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>>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
> If ads were merely about being informative, they would be boring.

I disagree. Lots of entities want to get information out, and they're all competing for attention. This includes a lot of manipulative information, but it's also true for important information. Say that I'm a government agency tasked with informing the public that a certain brand of car seat is unsafe, or just reminding people that wearing safety equipment is a good idea. I can't just publish it on the agency website, confident that everybody will routinely check it. People don't work like that. So, if I really want people to listen, I have to compete in the same way that ads do. And this of course explains why the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's online presence is batshit insane: https://bsky.app/profile/cpsc.gov . It needs to be. They need Sentinel Burrito to warn you that unattended cooking is the #1 cause of house fires because otherwise our stupid brains won't listen.