zlacker

>>iambat+(OP)
Advertising is a parasitic force on society. It sucks up your attention with a willful intention to change your purchasing behaviour, often knowing that the new behavior is worse for you.

If ads were merely about being informative, they would be boring. But ads want to manipulate, so they have to be flashy and appeal to your emotions.

They pollute your mental headspace, and have no place in a healthy society.

Let's ban billboards. And then let's follow that up with a general purpose ban on paid advertisement.

>>Taek+F1
What is an advertisement? Let’s see if we can define this before deciding on an all out ban.

>>whall6+B3
paid advertisement is easier to define, I think. If entity A pays entity B to show/tell me something, that's an ad.

>>Retr0i+N3
So paid actors in movies are ads? They are paid for by the production company.

Presumably we want to keep paid actors, but then the loop hole is that Procter & Gamble becomes a media production company.

That's actually close to how things used to be eg in the US.

>>eru+14
Procter & Gamble is welcome to become a media production company, but they can't push their media by paying for distribution - any paid distribution is advertising. Instead, distributors have to want to distribute the content because they think their audience will be interested in consuming it - a high bar to hit if the main purpose of your media is to push a product.

Paid actors, and for example company representatives, do count as acting on behalf of the company and therefore don't count as paid advertising. But, whatever medium they are talking to has to be an unpaid medium. A company representative (or paid actor) talking about a product in an interview is okay if the interviewer / distributor is not being paid to host the interview. (or if the interviewer / distributor is the company itself - that's also allowed).

Does that give massive companies an advantage? I would argue not really, because it creates massive overheads for pushing advertisement content, and since you aren't allowed to pay for distribution, it means that people have to be interesting in consuming your content of their own volition instead of other content that isn't trying to push products.