I&#x27;m extremely skeptical that there&#x27;s any meaningful reform to be had with liability for misuse. Demonstrating misuse is a substantial legal hurdle that no one is going to litigate in court. Even with severe and proactive enforcement, it&#x27;ll just incentivize shell companies to act as liability shields.

Another approach with overlapping effects is to make companies extremely liable for misuse or mismanagement of personal information.There would still be advertising, and maybe even some personalized advertising, but in many cases they might decide the risk isn&#x27;t worth it.It would also impact data-brokers and operations that don&#x27;t strictly rely on direct-to-consumer advertising, like background checks, but credit scores, sales leads, etc.

Europe has perhaps stricter rules on ads, but they&#x27;re absolutely not banned, at most they&#x27;re restricted but that just means you&#x27;ll see different ads, rather than no ads

Growing up around Seattle, I had never seen any billboard ads on the freeway. I had no idea it was heavily regulated in Washington State! I wish other states would ban them.

You&#x27;re referring to outdoor advertising; the article is talking about something much more fundamental. But of course you would know that if you had read it

Which is normal in a lot of European countries

In the US advertising is considered a business expense. So we equate it with investing in infrastructure or research, both of which reasonably would be subtracted from your revenue to determine your tax burden.It&#x27;s very dumb.

Don’t need to make it illegal just make it not deductible.

&gt;I&#x27;d love to see the internet become relatively non profitThe stocks haven&#x27;t gone down enough for your liking?

Sign me up for a monthly internet pass. Shit, bake it into my monthly internet access fee and make it so the service providers then pay back into internet infrastructure. Just like we do for radio and TV.I&#x27;d love to see the internet become relatively non profit, instead of the current for-profit, for absolutely shit model we are living in.

How many things on the internet do you really need and that are paid for via advertising?

The early internet, which I was a part of, and think of fondly, didn&#x27;t have anywhere near the utility of the modern internet. It was fun to explore, but you couldn&#x27;t DO much.I hosted my own site, in my bedroom. I hosted a counter-strike server, too. Comcast hadn&#x27;t shut hosting down yet.Anyway, that has nothing to do with online banking, services, security, apps, media. Let&#x27;s just use youtube--one of the greatest sites of all time, hands down. Huge utility, huge entertainment. Free, via advertising. Would have never happened without it.There&#x27;s so, so much trash, webspam, etc on the modern web. I hate it, too. I don&#x27;t even have warm feelings about youtube anymore. But advertising opened a lot of doors.

Ha ha, so your answer is, everything that advertising pays for, which is like 99% of the internet usage today, would go away.

I remember fondly the early internet which was full of hobby sites and forums and niche link rings.  This was an innocent better time where the internet was full of small scale creativity and sharing and mostly kindness.

This is something I explain too. I’d gladly pay maybe 10 cents for IntelliJ but it’s the Pirate Bay otherwise. Just set the pricing appropriately. It costs $0 to make a copy so it’s an infinite margin. Same with most SaaS. About 20 cents per month should be the maximum. Any more than that is gouging.Hiring engineers is even worse. I think about $20&#x2F;hr should suffice but there’s this big fuss kicked up about “they’re not willing to pay enough”.

This is the great white whale of the internet. A platform for this would clearly be a thing of value, but extremely difficult to do because you need to booststrap a two-sided market in an environment where all the existing established players are incentivized NOT to participate.

At first I scoffed at this idea, but then I had a tangential thought: what keeps me shopping at Amazon or ebay all the time instead of smaller retailers? It&#x27;s not product quality or selection, that&#x27;s for sure. It&#x27;s mostly the friction of signing up for another site, entering my payment and shipping information, adjusting my mail filters, etc. What would really help would be complete automation of this process, where I click &quot;Checkout&quot;, my browser goes through its workflow of asking me once if I approve, and a day or two later I get my product. So I guess if you had payment processing built into the user agent then you can have all the micro transactions you want.So what&#x27;s keeping this from being a reality?

The problem with microtransactions is, who defines the minimum unit? Instead of just publishing a $0.25 article, a site could publish a $1.25 five-part series, each part duly ending in its own cliffhanger. And they&#x27;ll do it as long as enough readers still keep reading it. (It doesn&#x27;t matter how you&#x27;d prefer to read it, it only matters what they can get away with before profits start to decline. And it wouldn&#x27;t have to be as drastic as this example, it would be a more subtle trend of less information expressed in more words over time.)Also, with 10x or more value on each reader&#x27;s copy of the article, say hello to more stringent copyright enforcement (either legally or socially: how dare you replicate the work of this beloved blogger and deprive them of income!). And the complete death of independent search engines.I just don&#x27;t see ubiquitous microtransactions leading to anywhere good on a social level. And of course, without a ban on advertising (however that&#x27;s supposed to work), you&#x27;d just end up with sites full of ads on top of microtransactions.

&gt; Obviously credit card transaction fees would be a problem,Card transaction fees here in Norway can be extremely low if the merchant uses BankAxept, much lower than Visa, Mastercard, etc. And it even works if the network is down.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bankaxept.no&#x2F;en&#x2F;services&#x2F;backup-solution" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bankaxept.no&#x2F;en&#x2F;services&#x2F;backup-solution</a>

There must be a reason someone hasn&#x27;t invented a browser plugin for microtransactions on the internet?I&#x27;ll gladly pay 25 cents to read an article from a news website, but I won&#x27;t subscribe for a whole year for $25+, especially when there&#x27;s dozens&#x2F;hundreds of sites.Obviously credit card transaction fees would be a problem, but that could be mitigated by depositing say $15 at a time and deducting from the balance each time.

I am pretty sure that if people had to find away to make things profitable they would.There are plenty of payment mechanisms already used online.IMO it would be well worth paying for things so I am the customer instead of the product.Many things could be replaced. My use of FB could be replaced by forums, for example. I would quite happily pay the bills for old style forums that replace the FB groups I admin (although not the costs imposed by the Online Safety Act, but that is a UK only problem).

We can rely on donations, look at Wikipedia or personal blogs. The best parts of the internet are free and non-profit.

This seems to focus on online advertising. The question is how would you pay for many things on the internet?

I think it is a good question, but there are some answers. For one thing, it is paid for, though a system set up for the purpose of putting commercial speech on someone else&#x27;s profit making media.Many laws do draw lines in areas that are equally difficult. Its a problem, but far from a fatal one.

&gt; Were you paid to say it, with the intent of motivating said person, to buy a product?For the waiter, this is probably true.

Well, the thought piece had one simple answer: Were you paid to say it, with the intent of motivating said person, to buy a product?Though, this piece made me groan with the buzzwords &quot;a micro-awakening of the self.&quot; Great way to make me cringe if I send it to someone.

