The part that really struck me was framing advertising and propaganda as essentially the same mechanism - just with different masters. Having built targeting systems myself, this rings painfully true. The mechanical difference between getting someone to buy sneakers versus vote for a candidate is surprisingly small.
What's frustrating is how the tech community keeps treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease. We debate content moderation policies and algorithmic transparency, but rarely question the underlying attention marketplace that makes manipulation profitable in the first place.
The uncomfortable truth: most of us in tech understand that today's advertising systems are fundamentally parasitic. We've built something that converts human attention into money with increasingly terrifying efficiency, but we're all trapped in a prisoner's dilemma where nobody can unilaterally disarm.
Try this thought experiment from the article - imagine a world without advertising. Products would still exist. Commerce would still happen. Information would still flow. We'd just be freed from the increasingly sophisticated machinery designed to override our decision-making.
Is this proposal radical? Absolutely. But sometimes the Overton window needs a sledgehammer.
P.S. If you are curious about the relationship between Sigmund Freud, propaganda, and the origins of the ad industry, check out the documentary “Century of the Self”.
To me it sounds a lot like "What if we made drugs illegal?"
It would? I don't understand why you and others see this as a hard law to craft or enforce (probably not constitutional in the US).
The very nature of advertising is it's meant to be seen by as many people as possible. That makes enforcement fairly easy. We already have laws on the books where paid advertising/sponsorship must be clear to the viewer. That's why google search results and others are peppered with "this is an ad".
> To me it sounds a lot like "What if we made drugs illegal?"
Except drugs/alcohol can be consumed in secret and are highly sought after. The dynamic is completely different. Nobody really wants to see ads and there's enough "that's illegal" people that'd really nerf the ability of ads to get away with it.
There's not going to be ad speakeasies.
What you seem to be missing is that, in the end, it's all about risks vs. potential gains.
As it stands, advertising is relatively cheap and the only risk is to lose all the money spent on it.
Once it's made illegal, that formula changes massively since now there's a much bigger risk in the form of whatever the law determines - fines, perhaps losing a professional license or the right to work on a certain field, or to found and/or direct a company, perhaps even jail time!
You're right, it will probably still exist in some ways in some contexts. I bet it wouldn't be nearly as pervasive as it is today though, and that's a win. And if it's not enough, up the stakes.
Separately, I was saying that we can't usefully debate the pros and cons of such a vague proposal. You can postulate that some sort of vaguely defined prohibition would have no drawbacks, but any concrete policy proposal will in fact have drawbacks, and in some cases those will outweigh their advantages.
> I was saying that we should consider the possible enactment of such laws in the light of the knowledge that people will try to circumvent them and will sometimes succeed
That should always be the case when discussing any laws. If you don't consider that people will try to circumvent them, there is no point in considering punishment for when they do, and ultimately there is no point to the law.
> rather than assuming that, if advertising is prohibited, there will be no advertising.
As above, I would expect no one to make such assumptions.
> Separately, I was saying that we can't usefully debate the pros and cons of such a vague proposal.
I don't see why not. I suspect most proposals and ideas start vague, and by discussing their pros and cons and further refining them, we get to more concrete, more actionable ones.
> but any concrete policy proposal will in fact have drawbacks, and in some cases those will outweigh their advantages.
This is a truism, I'm not sure what value it adds to the discussion.