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.
Advertising is how small and new companies can reach customers. It's how monopolies are broken. It's how progress reaches the masses.
Yes, it is willfully intended to change people's behavior. So are many of our posts on HN. That is an important purpose for communication!
Large companies already have a huge advantage over small/new companies in that they have much more money to spend on marketing and advertising. If anything, banning paid advertising helps level the playing field.
People will still find out about small and new businesses if paid advertising was banned. In fact I learn about most smaller players through word of mouth and other non-paid sources.
The problem is there are some services you don’t even know exist that could be much better than how you’re currently solving a problem. Think prevention vs treatment of a problem.
For a concrete example:
I learned about a dog groomer that comes to your house this way. Maybe it should have been obvious there would be some that made house calls but searching Google maps for groomers tends to return the ones with locations that you drive to.
Dog hates the car. Problem solved with a thing I didn’t know existed.