Any laws with blurred lines will be used by the people in power against their political adversaries to keep them in power.

&gt; I say it sounds like their laws are captured by the pachinko industry.It wasn&#x27;t just the pachinko industry that tied the hands of Japanese government. It was the people too. It&#x27;s a lot harder to ban something and keep it banned when everybody wants it. Thankfully, not many people want ads, but pachinko was popular enough that it makes sense to continue to let people do it. You&#x27;re right about still getting a benefit. Even after carving out exceptions, banning gambling broadly otherwise is effective enough to solve a lot of the problems that unregulated gambling can cause.I do think video game loot boxes are something that needs regulation. Not just because it is gambling, but because the games can be unfair and even adversarial. Casinos exploit and encourage adult gambling addicts but at least those games are required to be &quot;fair&quot; (no outright cheating) and they have to be honest about how unfair the odds against you are. A supposedly impartial third party goes around making sure casinos are following the rules. Video games don&#x27;t have any of that and they&#x27;re targeting children on top of it.

&gt;video game loot boxesIs buying packages of random baseball&#x2F;pokemon&#x2F;etc cards gambling then?

Many lines are hard to draw but we benefit from trying to draw them. Worrying too much would be bikesheddingThe biggest example that comes to mind is gambling. Japan says it&#x27;s not gambling if the pachinko place gives you balls and then you have to walk next door to a &quot;different&quot; company to cash out the balls. I say it sounds like their laws are captured by the pachinko industry.Video game loot boxes are technically legal but most of us don&#x27;t want children gambling. Even if the game company doesn&#x27;t pay you for weapon skins, there&#x27;s such a big secondary market that it constitutes gambling anyway. Just like the pachinko machines.

Hard rules are fallible, but we can lean on precedent in the supreme court for an adjacent topic (obscenity): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;I_know_it_when_I_see_it" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;I_know_it_when_I_see_it</a>

Yep, such an obvious &amp; simple answer.I’m always amazed by how much ink gets poured before somebody mentions the obvious: this question has already been answered in a different context.

The answer is the same way we banned cigarette ads.

There are two ways of trying to achieving goal. One is to start from big picture, think if we even want to do something, then plan how to go there. Second is to start from technicalities and probably immediately go nowhere.You are starting from technicalities before you even took the moment to actually think of goal is worth it.If it is worth it and we would indeed be better off - plan how to go there, it may not be easy, but it will be possible this way or another. If it is not worth it after all - just say it, no technicalities needed, redirect time and effort elsewhere.

I think this is the best insight on this thread. Laws of this kind would be like banning billboards in cities, which has been done.

How would this work for a personal blog? Would I need to be careful not to endorse or even talk about companies and products? And if I didn&#x27;t have to, wouldn&#x27;t that open the door for advertising masquerading as news or opinion? Genuinely interested in this.

Put this way I almost think we should ban anything that makes “people into the product”

Does a website count as broadcast, since anyone with an internet connection can access it (sans the Great Firewall and similar)?

It’s not speech that needs to be regulated, it’s broadcast (which should not have 1A protections at nearly the same level). Even if a waiter is giving recommendations, those are limited to the people at the table and there is clearly a mutual exchange of value. Broadcast (aka Industrial) advertising is something we accept, but not because it particularly benefits the viewer. It benefits the broadcaster and advertiser and makes the viewer into a product.

So if you accept GP&#x27;s waiter&#x27;s rosé suggestion, it was advertising, and if you don&#x27;t it was not?(Schrösédinger, if you will.)

So if a restaurant rents a property to build a really nice looking outdoor dining area, do they have to surround it with walls so people arent convinced by it to dine there?

Money. It’s advertising if mony or anything equivalent flows in any form, even after the act.Many countries have laws against corruption that are structured like that.

&gt;- Advertising and marketing are when an entity pays some other entity to transmit contentSo all usage of the internet would apply?

In the communications industry there are SOME fairly bright definitions:- Advertising and marketing are when an entity pays some other entity to transmit content- Public relations is when an entity, without paying, causes another entity to transmit content- Public affairs is when an entity causes a governmental entity to consume specific content at minimum, up to possibly influencing decisions. It should go without saying that this is without paying as well, otherwise it&#x27;s corruption&#x2F;bribery

Worth questioning who that benefits the most. It definitely benefits consumers in the sense that they won&#x27;t be bombarded by advertisements.But it also benefits large businesses that already spent millions advertising and now have a much deeper moat.It kind of reminds me of college sports before NIL deals. Back then, you couldn&#x27;t pay college recruits. You&#x27;d think this levels the playing field, right?In fact, we saw the opposite effect. You see schools spending millions to add waterslides to their locker rooms, or promising &quot;exposure&quot; that smaller schools can&#x27;t offer. You essentially had to spend twice as much on stuff that indirectly benefited the players.I&#x27;d expect similar things to happen among businesses. Think &quot;crazy stunt in Times Square so that an actual news site will write about it.&quot;

If money exchanges hands. If you pay someone to distribute flyers, or you pay someone to run ads.If you expect a this for that that benefits the giver. Like say a pharma offering free airfare and lodging to a medical conference if you talk up their product to patients.There will be corner cases, obscure circumstances, unforeseen loopholes, etc., but this would be a good start.

So we end up in a system in which those with money to litigate will do what they want? I&#x27;d rather have airtight laws instead.

No. This is called selective enforcement and is the worst thing in the world. It gives the enforcers the option to pick on whoever they want and give a pass to whever they want, as if there were no law at all. There is effectively no law at all, because literally anyone doing anything can be called either guilty or innocent at the whim of the person doing the enforcing, or whoever controls them.

There would be a chilling effect on speech. People would be afraid to speak or be imprisoned for saying the wrong things. North Korea is the only country that bans advertising.

The ambiguity of these questions is a feature rather than a bug.Being unable to tell when something is &quot;advertising&quot; forces everyone to think twice before hawking their wares, which is exactly what we want if we intend to kill ads. The chilling effect is precisely the intention.It’s the engineer’s curse to believe that airtight laws are automatically better, or that justice springs from mechanistic certainty. The world is fundamentally messy, and the sooner we accept its arbitrariness, the sooner we can get to an advertising-free world.

The free samples are interesting. No one got mad because people offered cheese samples at the grocery store, because they&#x27;re not forced to eat them. I dread passing by the perfume island when I go shopping because the vendors can be persistent, but IMO that is also not blatant advertising. Offering free samples of perfumes inside magazines also doesn&#x27;t offend anyone, but that&#x27;s clearly paid advertising and would be illegal.

