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Define "advertising". I feel this might be hard to do. For example is my blog talking about Windows considered as Advertising? What about my blog discussing pr

• stingraycharles 8mo ago
  Advertising = compensating someone to promote a product / company. It’s about the compensation. That makes it advertising. Regular booking.com is fine. Paying booking.com to allow your results to appear higher is not. Regular Google Maps to register your restaurant is fine. Paying Google Maps to promote your restaurant is not. It’s not that hard to implement. Advertising is pretty well defined.
  • nozzlegear 8mo ago
    How would something like Github Sponsors work? Lots of projects use a "sponsor us for $LARGE_SUM and we'll mention you in our readme and release notes" model.
    • 1718627440 8mo ago
      Maybe advertising should be banned in stuff that you are not the author for. Google putting ads into their blog posts is fine, Google putting ads into the search result is not. So on a Github project, the maintainer can put adds, Github can not unless it's their project.
  • Barbing 8mo ago
    What would YouTube look like? (Genuinely happy to read “like the good old days” as an answer!)
    • shaky-carrousel 8mo ago
      It would be way smaller and with real content, instead of crappy slop (AI or otherwise).
      • permo-w 8mo ago
        It would be dead. Google would shut it down or sell it, but who is going to buy billions of dollars a year in costs for no advertising revenue in return? Youtube's hosting costs would put a massive dent in even some hypothetical really nice billionaire's wallet. Apple could afford it and they'd run it a million times better, but would they even consider putting so much loss on their books for the sake of ... PR?
        • shaky-carrousel 8mo ago
          A subscription based YouTube dead? That makes no sense. And a YouTube without terabytes of slop would be way easier to maintain.
          • permo-w 8mo ago
            What percentage of YouTube's revenue do you think is from subs? The slop is already there. Even without the slop, which it would be borderline impossible to identify en masse, the hosting costs are still astronomical. I appreciate your idealism, but Youtube without advertising revenue would be a financial black hole, and even if it survived, creators would simply be the ones taking the hit Unless you're suggesting Youtube would just start again from zero, in which case it would just fail and it might as well be the same as dying
  • bruce511 8mo ago
    >> Advertising = compensating someone to promote a product / company. That's a definition, sure. I feel like it leaves loopholes (under this definition spam isn't advertising, and I guess affiliation programs are?) If I pay someone to print flyers is that advertising? If I pay squarespace for my site, is that advertising? What if I need a Google maps subscription to place pins? Is placing a pin then advertising? Even if the subscription gives me other abilities? Under your definition I guess YouTube creators can't be sponsored. And all existing videos with sponsorship need yo be removed? And I guess no online watching of sports (lots of people paid to wear a logo there...) Presumably no product placement in Netflix shows (not sure what to do with old content?) Of course I'm not paid to advertise MiraclePill. My channel exists purely thanks to patreon. No, I don't know that my "executive level" patreons are all MiraclePill employees... No, I don't pay Google for ads, the ads are free when I purchase GoogleCoin which I buy because I expect GoogleCoin to go up in value... >> Advertising is pretty well defined. Alas, I fear it isn't...
    • wasmainiac 8mo ago
      Being a little pedantic here no? 80/20 rule, it’s defined well enough to encompass 80% of advertisements. Anything beyond that is tolerated or illegal spam. And if the situation arises that ads are being used unjustly the legal definition will eventually shift.
    • brabel 8mo ago
      What are you trying to say, that it's impossible to define anything legally without edge cases?? That's bullocks. > If I pay someone to print flyers is that advertising? What the hell, we're talking about internet... you can't put printed flyers on the internet. > If I pay squarespace for my site, is that advertising? No. It's your site, not a third-party site promoting your site! > What if I need a Google maps subscription to place pins? Is placing a pin then advertising? If you promote it somehow, yes... if you just say there's a business there, no, since you're not actively promoting it. Information that something exists by itself cannot be included in "promotion". > And all existing videos with sponsorship need yo be removed? Yes, or re-uploaded without the sponsor segment. > And I guess no online watching of sports (lots of people paid to wear a logo there...) There could be exceptions for ads placed on the real world which are not paid for by the site/creator. There's always cases that must be allowed, no prohibition is absolute. > Presumably no product placement in Netflix shows (not sure what to do with old content?) To be honest, I wouldn't mind subtle product placements in shows. That's a lot less hostile than actual ads we see today on the Internet. > Of course I'm not paid to advertise MiraclePill. If you lie that you're not paid by someone while you are, like with any law, you can be prosecuted for it. > Alas, I fear it isn't... You didn't show what you think you did.
