zlacker

>>smnrg+(OP)
I can’t stop thinking about this article. I spent a long time in ad tech before switching to broader systems engineering. The author captures something I've struggled to articulate to friends and family about why I left the industry.

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”.

>>gcp123+Cj
A lot of winners today are those that get away with greyzone illegal practices. The same would happen in a "ads are illegal" world. People would pay for word of mouth, or even pay influential people to casually talk about it, but it'd be off the books etc.

>>qoez+fz1
I live in Vermont, where billboards are illegal. It's great, there is so much less visual pollution driving anywhere.

And yes, some people do try to push it, renting space to park their hay carts that happen to have their business information on the side.

But you know what? Those cases eventually get dealt with too, and overall, the law is a complete win, even with a few people testing the line.

>>lambda+WL1
This is the best and most obvious example of successful anti-advertising legislation, NYC as well prohibits billboards in most places which is a blessing.

The fact that the MTA is now plastered in flatscreen ads is an example of huge overreach, and also an example of how better funding for public utilities like the subway eliminate the "need" for advertising that the MTA claims.

Unfortunately, this is the system working as designed per the capitalists. Underfund public utilities to make the public more dependent on the for-profit private sector. Banning ads is communism for this mindset.