Airline credit card announcements on flights is a perfect example of what should be banned, but getting the law right is tricky.IMO it should be illegal due to using a system for safety announcements for non-safety profit related reasons.

In addition to sibling commenters mentioning incentive-side (eg. paid to promote) considerations, I also propose both an &quot;immersion&quot; and&#x2F;or &quot;consent&quot; component.When you are dining, and are suggested food pairings -- I&#x27;m there to eat, so suggesting something food related from the same establishment, that may enhance my meal experience, makes sense and generally does not feel unduly interruptive. In a way, I consent to being offered additional interesting and available food items at that time and place. I would not find it acceptable if the waiter brought out a catalog and tried to sell me shoes or insurance.In a similar way, I don&#x27;t mind (and often even enjoy or appreciate) movie trailers at the beginning of movies. I&#x27;m there to watch a movie, and in a fairly non-interruptive way (before the start of the movie) I am presented with some other movies coming out soon. Nice. I consent to seeing them at the start of a movie, and they are relevant to the subject matter. I would certainly be irritated if they were hoisted upon me in the middle of the movie, or if they were about new cars coming out soon.I have also at times been actively searching for something I need or want to purchase, but am unsure what exactly I am looking for or what are the best options. At that time I would certainly be more open and interested in seeing advertisements regarding the types of items I am interested in. I would &quot;consent&quot; to seeing interest based advertisements.Summary: I do not enjoy being interrupted with advertisements completely unrelated to whatever activity I am taking part in. I only want to see them when it is related to what I am doing, AND when I consent to seeing them.

I would start with obvious things, like banning distracting blinking advertisement next to roads and go further from there.Rule of thumb, all aggressive unwanted information.Clear? For sure not, like you said. But I am considering (rather dreaming) moving to La Palma, a vulcano island that banned all light advertisement (they did so, because of the observatories on top, but they are cool).Still, a city without aggressive lights would be nice. Some lights are probably unavaidable in big cities, but light that is purposeful distracting, should be just banned.And online is kind of a different beast, as we voluntarily go to the sites offering us information (but thank god and gorhill for adblockers)

There&#x27;s a world of difference between announcing the existence of a product to potentially interested demographics, and abusing people&#x27;s privacy by collecting their personal data in order to build a profile of them so they can be micro-targeted by psychologically manipulative content that is misleading or downright false—oh, and their profile is now in perpetuity exchanged in dark markets, and is also used by private and government agencies for spreading political propaganda, and for feeding them algorithmic content designed to keep them glued to their screens so that they can consume more ads that they have no interest in seeing... And so on, and so forth.Whatever happened to product catalogs? Remember those? I&#x27;m interested in purchasing a new computer, so I buy the latest edition of Computer Shoppers Monthly. Companies buy ad space there, and I read them when I&#x27;m interested. The entire ecommerce industry could work like that. I go on Amazon, and I search for what I want to buy. I don&#x27;t need algorithms to show me what I might like the most. Just allow me to search by product type, brand, and specifications, and I&#x27;m capable of making a decision. It would really help me if paid and promoted reviews weren&#x27;t a thing, and I could only see honest reviews by people who actually purchased the product. This is a feature that ecommerce sites can offer, but have no incentive to.

That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s such a stupid idea. People who want a world without advertising should create a product that will genuinely improve people&#x27;s lives and be forced to work as a salesman selling that product and experience the practicalities of doing so before drawing lines. I&#x27;m not for unsolicited phone calls about my car&#x27;s warranty during dinner, but advertising is not this universal evil that some make it out to be.

&gt; The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That&#x27;s advertising.this is obviously not a clear line. No money is exchanged when I promote my own product through my own channels, nor when I promote my friends products, whether I disclose it as promotion, or disguise it as my genuine unaffiliated opinion. Sometimes it really is a genuine opinion! Even worse: sometimes a genuine opinion becomes an incentivized one later on as someone&#x27;s audience growsthe good news is there is a solution that doesn&#x27;t require playing these cat &amp; mouse games and top down authority deciding what is allowed speech: you want better ways to reach the people who want your product.Ads are a bad solution to a genuine problem in society. They will persist as long as the problem exists. People who sell things need ways to find buyers. Solve the root problem of discernment rather than punishing everyone indiscriminately

Why not just eliminate the sale of personal data? That seems pretty cut and dry.

Does CNN, Fox News, ABC, New York Times and CBS use money to endorse candidates on air? Is that advertising?

Most advertising is done via &quot;influencers,&quot; now...

Commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment.

&gt; The line is clearIt is not. It never is. But that is not a big problem.Around the boundary cases there will be injustice and strife. But only around the boundary cases.We deal with this all the time in our societies. Some societies are better at it than others&quot;The perfect is an enemy of the good&quot;

I&#x27;m wondering if it&#x27;s possible that the reality might be working the other way around than perceived. Could there be steaming can of worms that modern rampant commercial advertising is venting and holding down?Studio Ghibli made ~$220m on Spirited Away. What if they made $2.2T, is the quality going to go up, or down? And, would there be less ads, if no one made even $2.2 on them?

&gt; The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That&#x27;s advertising.Let&#x27;s say I have a journal. It costs money to subscribe. It covers a topic that many college students also study.Can I give the school a free copy? Can I give the teachers one? Can I give the students one? Is this advertising? When does the amount of &quot;value&quot; become offensive?&gt; surfacing the dark data broker market and banning it altogether.This is why this has become a modern problem. I can live with erring on the side of free speech when it comes to advertising, but there is no side to err on when it comes to analytics and targeting.

&gt; The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That&#x27;s advertising.The line is absolutely not clear.Is ABC allowed to run commercials for its own shows?ABC is owned by Disney. Is ABC allowed to run commercials for Disney shows? Is it allowed to run commericals for Disney toys?Can ABC run commercials for Bounty paper towels, in exchange for Bounty putting ads for ABC shows on its paper towel packaging?Literally no money is being exchanged so far.I&#x27;m familiar with a lot of gray areas that courts regularly have to decide on. But trying to distinguish advertising from free speech sounds like the most difficult free speech question I&#x27;ve ever come across. People are allowed to express positive opinions about products, and even try to convince their friends, that&#x27;s free speech. Trying to come up with a global definition of advertising that doesn&#x27;t veer into censorship... I can&#x27;t even imagine. Are you suddenly prevented from blogging about a water bottle you like, because you received a coupon for a future water bottle? Because if you use that coupon, it&#x27;s effectively money exchanged. What if your blog says you wouldn&#x27;t have bothered writing about the bottle, but you were so impressed with the coupon on top of everything else it got you to write?You can argue over any of these examples, but that&#x27;s the point: you&#x27;re arguing, because the line isn&#x27;t clear.