  • dahart 8mo ago
    Promotion of anything at all is advertising, with or without compensation. The word advertising is pretty well defined, and the dictionary definitions don’t usually mention compensation, e.g. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/advertise https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/advertise. An example I’m sure you would consider advertising - consider Google advertising Google Fiber in Google search results, or Facebook advertising business services on Facebook, or Apple, Netflix, Cinemark advertising their own shows & products in their own channels. You’ve seen lots of these, I’m sure you would consider them ads, but it’s not the compensation that makes them ads.
    • xigoi 8mo ago
      Alright, if you want to be pedantic abuot the definition, then ban compensated advertising.
      • dahart 8mo ago
        Seems like you missed the point; banning compensated advertising wouldn’t fix the problem at all.
        • fsflover 8mo ago
          I don't see why it wouldn't.
          • dahart 8mo ago
            Even though I gave an example of a huge swath of advertising that isn’t “compensated”?
            • ajam1507 8mo ago
              Surely you're just being pedantic by pointing out that platforms can advertise themselves without paying money to themselves. If those same advertisements were on another platform they would be compensated ads.
  • yunohn 8mo ago
    > Paying booking.com to allow your results to appear higher is not. But booking takes a cut of the booking in all scenarios, so they’re already incentivized to prioritize results that result in more profit for them. This all gets very tricky unfortunately.
    • arter45 8mo ago
      Yes, but that is different. Scenario A: Booking.com wants to increase their profits so they analyze their results and prioritize the best ones to reach their target. Regardless, Booking takes a cut of everything. Scenario B: if you pay Booking $10k you can get to the first page even if you are a random 1-star hotel. Booking takes a cut of everything and also profits by getting money in exchange for more visibility of certain results.
    • 1718627440 8mo ago
      That's not advertising, that's how it works for every store. A grocery store has a larger absolute margin on a more expensive product, given the same relative margin.
  • Someone 8mo ago
    > Advertising = compensating someone to promote a product / company. > It’s about the compensation. That makes it advertising. if you rent a billboard or space on Google.com, you’re not paying to promote a product/company; you’re just renting space. So, if you then, yourself, put your company logo there, you’re saying that’s not advertising, but if you pay your nephew to put it there, it is?
    • atoav 8mo ago
      You got it reversed. If you're Google and someone is paying you to put content on your website or give it some sort of preferential treatment within your already existing website, that is advertisement. It doesn't really matter whether some company paid for it or the company CEO had their nephew pay for it through aoney laundered network of obfuscation.
      • card_zero 8mo ago
        Hosting, or domains, does seem to be a loophole. Renting an entire website for your own product's advert is fine because that's "your website". What about subdomains? Or what about TLDs, suppose the operator of a TLD like .promo has a nice front page with a directory of all the sites, searchable, with short excerpts - all provided for free to the benefit of those who pay to own those sites. This could be like Facebook, or it could be like Neocities. I'm imagining a walled garden that treats its denizens equally, but they gain special attention from being there, and it costs money. Maybe that's OK.
  • roysting 8mo ago
    You will just see the shift of the methods used in government corruption to circumvent such rules, e.g., your wife gets a wildly lucrative “book deal” right after you do something, and then when time has passed, you also get a “book deal” or are hired to speak at exorbitant fees or get hired in some BS position or are made a member of a board, or your children are hired as executives or even made board members. The problem with the direct approach, i.e., “ban advertising”, is that it is hung up on a specific term, not the underlying dynamic/system. It’s fighting a symptom, not the disease/cause.
    • _qib3 8mo ago
      Well, yeah. There are always ways to get around laws. But this is like saying taxes are a bad idea because tax evasion exists.
