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”.
I can't because a world with magic and world peace is more realistic and believable.
It's impossible. How do you even define advertising? If you define it conservatively, then advertising will skirt through the loopholes. If you define it liberally, then you have an unfair, authoritarian system that will definitely be selectively enforced against political enemies.
And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.
This would result in a better world still, without the authoritarian system you describe. No need to get it perfect the first try, just start small.
For an example of this in action, drive through any of the US states that do not allow billboards.
The only thing special is our geography and history. It's really hard to launch an attack unless you're in Canada and Mexico. So the US smartly made treaties and agreeemtns instead of repeating the bloody history Asia and the now EU went through as they constantly battled neighbors.
Only Australia has such a similar advantage and instead they had to war with nature's deadliest critters trying to kill them (they arguably lost).
I mean sure, in the 50s the main driver of prosperity was whether a country had avoided being invaded and that isn't necessarily a result of a country's legal system. But the 50s was a very long time ago now and the era since then has been quite equal-opportunity outside pockets of disaster in Africa and the Middle East. The USSR, Chinese, Euro and US experiences haven't been determined by external factors or historical determinism as much as internal policy choices made in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s with a 20-30 year lag before the decisions start to turn up in real life.
Even if we indulge in wild conspiracy and pretend there is a shadowy cabal in Washington that decided to crush the USSR and exalt China economically, that cabal would have had to implement its decisions by somehow guiding internal policy choices in the respective nations. Nobody has managed to do anything to either of them through external pressure that holds a candle to the internal choices made.