Maybe you should post a proposal for a law that&#x27;s a little more specific than &quot;is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That&#x27;s advertising.&quot; Then we can see if it is in fact possible to prevent 99%, or for that matter 50%, of the harm that comes from modern advertising, without outlawing other things.Let&#x27;s consider toomim&#x27;s three examples: &quot;would you like to try a rosé with that dish? It pairs very well together,&quot; giving out free samples, and putting a sign up on your business that says the business name.The first case seems like it would straightforwardly be illegal under your proposal if the waiter is an employee (or contractor) who gets paid by the restaurant, because the restaurant is exchanging money with the waiter in order to promote the rosé, which is a product. It would only be legal if the waiter were an unpaid volunteer or owned the restaurant.The second case seems like it would straightforwardly be illegal under your proposal if the business had to buy the free samples from somewhere, knowing that it would give some of them out as free samples, because then it&#x27;s exchanging money with its supplier in order to promote its products (in some cases the same product, but in other cases the bananas and soft drinks next to the cash registers, which people are likely to buy if you can get them into the store). Also, if one of the business&#x27;s employees (or a contractor) gave out the free samples, that would be exchanging money with the employee to promote a product. You&#x27;d only be in the clear if you&#x27;re a sole proprietor or partnership who bought the products without intending to give them away, changed your mind later, and then gave them away yourself rather than paying an employee to do so.Putting up a sign on the business that says the business name is clearly promoting products, if the business sells products. Obviously the business can&#x27;t pay a sign shop. If the business owner makes the sign herself, that might be legal, but not if she buys materials to make the sign from. She&#x27;d have to make the sign from materials unintentionally left over from legitimate non-advertising purchases, or which she obtained by non-purchase means, such as fishing them out of the garbage. However, she&#x27;d be in the clear if her business only sells services, not products.A large blanket loophole in the law as you proposed it is that it completely exempts barter. So you can still buy a promotional sign from the sign shop if you pay the sign shop with something other than money, such as microwave ovens. The sign shop can then freely sell the microwave ovens for money.In this form, it seems like your proposal would put at risk basically any purchase of goods by a product-selling business, except for barter, because there is a risk that those goods would be used for premeditated product promotion. Probably in practice businesses would keep using cash, which would give local authorities free rein to shut down any business they didn&#x27;t like, while overlooking the criminal product-promotion conspiracies of their friends.So, do you want to propose some legal language that is somewhat more narrowly tailored? Because a discussion entirely based on &quot;I know it when I see it&quot; vibes is completely worthless; everyone&#x27;s vibes are different.

Well money must be exchanged to put up a sign outside of your business. Therefore it would be illegal.

The definition in the second sentence would ban sponsorship of public television, among other things. I don&#x27;t think that plan nets out to a positive.

&gt; The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That&#x27;s advertising.So that would exclude:- listing your house, or car in the classifieds- buying a sign for your business (ad discussed in other posts)- buying a garage sale sign- buying a for sale sign, or flyers for your house for sale- paying a realtor to sell your house- paying a reporter or professional reviewer to write a review. Even if they are paid by a newspaper&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;consumer report site, money exchanged hands for something that promotes a product.- distributing a catalog- paying a cloud provider or VPS provider or website hosting service to host a website that promotes your productAlso, what exactly constitutes a &quot;product&quot;? Does a service count? If not, that is a pretty big loophole. What about a job position? Or someone looking for employment?And finally, advertisement in some form is kind of important for making customers aware your product exists. Word of mouth isn&#x27;t very effective if you don&#x27;t have any customers to begin with. I would expect removing all advertising to have a chilling effect on innovation and new businesses.To be clear, I think the current advertising environment is terrible, and unhealthy, and needs to be fixed. But I think that removing all advertisement would have some negative ramifications, especially if the definition of an ad is too simplistic.

What if I &quot;win&quot; a BMW and I can&#x27;t stop talking about it on social media?

&gt; is money being exchanged in order to promote a product?So if I paint my store front&#x27;s sign myself, I&#x27;m good, but if I pay a signwriter to paint it, it&#x27;s illegal?I guess I better become &quot;friends&quot; with a signwriter, so that they don&#x27;t mind making a sign or two for me &quot;for free&quot;. And so that I don&#x27;t mind giving them a widget or two from my store sometime in the future.

&gt; Someone I know mentioning a product because they want to recommend it to me? Not advertising.Except that it is, and it&#x27;s why social media is so important for marketeers; the best kind of advertising is word-to-mouth, so generating discourse about products is big business.Anyway, without strict legislation and tight controls on social media &#x2F; chat &#x2F; RL, how would you know whether they would be getting paid or not?It&#x27;s a legal and &#x2F; or philosophical conundrum, not to mention even more of a legal whack-a-mole than it already is.

We don&#x27;t need to go into absurd discussions in order to prevent 99% of the harm that comes from modern advertising.The line is clear: is money being exchanged in order to promote a product? That&#x27;s advertising.Someone I know mentioning a product because they want to recommend it to me? Not advertising.Giving out &quot;free&quot; samples? Presumably someone is being paid to do that, so advertising.We can later quibble about edge cases and how to handle someone putting up a sign for their business. Many countries have regulations about visual noise, so that should be considered as well.But it&#x27;s pretty easy to distinguish advertising that seeks to manipulate, and putting a stop to that. Hell, we could start by surfacing the dark data broker market and banning it altogether. That alone should remove the most egregious cases of privacy abuse.

So no third-party advertising. But that would then create bundling schemes where the restaurant sells you a bundle of their goods and some third-party goods together, for a kickback on the backend, or they make referrals.

How do grocery stores work in this model?

I would propose &#x27;unsolicited salesmanship&#x27;.If I enter your restaurant, car dealership, etc. then you can pitch &amp; try to up-sell your goods and services to me.If I drive down a motorway or use your website, third-parties can&#x27;t advertise their goods and services at me from spots you&#x27;ve sold them. (But you can tell me it will be faster to exit onto your toll road or that I should buy or upgrade my membership plan on the site.)

Most things that people post online, voluntarily, is essentially advertising of one form or another.

Vaccine ads are a great example, in that large parts of the population consider them as fake propaganda. Trump supporters were up in arms against Biden&#x2F;Dems for promoting vaccines during COVID. With your logic RFK Jr would be very happy!

No paid advertising, whether that involves financial compensation, in kind gifts, or something else.There would be no commercial ads online if google received no kickbacks to show ads. There would be no influencers, either. I&#x27;d be okay with non-profits and government agencies advertising benevolent things to us, like vaccinations.The only hard part is to develop systems to actually ensure nobody is receiving compensation if they are showing a product.I&#x27;d also be fine to make exceptions for internal advertising, e.g. you&#x27;re already on the Google website and Google is advertising their own products&#x2F;services to you.