      • permo-w 8mo ago
        It's the eternal hacker news debate: "let's regulate x" "but surely we can't regulate x because defining x is complicated" "plenty of things are complex and are regulated, also here is a definition that covers almost all cases and the rest can be left to judicial nous" "but people will just evade the law anyway" Honestly pick a post about the EU at random and you'll be able to find some variety of this chain of conversation. It's so general an argument that it could be made about literally any law that's ever existed, making it entirely null if you believe in any regulation whatsoever
        • throwup238 8mo ago
          I once had the idea to create a HackerNews equivalent to tvtropes called hntropes that crowd sources all of these patterns.
          • permo-w 8mo ago
            Do it
          • 8mo ago
  • throw0101c 8mo ago
    > Advertising = compensating someone to promote a product / company. So basically all full-time Youtubers who do in-video ad reads, including, but not limited to: MKBHD, Linus Tech Tips, Veritasium, Smarter Every Day, minutephysics, Computerphile, Tom Scott, Patrick Boyle, The Plain Bagel, Sailing La Vagabonde, Sailing SV Delos, Gone with the Wynns, etc.
    • baq 8mo ago
      Pretty much
    • atwrk 8mo ago
      There is no fundamental right to a particular business model. This wouldn't mean this type of content would disappear - for every single business producing such content there's a bunch of people doing the same for free. And then there's patreon et al., and funding for education etc.
      • throw0101c 8mo ago
        > This wouldn't mean this type of content would disappear - for every single business producing such content there's a bunch of people doing the same for free. For some definition of "same" which may or may not mean "equal" (in the sense of quality, quantity, etc). It brings to mind some rich people running for public office and putting forward the idea because they're rich they can't be influenced/lobbied or something. Or the general public sometimes complaining about politicians giving themselves raises: well, if you only pay peanuts you're going to get monkeys running things (more than already). There is more opportunity for different types of people and channels to happen because the money allows people to recompensed for their time/effort. Free only scales so far when you have rent/mortgage, groceries, kids, a partner you may wish to spend time with, etc, to worry about. > And then there's patreon et al., Except for MKBHD and Linus Tech Tips, all (most?) the channels I listed have Patreon, and still find it necessary to in-video ads because it's not enough.
        • int_19h 8mo ago
  • kenjackson 8mo ago
    What people who advertise indirectly on the internet. For example the ads around a baseball field - can that baseball game no longer be streamed? Product placement in a movie - can that movie only be in theaters and DVD, but not Netflix? Could streaming companies show previews of coming shows on their own platform? I also assume it means that sites like X could no longer charge for verified accounts.
    • true_religion 8mo ago
      I'm curious what the point is in calling out obvious edge cases that can be addressed by either the legislation allowing for discretion in enforcement via the FCC or other department, or having the court system directly address this factors? What's important is agreeing or disagreeing with the spirit of the law, not trying to get a HN comment to give you a bullet-proof wording.
      • kenjackson 8mo ago
        The obvious edge cases are often the difference between a law having any teeth at all. Or the edge cases can be such a big loophole that everything fits under it.
        • lores 8mo ago
          That's what the judiciary is for. Really!
      • lores 8mo ago
        Because as long as there is a theoretical edge case, nothing should be done, your model is flawed. That's a mentality very common amongst software engineers. In the real physical world, even tying your shoes has edge cases. Hmm, thinking of it, it may explain the love of sandals in said community.
• Kerrick 8mo ago
  > The Commission believes these terms are sufficiently clear and declines to add definitions of these terms. - https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/federal_register_notices/definitions-and-implementation-under-can-spam-act-16-cfr-part-316/050119canspamact.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/federal_re...
• rrgok 8mo ago
  Just answer this question: do you get a compensation for showing me something that I did not click for?
• kerkeslager 8mo ago
  Let's drop the charade where you pretend you don't know what advertising is. You're smarter than that, and your playing dumb act would be more persuasive if you didn't ask leading questions that clearly show you know the answers. This isn't a good faith argument. I mean are you really asking whether creators embedding "sponsored by" scenes is an ad as if you don't know? C'mon, don't insult your readers with this nonsense. HN commenters are not legislators, and even if random HN commenters can't draft legislation, that doesn't mean that a minimally-funded team of experts would have any difficulty with the problem.
