What if we banned all advertising? Not regulate it—abolish it. This proposal would transform manipulation machines, and maybe save democracy itself. A thought experiment worth considering.

The idea feels like sci-fi because you’re so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.

The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn’t been valid for decades.

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    8 months ago

    Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.

    It arbitrary pollutes any environment it’s conducted in, and causes secondary harms to non-participants by incentivising insecure hoarding of private information with the intent to better target individuals.

  • RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world
    1·
    8 months ago

    The economy should exist to serve real needs of the people. All that advertisement does is create a fake desire for consumption which simply wastes respurces.

  • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    It’s also a form free market distortion that actual economic conservatives should hate.

    Rather than having firms compete for who can make the best product or service, advertising instead lets them compete based on who can best psychologically manipulate the population en masse.

    It’s a “rich get richer” mechanic that any halfway competent dev would’ve patched out for balance reasons a long time ago.

  • heavydust@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    8 months ago

    The web has been cleaned with uBlock Origin. Doing that IRL would be great. And for every stupid counter argument (I’ve seen those on HackerNews), I don’t tolerate brain washing.

    The most stupid argument I’ve seen is from an American who said “what if you don’t know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?” Well, that’s the job of the doctor. Your society has failed if you rely on marketing to eat random chemical dangerous stuff.