&gt;What about just restrict it to advertising on the internet?Why? I don&#x27;t see the difference between a webpage and the magazine here, except that I guess you&#x27;re assuming the webpage must be showing an unrelated ad.

What about just restrict it to advertising on the internet?The internet is supposed to be an information retrieval tool. Advertising’s whole goal is to stand between you and the information you actually want. And it does so by trying to anticipate instead of the thing you want, the thing you are most willing to buy next, whether that’s actual products with money or propaganda. Whereas an ad in a magazine about computers offers me relevant ads for products about computers. And if you read old ad copy a lot of it is a serious effort to try and convince you to buy their product. From some kind of argument for it. Instead of simply using statistics and data to predict what you will buy next. So this required the product to actually deliver something to justify the effort to advertise it.

I&#x27;ve heard so many respectable intellectuals use &quot;beg the question&quot; instead of &quot;raise the question&quot; that correcting the usage has surpassed pedantry and gone into ignorance of &quot;definition b&quot;.It&#x27;s like correcting someone on the pronunciation of French-English forte. It just gets you uninvited next time.

It raises the question, it does not beg it. Begging the question is e.g saying &#x27;If advertisement was bad for you it would be forbidden. Since it&#x27;s not forbidden it&#x27;s not bad for us. Therefor we should not forbid it.&#x27;

You don&#x27;t need to draw a precise line, just one where things over the line are clearly undesirable, like billboards on roadways, TV commercials, etc. There are some countries with virtually no advertising. People who visit the DPRK come back saying it&#x27;s like &quot;Ad block for your life&quot;.

Corporate personhood exists so that you can be hired by a company instead of a specific person in HR or have a cellphone contract with Verizon instead of a particular sales associate and companies can buy real estate and so on without requiring a whole bunch of extra legal work defining all the ways in which corporations are legally treated like natural persons. That necessarily includes giving corporations some of the same rights and duties as natural persons. But I do think that corporations have been given too many rights which have been interpreted too broadly. The notion that a corporation has a constitutional right to spend however much money it wants to influence politics due to free speech is ridiculous.

Remind me why corporations are protected by human rights such as free speech.

Good question. Yet, unlock origin manage to filter out 99.99% of all all ads without blocking actual content, so must be possible!!

One man&#x27;s propaganda is another man&#x27;s truth-to-power.There are dangerous consequences to handing the government the authority to ban public communication (even about mouthwash brands) without very careful scrutiny.Imagine if you couldn&#x27;t advertise energy alternatives because oil and gas came first and, with advertising banned, we can&#x27;t even talk about the relative merits of installing solar vs. buying coal-made grid electricity. The status quo will maintain until the planet cooks.

This is precisely the sort of statement that derails the discussion and makes it impossible to even have. I imagine there’s a name for this sort of thing, perhaps some exquisitely long German word?So lets do this: ban all ads in print, video, and in-public. Make the fine so high that you’re going to have to declare bankruptcy and close up shop. Or just straight up revoke corporate charters. There’s your line. I’m happy to start here and negotiate backwards. But this needs to be in effect while we work it out. Advertising is killing us. I don’t need or want myself or my family constantly assaulted by ads.Finally, to be frank I find advertisements a sibling of propaganda. I don’t want either.

“begs the question” means something entirely different than “raises the question”, fyi.

I’d draw the line at publishers.Are you a publisher (ie responsible for every single thing that appears on your platform)? You can show advertising. Otherwise no.I know this isn’t in the spirit of the article, but I like the idea of a ad-spaces and ad-free spaces.

It&#x27;s actually really easy, you&#x27;re not allowed to be compensated for your speech. It&#x27;s free.

Not all countries have the same free speech protections as America. I can easily imagine a country that simply has a bureaucracy whose approval is required to publish TV programming, or one that bans banner ads in social media, billboards, restricts shop signs in various ways, requires all packaging in the store to be black and white, etc. Advertising doesn’t have to ve banned outright. It could be killed by a thousand specific rules targeting the most obnoxious forms, provided there wasn’t a constitutional issue in the country implementing these measures.

Yet we have laws against fraud, rape, and so on. Where do you draw the line for those? There are some crystal clear cases, and there are unclear cases where you could argue forever.So it is for advertising. You don&#x27;t need to draw a clear line for every case before you can make a law.I like how it turned out with email advertising, actually: spam is defined to be whatever people put into their spam folder.

There is no line, to fully and strictly ban advertising we basically have to abandon democracy and capitalism. Advertising and capitalism a so tightly related that you can&#x27;t have one without the other.You want no ads? Cool, let&#x27;s familiarize yourself with North Korea.People might want to rather opt for ethical ad standards and regulations, something fundamental like... GDPR.

&gt;What about a waiter asking you &quot;would you like to try a rosé with that dish? It pairs very well together. Is that &quot;advertising&quot; that would need to be outlawed?Were they paid by a vintner to say that?&gt;What about giving out free samples? Is that advertising, and thus should be illegal?To and by whom? From Nvidia to a GPU reviewer: Yes; from a chocolate shop to a patron: No.&gt;What about putting a sign up on your business that says the business name? Is that advertising?No. Do you have any hard questions?

&gt; This begs the question: how could you reliably distinguish advertising from other forms of free speech?That&#x27;s a great question, but let&#x27;s not lose sight of the fact that failing to legislate on this is 0% reliable. If we even are able to identify and ban 25% of advertising, that level of reliability is a massive improvement over doing nothing. Don&#x27;t fall for the perfect solution fallacy.The reality is that some really basic, careful definitions of advertising would identify a huge percentage of advertising, without catching any cases that aren&#x27;t advertising.As a starting point, if a corporation pays a person or corporation to display their corporation&#x27;s name, product, or logo on a physical property, broadcast, or publication when they aren&#x27;t directly selling your product, that&#x27;s advertising. Maybe you can think of some cases where that catches some stuff it shouldn&#x27;t, and I&#x27;m open to revising it.&gt; What about giving out free samples? Is that advertising, and thus should be illegal?&gt; What about putting a sign up on your business that says the business name? Is that advertising?I think this sort of handwringing is pretty silly. I don&#x27;t care about either of those--I do care about &quot;free samples&quot; in the sense of auto-renewing free trials, but that&#x27;s because the intent is to trick people into forgetting to cancel, not because it&#x27;s advertising.Draw the line very conservatively, making a very clear definition of advertising that we can agree on illegal, and go from there as we see the effects (i.e. what loopholes people start to use). Regulation is an iterative process--start small and build.

