want it. If I don’t want my behavior swayed by HN, I can stop reading it. If I don’t want my behavior swayed by advertising, I can... close my eyes every time a bus goes by, avoid any public place with an operating television, and never check my mail?
- bearcobra 2y ago
  Yes? Unfortunately others can communicate to us without our consent. That could be ads or someone writing you a postcard, or yelling on a street corner. All of those can influence us and not all of them are welcome but I don’t think it’s reasonable to think we can live in a world where we can fully control it without becoming hermits.
  - spencerflem 2y ago
    But one way we can control some of it is by banning advertising
    - bearcobra 2y ago
      I’m curious how you’d define advertising. Is it just something applied to another form of media? Would you count an end cap at the super market? Does the McDonald’s logo on the big sign you can see from the highway count? Or the coke machine inside?
      - spencerflem 2y ago
        Any definition I could pick would be more than none, which us what we have now. An easy start is all billboards, everything ublock origin considers an ad, TV/radio/magazine ones. All very unambiguous
  - wat10000 2y ago
    Maybe not, but only because it’s impractical, not because advertising is actually a good thing.
asdf6969 2y ago
The companies exist to serve me and not the other way around. Companies don't have any inherent right to exist. If they can't make money off of me they're probably not doing anything that matters. Do you mean real progress like washing machines and more efficient solar panels or fake progress like another beverage company to replace the ones that are already there? Real progress will spread by word of mouth. It will be much slower, but I'll accept that to never see an ad for another McDonalds new burger of the month. Also, search engines are the perfect solution for discoverability here. I don't care if lawn care ads pop up if I search "lawn care service" but I don't want to have this thrown at me when I watch a YouTube video about Napoleon
harshreality 2y ago
They can still promote their products, by sending them to social media reviewers no-strings-attached, or by posting through non-commercial channels. For instance, corporate representatives can promote their company's offerings on their own accounts on twitter or reddit. What they should not be able to do is pay people, who have a media or influencer "brand", to say things about a product or service. Or pay media for a time slot during which a corporate agent spouts propaganda about the company's product or service. Or send a product to a reviewer as part of a contract for a review, even if it's supposedly a "fair and honest" review.
colordrops 2y ago
You really think 1) advertising is the only channel for finding new products and 2) people will just give up looking for new products without ads?
dclowd9901 2y ago
Gotta disagree. The most disruptive up and comers seem to get there through word of mouth. I mean look at Figma. I haven't seen a single Figma ad since they began as a company (they probably exist somewhere) but they really rocketed off through word of mouth among the design community. Pretty sure slack was similar in this regard. Both disrupters. I have no actual evidence of this always being the case but I would imagine given the fact the nature of a disrupter is that they're usually operating on principles of delivering a better product but without the budget to go crazy with advertising, they have to find more grassroots methods of market penetration.
RajT88 2y ago
There is a balance to be maintained for sure. I am known for bemoaning the almost-exclusively scammy ads on Facebook (and getting downvoted for it here). But - also - my wife and I opened a restaurant recently. We need exposure. We are buying ad space on social media, having influencers review the place, working on putting up fliers at public bulletin boards, and investigating mailers (snail mail). It's clear, we're not going to make a go of it without connecting with more customers. If it was just me and her working it, we'd be in the green but we have day jobs and pay our (necessary) employees fairly.

ranger_danger 2y ago

The states that have banned billboards seem to get by just fine though.

rayiner 2y ago

You probably don’t need advertising now that the internet exists and people can just research what they need.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

Advertising may have been necessary the way you're describing in the 1950's but it's now so much easier to move information around. As for all communication being a bit like advertising, a significant threshold has been crossed once you're paying to have your information elevated above that of your peers. If we didn't allow that, the noise floor would be lower, and it would be possible to achieve the benefits of advertising without the harms. For instance, suppose I'm looking for a plumber... there are only maybe fifteen within a reasonable distance. There's no need for the plumbers to pay some third party for the privilege of being first in the list. I can limit my search criteria so that the results are narrow enough that I can consider each one, and they can instead spend that money on pipes or toilets or whatever.

