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”.
What if we outlawed surveillance capital instead? "Ad tech" is about exploiting information about individuals and their actions, what if that part of it was illegal because collecting or providing such information about individuals was illegal? (like go to jail illegal, not pay a fine illegal).
By making that illegal, collecting it would not be profitable (and it would put the entity collecting it at risk of legal repercussions). "Loyalty cards", "coupons", "special offers just for you", all gone in an instant. You could still advertise in places like on the subway, or on a billboard, but it would be illegal to collect any information about who saw your ad.
If you're over 50, you probably read a newspaper. And in reading the newspaper might have looked at the weekly ad for the various supermarkets in your neighborhood. That never bothered you because you weren't being "watched". The ad was made "just for you" and it didn't include specials on only the things you like to eat. When read a magazine you saw ads in it for people who like to read about the magazine's subject matter. Magazines would periodically do 'demographic' surveys but you could make that illegal too.
Generally if you're under 40 you've probably grown up with the Internet and have always had things tracking you. You learned early on to be anonymous and separate your persona in one group for the one in another. That people have relentlessly worked to make it impossible to be anonymous angers you to your core and their "reason" was to target you with ads. By maybe that it was "ads" was a side effect? That is probably the most effective way to extract value out of surveillance data but there are others (like extortion and blackmail).
I resonate strongly with the urge to slay the "Advertising Monster" but what I really want to slay is how easily and without consequence people can violate my privacy. I don't believe that if you made advertising illegal but left open the allowance to surveil folks, the surveillance dealers would find another way to extract value out of that data. No, I believe choking off the "data spigot" would not only take away the 'scourge' of targeted advertising, it would have other benefits as well.
Advertising is virtually impossible to stop, but more than that, is not inherently evil. Most countries include laws on how you can advertise. For example, you can't lie and make a claim that your product can't live up to, you can't use certain words or phrases, and you have to have disclaimers in some situations.
In the mid-90s when Yahoo was a young company, they had a simple advertising model. The ad would be placed next to the section of the site relevant to the category. If you were searching for watches, a watch ad would be next to it. The advertiser would know how many times the ad was served and how many times it was clicked on.
They didn't have deep demographic data like they do today.
The surveillance capitalism model is the predatory model. Advertisement is only one part of that industry.
With that, let me outline where I think proponents would argue there is a benefit
- Consumers get "relevant ads".
If an ad company knows you're in the market for a new grill, it's better for them to show you advertisements for grills than for soap. The argument made here is that the consumer wastes less time, has less of an issue with ads (since they're relevant) and is better informed (arguing that ads are a form of information).
- Advertisers waste less money
The argument here goes that an advertiser who puts out an ad on TV or a magazine only has some vague notion of who the audience is. If they know who they want to target to buy their product, they don't to spend money advertising to people who aren't going to buy their product.
- It lets smaller advertisers come in for a niche audience
Let's imagine that your product or service is very niche. You're likely to have less resources to spend on advertising, and you need to make your ad spending count. With surveillance capitalism and targeted ads, you can reach your target market.
I don't personally view these benefits as outweighing the net negative of the incredible amount of information collected on people and the way this information is used not only to get people to spend more (since that's what advertisement is) but also for psychological and even political manipulation as we saw in the last US election where different people would be shown customized ads to stir up their fears and doubt.