This begs the question: how could you reliably distinguish advertising from other forms of free speech?The courts already distinguish &quot;commercial speech&quot; as a class of speech. Would we prevent all forms of commercial speech? What about a waiter asking you &quot;would you like to try a rosé with that dish? It pairs very well together.&quot; Is that &quot;advertising&quot; that would need to be outlawed?What about giving out free samples? Is that advertising, and thus should be illegal?What about putting a sign up on your business that says the business name? Is that advertising?I hate advertising and propaganda. But the hard part IMO is drawing the line. Where&#x27;s the line?

Most likely these algorithms would become useless in an advertisement-free world, where retaining users for longer on the platform no longers means making more money.

More than ads, it&#x27;s engagement algorithms that are killing us. We should outlaw those first and then see where we end up. Engagement algorithms do nothing except ruin society by incentivizing content creators to lie to us, and to make videos that are psychically horrible to society.

Review pages are often ad based. Unless you paid for it. But I still think having to pay for reviews is a better option. That way the reviews are the product not me.

1. Discovery
For known problems, sure! we probably don’t need ads anymore.
But for unknown problems, we still do. When you&#x27;re not even aware that a solution exists, or that your current approach could be improved, advertising can spark that initial awareness. At that stage, you don’t even know what to search for.2. Competition
If you know better alternatives might exist, yes, you can search for them.
But how do you search for better deals, services, or products for every little thing in your life? You don’t. Nobody has the time (or cognitive bandwidth) to proactively research every option. When done right, advertising helps level the playing field by putting alternatives in front of customers. And in doing so, it also pushes businesses to keep their offerings competitive.

Your access to all of that collective knowledge is funded by ad revenue.

&gt; Advertising has consequences, and I’m not a big fan of it—but it’s also a necessary evil.At one time, definitely. Now though? We all carry around all of humanity&#x27;s collective knowledge in our pockets. If you need a solution to a problem you have, if you need a plumber, if you need a new car... you an get unlimited information for the asking.I don&#x27;t remember the last time I responded to an advertisement. If I need things, I search Amazon&#x2F;Etsy&#x2F;local retailer apps or just go to a store. If I need contractors, I check local review pages to find good ones or just call ones I&#x27;ve used before. And some of that I guess you could call ads, but I mean in the traditional sense, where someone has paid to have someone put a product in front of me that I wasn&#x27;t already looking for? Nah. Never happens.

&gt;If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.No it wouldn&#x27;t. If someone opens up a new restaurant a block away there&#x27;s not going to be much word of mouth when it just opened, and even if they make a website, web search will prioritise the websites of existing restaurants because their domains have been around longer and have more inbound links.

Theoretically: yes.Realistically: no, you can’t stop big companies from advertising. Just having multiple shops bearing your logo gives you a level of brand recognition that’s hard to beat. Even if no one advertised, they’d still find ways to dominate the conversation and outshine competitors through sheer presence. You’re right that it becomes a kind of arms race, but in practice, trying to &quot;opt out&quot; often means falling behind.

So, if no one competed to get ahead of competitors, by making better or cheaper products and to grab the available marketshare, we would just have better and cheaper products without it? Sounds flawed to me.

I disagree, one component of advertising is discovering things you didn’t even know existed. Having to actively look stuff like that up would be much harder.

Without advertising you won&#x27;t have search, because that&#x27;s how search engines are funded. And you&#x27;ll also lose pretty much all of the online options for word-of-mouth, too.

I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a zero sum game. Some degree of advertising will make a product more discoverable regardless of whether competitors advertise or not.

&gt;If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.Most consumers don&#x27;t do extensive research before making a purchasing decision, or any research at all - they buy whatever catches their eye on a store shelf or the front page of Amazon search results, they buy what they&#x27;re already familiar with, they buy what they see everyone else buying. Consumer behaviour is deeply habitual and it takes enormous effort to convince most consumers to change their habits. Advertising is arguably the best tool we have for changing consumer behaviour, which is precisely why so much money is spent on it.Banning advertising only further concentrates the power of incumbents - the major retailers who decide which products get prime shelf position or the first page of search results, and the established brands with name recognition and ubiquitous distribution. Consumers go on buying the things they&#x27;ve always bought and are never presented with a reason to try something different.A market without advertising isn&#x27;t a level playing field, but a near-unbreakable oligopoly.

&gt; every solution would be equally discoverable via searchI hate ads but there would be no search engines without ads unless they were backed by governments

&gt; If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.This is unbelievably untrue. Consider clothing brands, large and older labels have an immense advantage over newcomers. Newcomer word of mouth will never come close to some brand that has a store in every mall across the US.With (say) Instagram ads alone, tiny labels can spend and target very effectively to create a niche, and begin word of mouth.Gap and Lululemon would love it if all advertising was shut off today. It would basically guarantee their position forever because of the real estate and present day distribution Schelling point.

If nobody advertised then first mover advantage would be everything. How would a new product come to market and compete with no way of getting new users except word of mouth?

I disagree. Advertising is a zero-sum game. If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.It&#x27;s only when some actors start advertising that the others must as well, so they don&#x27;t fall behind. And so billions of dollars are spent that could have gone to making better products.It&#x27;s basically the prisoner&#x27;s dilemma at scale.

&gt; That&#x27;s what they said about patents, and so far it just means players with more money buy up more patents.That&#x27;s a bit of a strawman argument.&gt; ...Coca-Cola and Google spend huge amounts on advertising just to make people feel okay with the amount of control they have over everything.I agree - some reform is necessary. The current system often exacerbates the imbalance, but completely dismissing advertising ignores its potential role in leveling the playing field for smaller players when done responsibly.

&gt; It also promotes fairer market competition by giving smaller players a shot at visibility,That&#x27;s what they said about patents, and so far it just means players with more money buy up more patents. Do they not buy up more advertising too? Coca-Cola and Google spend huge amounts on advertising just to make people feel okay with the amount of control they have over everything

I don&#x27;t think it should be referred to as a &#x27;necessary evil&#x27; (by the following definition of that term):<pre><code> &quot;something unpleasant that must be accepted in order to achieve a particular result&quot;
</code></pre>
For one thing the term &#x27;advertising&#x27; is broad same as many words (ie &#x27;Doctor&#x27; or &#x27;Computer guy&#x27; or &#x27;Educator&#x27;). Second it&#x27;s not unpleasant although like with anything some of it could be. (Some of it is funny and entertaining).&gt; Advertising has consequencesEverything has consequences. That is actually a problem with many laws and rules which look only at upside and not downside.Unfortunately and for many reasons you can&#x27;t get rid of &#x27;advertising&#x27; the only thing you can do is potentially and possibly restrict certain types of advertising and statements.As an example Cigarette advertising was banned in 1971 on FCC regulated airwaves:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;truthinitiative.org&#x2F;research-resources&#x2F;tobacco-industry-marketing&#x2F;what-do-tobacco-advertising-restrictions-look-today" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;truthinitiative.org&#x2F;research-resources&#x2F;tobacco-indus...</a>

Businesses will then send the discoverers free samples, provide literature, and send “advisers” to talk with the discoverers, and you’ll be right back where you started.