28304283409234 2y ago
And also, in communication there is respectful and disrespectful. Screaming in my face is communication. It is not respectful.

bentobean 2y ago

You’re right. New plan: let’s ban all paid advertisements except for those that are approved by a committee of government officials. /s

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
No seriously, let's ban all advertisements. If you want that info, you can seek it out, it should not seek you.

kelnos 2y ago

I don't really care if companies -- of any size -- can reach me or not. If I want a service they provide, I will actively seek them out. Large companies already have a huge advantage over small/new companies in that they have much more money to spend on marketing and advertising. If anything, banning paid advertising helps level the playing field. People will still find out about small and new businesses if paid advertising was banned. In fact I learn about most smaller players through word of mouth and other non-paid sources.

Kerrick 2y ago
When you seek them out, how will you find them?
- jrvarela56 2y ago
  Not through ads - you can be sure of that!
- TheDong 2y ago
  In the old days, if I wanted someone to remove a tree stump in my yard, I would ask my neighbor who had a stump removed who did it for them, or open the yellow pages. In the modern age, I would open google maps (where companies can, for free, volunteer to be listed), or google.com and search. The yellow pages are ads, and in a sense a company having a webpage which is indexed by google is advertising, but advertising in an index of services is wildly different from paying an influencer on tiktok to do a dance video that just happens to have a tree stump being removed in the background, as if by accident, with the company name visible. I think anti-advertising people are largely fine with a yellow-pages-like list of companies, with a search engine that indexes company websites, with word-of-mouth questions and reports about what services exist out there. Will it be harder for a new company that spends $10 on a purse made in vietnam and $20MM on advertising to convince consumers it's a necessary fashion item worth $20k to take off? Yes, absolutely. Will it be harder for a plumber in my area to get business? Honestly, probably about the same, people who need a plumber will usually look at the list of businesses offering the service in their area, and a new plumber can easily get added to google maps and slap together a site.

Taek 2y ago

The difference between an advertisement and a post on HN is that the HN comment (presumably) is not a paid comment - people are saying things on HN because they genuinely believe them, not because someone with an agenda paid them to pretend to believe them! And that makes all the difference. I am very happy to read that an HN commenter prefers one specific brand of car - assuming that this is an unbiased comment and the commenter was not paid to say that. On the other hand, if they *were* paid to say they like a specific brand of car, they are deceiving me! They are exposing my brain to ideas and associations that are inauthentic, and making me more likely to buy a certain brand of car even though that car cannot get mentioned on its own merits, and instead needs to pay for attention. Also, I'm not sure I agree that "advertising is how monopolies are broken" - my read on the advertising industry is that larger companies today have a massive advantage over smaller companies, and that smaller businesses would be more able to succeed if advertising was removed. And the advantage more or less comes from the larger brands ability to afford to expose a larger number of people, and that exposure has superlinear effects on purchase behavior (because not only are you exposed to it, but your friends are talking about it, and their family is talking about it, etc).

horsawlarway 2y ago

Both perspectives have truth. Some ads are abusive. Some ads compel behavior that is obviously bad for the participants. Take all the sports gambling ads right now. Take loot boxes with flashing visuals for children. Some ads are fine. They are informative and useful, and can provide value. I'm my opinion, we have leaned too far towards the bad. The useful is being drowned out by ads that take advantage of any social or emotional vulnerability we have. Banking on physical rewards systems geared towards smaller, more meaningful social groups to make us give up attention, time, and money. I'm in favor of banning ads. Let's try the other end of the spectrum for a bit. To be crass: let God find his own in the ads world. The good products will still spread organically. It's still advertising. It's just not the bullshit we have today.

