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Advertising = compensating someone to promote a product / company. It’s about the compensation. That makes it advertising. Regular booking.com is fine. Paying

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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
What would YouTube look like? (Genuinely happy to read “like the good old days” as an answer!)
- shaky-carrousel 9mo ago
  It would be way smaller and with real content, instead of crappy slop (AI or otherwise).
  - permo-w 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
  Alright, if you want to be pedantic abuot the definition, then ban compensated advertising.
  - dahart 9mo ago
    Seems like you missed the point; banning compensated advertising wouldn’t fix the problem at all.
    - fsflover 9mo ago
      I don't see why it wouldn't.
      - dahart 9mo ago
        Even though I gave an example of a huge swath of advertising that isn’t “compensated”?
        ajam1507 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
      I once had the idea to create a HackerNews equivalent to tvtropes called hntropes that crowd sources all of these patterns.
      - permo-w 9mo ago
        Do it
      - 9mo ago
throw0101c 9mo 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 9mo ago
  Pretty much
- atwrk 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
kenjackson 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
      That's what the judiciary is for. Really!
  - lores 9mo 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.

nozzlegear 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago

What would YouTube look like? (Genuinely happy to read “like the good old days” as an answer!)

shaky-carrousel 9mo ago
It would be way smaller and with real content, instead of crappy slop (AI or otherwise).
- permo-w 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
Alright, if you want to be pedantic abuot the definition, then ban compensated advertising.
- dahart 9mo ago
  Seems like you missed the point; banning compensated advertising wouldn’t fix the problem at all.
  - fsflover 9mo ago
    I don't see why it wouldn't.
    - dahart 9mo ago
      Even though I gave an example of a huge swath of advertising that isn’t “compensated”?
      - ajam1507 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
    I once had the idea to create a HackerNews equivalent to tvtropes called hntropes that crowd sources all of these patterns.
    - permo-w 9mo ago
      Do it
    - 9mo ago

throw0101c 9mo 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 9mo ago
Pretty much
atwrk 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago

kenjackson 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
    That's what the judiciary is for. Really!
- lores 9mo 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.