Those existed once.  They were called ‘magazines’.  But they mostly became ad-supported, and then got killed by the Internet.

The idea of product discovery has value. Advertising funds product discovery by taking some of the funds that you pay for goods, and funneling that money to platforms and creators that are willing to help others discover that product.There is an alternative model where we simply pay professional product discoverers. Think influencers, but whose customer is the fan not the sponsor. It would be a massive cultural shift, but doesn’t seem so crazy to me.

&gt; If you pay sociologists and psychologists to design „most effective ad” for you...It doesn&#x27;t actually work like that. A&#x2F;B tests learn the highest-yielding ad. Psychology isn&#x27;t robust enough to actually predict these things.

Ad business stopped to be necessary and started to be almost exclusively evil years ago. If you pay sociologists and psychologists to design „most effective ad” for you, something is clearly wrong. 100 years ago ads were indeed ways of discovering products and services. But now ads are almost exclusively battlefields for more and more money paid for by consumers’ anxiety, wellbeing and health when ads are more and more dishonest and hostile.

For discovery of niche products,The Google search ads(without spying) system is a great solution. The issues of monopoly should be handled of course.And regarding word of mouth: Is word of mouth for great products really random?

Advertising has consequences, and I’m not a big fan of it, but it’s also a necessary evil.It’s easy to dismiss advertising as just a profit engine for ad platforms, but that’s only part of the picture. At its best, advertising plays a meaningful role in solution and product discovery, especially for new or niche offerings that users wouldn’t encounter otherwise. It also promotes fairer market competition by giving smaller players a shot at visibility, and by making alternatives accessible to customers, without relying solely on monopolistic platforms or the randomness of word-of-mouth.That said, today’s ad ecosystem is far from ideal - often opaque, invasive, and manipulative. Still, the underlying idea of advertising has real value. Fair advertising is a hard problem, and while reform is overdue, banning it outright would likely create even bigger ones.

It&#x27;s just paraphrasing the declaration of independence. This is already the established world order.You have an extremist point of view that your right to free speech is granted to you by the government.

&gt; We can debate where that line is, but &quot;it&#x27;s not open for discussion&quot; is objectively incorrect.This is inherently a subjective matter. It&#x27;s not possible to be objectively incorrect on whether or not speech protection should be absolute.

I feel that this is a very black and white view of the issue. I don&#x27;t want to see billboards as I drive down the freeway, but I have no choice (in the US) if I need to get somewhere far away. Several states have banned outdoor billboards, should those governments be dissolved?At some point the public interest overrides an absolute freedom of speech. We can debate where that line is, but &quot;it&#x27;s not open for discussion&quot; is objectively incorrect.

&quot;Congress shall MAKE NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.&quot;What part of that are you confused by? You are making a brash claim that the writ of the state includes the ability to censor speech.Your right to free speech is not granted by anyone. It&#x27;s your natural right. It&#x27;s not possible to separate this right from a human with a law.

&gt; You can wax poetically all you want about endowment by the creator, but try saying racial slurs on daytime TV and see how long that lasts.You&#x27;re conflating two senses of &quot;free speech&quot;. Free speech is an ideal, which our society does not fully reach (as you correctly pointed out). But in the US, &quot;free speech&quot; is also sometimes used to refer to the legal protection from the first amendment. And in your example, that does apply. I can say all the racial slurs I want on TV, and it would be quite illegal to put me in jail for it.

Of course it&#x27;s open for discussion. Free speech is not limitless.You can wax poetically all you want about endowment by the creator, but try saying racial slurs on daytime TV and see how long that lasts.Advertisement is just another form of speech that can be limited.

Any voluntary transaction between two conscious, consenting adults is axiomatically ethical and moral.

Someone else made the point that ads cost money, so this isn&#x27;t about free speech. I guess making advertising free would be the same as banning it since it exists to be sold.

This is free speech. It&#x27;s not open for discussion.Our right to free speech is not granted by anyone&#x27;s consent or by government decree. It preexists the state and cannot be taken away.We hold this truth to be self-evident. We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights.If any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.

&gt; What if we made money illegal?Good luck.

Being downvoted isn’t punishment or silencing. But I find it lazy to simply downvote something because you disagree with what is being said.

I watch crowd here since 2011, and asking cowards not to downvote will probably have opposite effect :)if you disagree with the tribe, you will be punished by the tribe. Some of the tribe can down vote you and so they will use this terrible power to silence anyone who might shake tribes life view :)

&gt; No one is entitled to yell at you “GET 20% OFF THIS UNDERWEAR YOU GLANCED AT YESTERDAY” with a dopamine megaphone in your bedroom. And to track 90% of your life to know when and how to say it. That&#x27;s not free speech, that&#x27;s harassment.The author is off their chair. Yes, even commercial speech is protected as long as it’s not fraudulent. And there are already laws prohibiting nuisances. Advertising isn’t a nuisance in any legal sense; it just comes along with the ride when you willingly consume sponsored media.Listen to and watch only public media, and stop going to sponsored websites and using social media if you want to avoid advertising. It isn’t the most convenient thing, but it’s not impossible.If you disagree with this comment, please respond instead of downvoting. Don’t be a coward.

An outright ban on advertising makes for a compelling thought experiment, but ultimately it&#x27;s too simplistic to work as a real-world solution. The fundamental issue isn&#x27;t advertising per se; rather, it&#x27;s the aggressive exploitation of personal data, invasive tracking, and addictive attention-maximizing techniques that power today&#x27;s ad-driven business models.Banning ads altogether wouldn&#x27;t automatically eliminate incentives for manipulative or addictive content—platforms would quickly shift toward subscriptions, paywalls, or other revenue streams. While this shift might alter harmful dynamics somewhat, it wouldn&#x27;t necessarily remove them altogether. For instance, subscription models have their own perverse incentives and potential inequalities.Moreover, completely removing ads would disproportionately hurt small businesses, non-profits, and public service campaigns that rely on legitimate, non-invasive ads to reach their audiences effectively.Instead of outright banning ads—an overly blunt measure—we&#x27;d likely achieve far better outcomes through thoughtful regulation targeting the actual harmful practices: invasive tracking, dark patterns, algorithmic manipulation, and lack of transparency. A better approach would aim at reforming advertising at its source, protecting individual privacy and autonomy without crippling a large segment of legitimate communication.