  • maccard 8mo ago
    OPs comment isn’t a charade, he’s pointing out that it’s a very blurry line. If I receive compensation from company A for a product, and I genuinely like it, is it advertising if I talk about another item on their product line that I bought because of the free item I got? If I run a retail business, and have a better deal with a provider, am I allowed to prioritise their results? If I run an AI SAAS, with a bring your own key model, am I allowed to recommend a provider that I think gives the best results, even if my margin is bigger on that model? I’m not trying to gish gallop you here - the point isn’t to cherry pick any specific example it’s that advertising isn’t just a billboard or a sponsored VPN segment in a YT video. > HN commenters are not legislators That doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to have a discussion about it. > a minimally funded team of experts would have any difficulty with the problem. I’m a hugely pro EU person, and support the vast majority of what they do. The Cookie Banner is a disaster and has just resulted in a massive step back for the Internet worldwide. The USB C charger rule missed the forest for the trees. Their stance on technology has been poor, misguided and misunderstood, and often pushes the needle towards US companies winning out.
    • saalweachter 8mo ago
      >> HN commenters are not legislators > That doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to have a discussion about it. I would even go so far as to say that HN commenters are going to be the ones trying to evade/break/find the loopholes in whatever laws the legislators write.
    • 8mo ago
• reddalo 8mo ago
  What about just banning personalized advertising? Like: you can pay Google Maps to show your result as sponsored, but Google can only show it to either everybody or randomized people.
  • conductr 8mo ago
    They’re still incentivized to show you as much as possible. I don’t think this moves the needle much.
    • amelius 8mo ago
      It will move the needle on user tracking, so it's still a useful suggestion.
• toofy 8mo ago
  anything where you take any kind of compensation/gift to display/discuss a product.
• littlecranky67 8mo ago
  In a lot of countries in the EU, advertising for tobaco products, prescription medication, lawyer/docts are prohibited. That ban has been working quite well for decades.
  • onion2k 8mo ago
    This is true, but it's worth adding that there are no blog posts about those things either, or articles, discussions, etc except in very limited niche places dedicated to talking about them. If there was a ban on 'internet advertising of anything' then it would basically kill all discussion of any products on the internet.
    • littlecranky67 8mo ago
      It wouldn't, we in Germany have clear laws when you have to mark something in media as "advertisment" - it is whenever you received a "reward" in order to talk about something, you have to mark it. A reward is already when you receive a product for free, or get reimbursed for travel cost etc. It is clearly definable. Yes, we will never reach 100% success rate, but 95% is already a big step.
    • xiconfjs 8mo ago
      Like what the internet was before advertising? ;)
      • onion2k 8mo ago
        Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1992. Doubleclick started in 1995. So yes, like those glorious 3 years when hardly anyone was online and most access was via a 28kbps modem. I'd take adverts over that. :)
    • ndriscoll 8mo ago
      Paid blogs/articles are worse than nothing. They are anti-information. If you did successfully eliminate those things, the currently niche places with honest discussion would be easier to find.
• Moldoteck 8mo ago
  i would ban any advertising that targets populations on individual/subgroup behavior. Maybe targeting on country/language level at most, otherwise - just untargeted ads. Another option could be artificial slowdown of loading the content. Eg each content display general element (post, video, image) to be loaded with 0.5-1sec delay from the current in focus content
• atoav 8mo ago
  You get money from others to show certain content on you platform.
• xg15 8mo ago
  I think ad networks and tracking companies have a pretty good idea about what advertising is.
• jodrellblank 8mo ago
  To quote Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it". > "Your suggestion is, unfortunately, not implementable." How about trying it before giving up? Cookie banners were implementable. Laws requiring ID schemes are being implemented. Know-your-customer laws have been implemented. GDPR has been implemented. HIPPA and Sarbanes-Oxley have been implemented. Anti-pornography laws have been implemented despite the gotcha of "but but how will anyone tell what's porn and what isn't?". "not making a decision" is a decision. Companies are exploiting advertising - trying to avoid doing anything that might be imperfect because it's hard is taking a position, and it's a position in favour of explotative advertising.