BobbyTables2 2y ago

Ironically the companies with the most widespread advertising are the LARGE companies! They pollute our daily lives with stupid ads. I’m really not concerned about the car I don’t have, the quality of my floor mop, or the latest prescription pharmaceutical that my primary care doctor is too stupid to even spell. I really feel for the small companies. But outside extremely industry specific mediums, they just can’t afford to advertise much. They have to be known from reputation and search engine results. So, while I see the point you are trying to make, by volume, the bulk of advertising is utter crap.

kortilla 2y ago
This doesn’t match my experience. Are you maybe talking about untargeted ads like in the Super Bowl? My feed on social apps and youtube is very frequently filled with small businesses near me.

dietr1ch 2y ago

You assume that advertisement is the only way of discovering business, which is not true.

wat10000 2y ago

The difference is that we’re reading these comments willingly. A great deal of advertising is imposed on people who don’t want it. If I don’t want my behavior swayed by HN, I can stop reading it. If I don’t want my behavior swayed by advertising, I can... close my eyes every time a bus goes by, avoid any public place with an operating television, and never check my mail?

bearcobra 2y ago
Yes? Unfortunately others can communicate to us without our consent. That could be ads or someone writing you a postcard, or yelling on a street corner. All of those can influence us and not all of them are welcome but I don’t think it’s reasonable to think we can live in a world where we can fully control it without becoming hermits.
- spencerflem 2y ago
  But one way we can control some of it is by banning advertising
  - bearcobra 2y ago
    I’m curious how you’d define advertising. Is it just something applied to another form of media? Would you count an end cap at the super market? Does the McDonald’s logo on the big sign you can see from the highway count? Or the coke machine inside?
    - spencerflem 2y ago
      Any definition I could pick would be more than none, which us what we have now. An easy start is all billboards, everything ublock origin considers an ad, TV/radio/magazine ones. All very unambiguous
- wat10000 2y ago
  Maybe not, but only because it’s impractical, not because advertising is actually a good thing.

asdf6969 2y ago

The companies exist to serve me and not the other way around. Companies don't have any inherent right to exist. If they can't make money off of me they're probably not doing anything that matters. Do you mean real progress like washing machines and more efficient solar panels or fake progress like another beverage company to replace the ones that are already there? Real progress will spread by word of mouth. It will be much slower, but I'll accept that to never see an ad for another McDonalds new burger of the month. Also, search engines are the perfect solution for discoverability here. I don't care if lawn care ads pop up if I search "lawn care service" but I don't want to have this thrown at me when I watch a YouTube video about Napoleon

harshreality 2y ago

They can still promote their products, by sending them to social media reviewers no-strings-attached, or by posting through non-commercial channels. For instance, corporate representatives can promote their company's offerings on their own accounts on twitter or reddit. What they should not be able to do is pay people, who have a media or influencer "brand", to say things about a product or service. Or pay media for a time slot during which a corporate agent spouts propaganda about the company's product or service. Or send a product to a reviewer as part of a contract for a review, even if it's supposedly a "fair and honest" review.

colordrops 2y ago

You really think 1) advertising is the only channel for finding new products and 2) people will just give up looking for new products without ads?

dclowd9901 2y ago

Gotta disagree. The most disruptive up and comers seem to get there through word of mouth. I mean look at Figma. I haven't seen a single Figma ad since they began as a company (they probably exist somewhere) but they really rocketed off through word of mouth among the design community. Pretty sure slack was similar in this regard. Both disrupters. I have no actual evidence of this always being the case but I would imagine given the fact the nature of a disrupter is that they're usually operating on principles of delivering a better product but without the budget to go crazy with advertising, they have to find more grassroots methods of market penetration.

RajT88 2y ago

There is a balance to be maintained for sure. I am known for bemoaning the almost-exclusively scammy ads on Facebook (and getting downvoted for it here). But - also - my wife and I opened a restaurant recently. We need exposure. We are buying ad space on social media, having influencers review the place, working on putting up fliers at public bulletin boards, and investigating mailers (snail mail). It's clear, we're not going to make a go of it without connecting with more customers. If it was just me and her working it, we'd be in the green but we have day jobs and pay our (necessary) employees fairly.