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”.
Perhaps you could turn into a subsistence farmer making every home product you own on your own or in a small commune, or perhaps you and a group of employees could buy your existing employer.
But the other more realistic method is that you would start your own business so you no longer have to work for someone else.
19% of all American adults are starting or run a business. It's a very common way to make a living.
IMO the idea of removing advertising entirely would essentially entrench the status quo even further. People would only know brands like Coca-Cola, Tide, and Apple, the brands they knew about the day the ads shut off. There would be no chance for other companies to enter markets because they would have no realistic way of spreading the word about their alternatives, not even for small local businesses.
The proposal is not just radical, it's downright moronic if you've ever been in the shoes of owning your own company.
I wouldn't be surprised if these brands are so dominant because they can afford to flood the country with ads.
They need to remind you about them even though you already prefer them and know they exist because they want you to buy more than you would otherwise.
I still think a lack of advertising for smaller competitors really would be devastating. DuckDuckGo and Reddit achieved pretty amazing recent growth aided by major outdoor ad campaigns. These were sites that were not market leaders in their categories and had a lot of catching up to do.