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
There are definitely a lot of problems with advertising and I am all for regulating them but this seems like such an extreme response. As someone who has worked for smaller organizations (both for profit and nonprofit) without some form of advertising people just would not hear about us at all.

>>morsec+V3
If all advertising was banned, other institutions would set up to fill the vacuum. Imagine variations of Consumer Reports but that stretch across all sorts of industries.

Essentially, to get the word out about your organization or product (whether for-profit or non-profit), you'd have to convince someone with an audience to feature you *without paying them to do it*. In other words, your organization or product or service has to be genuinely interesting on its own.

And, since nobody else is allowed to pay for people's attention, you aren't competing with budgets, you are competing with other ideas. Imho this makes for a much more interesting information landscape.

>>Taek+o4
"And, since nobody else is allowed to pay for people's attention, you aren't competing with budgets, you are competing with other ideas. Imho this makes for a much more interesting information landscape."

Sounds nice in theory. "You want to like us on facebook and get a perk for free on your app? (No money involved)."

"Hey you maybe want a job? We will give one to those who spread the word most about us"

Devil is in the details. And humans have a lot of details.

Otherwise I am all for starting to ban of advertisement, what is possible.

But disruption should be expected. A lot.

(I mean, most of the internet is financed by ads)

>>lukan+e6
The law has pretty firm definitions for things like "in kind payments" and "consideration" - because these sorts of sneaky ways of rewarding people are also relevant to bribes!

So we aren't treading into new uncharted territory where the details need to be figured out - humans have been playing this game for centuries and the law already has effective tools for navigating the tricky parts.