Immediately reminded me of something I read a couple of years ago <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jacek.zlydach.pl&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jacek.zlydach.pl&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html</a>, which has some strong opinions on why advertising should be banned

Then your company would be beholden to the Yelp&#x27;s of the world. Pay up or have your listing removed.

I&#x27;ve known several people who developed quite a nice product, but felt that promotion and marketing were unethical. They failed to move a single copy, and wound up bitter and disillusioned.&gt; One micro payment later I have a list of links and reviewsYou won&#x27;t get on those lists nor will you get any reviews without marketing and promotion.

People who pay for consumer research type services. &quot;I want a general-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax that compiles to native code. It should be statically typed and supports both automatic (garbage collected) and manual memory management.&quot; One micro payment later I have a list of links and reviews.  In this case the research is the product instead of me.

I agree that billboards are a form of &quot;visual pollution&quot; that blocks scenic views. But paying for an ad on the side of a bus isn&#x27;t a problem.No, I don&#x27;t think we need to argue about where the line between the two is.

I guess the idea is to ban certain types of advertising. It’s a fun thought experiment and practical — it’s why some country roads don’t have billboards and some do.Going to a conference to promote your product to participants..Do you allow the shills to shill?Well, shills gonna shill— I sure wish I promoted my businesses more. It is uncomfortable at times but that’s not really a good excuse to not promote what you know to be good.

Who is going to know about your product if you cannot advertise it?

I like that a lot. Same reason plastics and fuels should be taxed but not outlawed. If some rich dude wants to drive a land yacht, he can pay it into the welfare system with his gasoline taxes, win-win

I think taxing ad revenue and investing the proceeds in research and social programs is the middle path

I agree and I just wish to god I could simply tell those poor advertisers what I actually am interested in because they are just so consistently wrong and it annoys me.

I actually in principle have no fundamental problem with advertising, but it&#x27;s execution on the internet I have many, many issues with. Putting an ad in a newspaper, or on the side of a building, or during a break in a tv show seems perfectly reasonable to me.What I absolutely have issues with is targeted advertising, having to modify content to make it advertiser friendly (i.e. reasonable people on YouTube having to avoid swearing&#x2F;use infuriating euphemisms for self harm or suicide etc in case it makes the video not advertiser friendly), and the frankly offensive and unjustifiable amount of tracking that goes along with it.I wish we could ban dynamic advertising (can&#x27;t think of a better term, as in targeted, tailored advertising that is aware of what it&#x27;s being advertised against) and just allow static advertising.I also wish it could be codified in law that what is shown to me on my computer is entirely up to me, and if I want to block advertising on my computer, that is my choice, in the same way I can make a cup of tea during the ad breaks in tv, and skip over the advert pages on the paper.

&gt; It&#x27;s speech for sure.Good point. It’s specifically paid speech that’s the problem.

&gt; Except that they can and do, as you outline below. All laws are arbitrary.The third rule follows from the second, the government isn&#x27;t allowed to curtail speech except under extraordinary circumstances which has been whittled down to basically &quot;panic and disorder&quot; and &quot;fighting words&quot;. The other two are civil torts if I&#x27;m not mistaken, you can&#x27;t be arrested for slander or libel. There&#x27;s others but they are extremely limited.&gt; Firstly, the fire thing is a myth.Go spread panic and see how fast you get charged with disorderly conduct or whatever the equivalent local statute is. Bonus points if someone is harmed by your actions.&gt; Secondly, so we&#x27;re just quibbling on &quot;overriding&quot; then?No, the Supreme Court has some pretty hard and fast rules on this.

&gt; First, it is 100% free speech.It&#x27;s speech for sure.&gt; Second, the government isn&#x27;t allowed to make laws prohibiting the exercise of free speech based on the content of said speech. Nor can it take actions which are arbitrary or capricious.Except that they can and do, as you outline below. All laws are arbitrary.&gt; Third, restrictions on free speech MUST fulfill some overriding public good like yelling &quot;fire&quot; in a crowded theater or words meant to incite violence. Slander, libel, &amp;etc.Firstly, the fire thing is a myth. Secondly, so we&#x27;re just quibbling on &quot;overriding&quot; then?&gt; Fourth, why is it even necessary to explain this?Well because none of your points are that conclusive?

None of those things exempt something from speech protection in the US, as far as I&#x27;m aware. Different countries have different laws, but here you are legally allowed to say just about anything (including way worse stuff than any of the things you mentioned).

I&#x27;m not convinced modern advertising qualifies as free speech. It&#x27;s often manipulative, used by bad faith actors, used for tracking, slows websites down, is obtrusive, disrupts concentration, etc.

&gt; Are cigarette ads still free speech?Apparently there was a &quot;significant public health crisis associated with tobacco use&quot; according to the google.I&#x27;m not even sure they&#x27;re universally banned, I don&#x27;t pay that much attention but seem to recall still seeing them in the windows of gas stations and whatnot.

Are cigarette ads still free speech?  Are you saying those should be legal again?

Ok...First, it is 100% free speech.Second, the government isn&#x27;t allowed to make laws prohibiting the exercise of free speech based on the content of said speech. Nor can it take actions which are arbitrary or capricious.Third, restrictions on free speech MUST fulfill some overriding public good like yelling &quot;fire&quot; in a crowded theater or words meant to incite violence. Slander, libel, &amp;etc.Fourth, why is it even necessary to explain this?

In the last 40 years how many millions of man years have been put into manipulating people&#x2F;breaking down their internal barriers by the ad agencies? By social media companies? By media companies? In the hundreds of thousands of man years at least (but more likely in the millions to tens of millions). There have been around 80 billion human years of output in that time and sales are a huge part of civilization so easily in the 10s of millions of human years of energy put into how to better manipulate&#x2F;break down&#x2F;re-train people.If I go play chess against a rando at a park and lose, your above argument makes sense.If I go play chess against someone who spent 150,000 man years studying how to beat me, to say &#x27;well, it was all up to your mental strength, same as it&#x27;s always been forever, and you just weren&#x27;t strong enough&#x27; is BS.Edit: The amount of focused research, science, practice, experience in manipulation humans is unprecedented. Never before have millions to tens of millions of human years been dedicated to things in such a continuous, scientifically approached way. Yet we act as if the world is basically the same as 1980 except we have smart phones&#x2F;the internet.

&gt; The financial incentives to create addictive digital content would instantly disappear, and so would the mechanisms that allow both commercial and political actors to create personalized, reality-distorting bubbles....&gt; 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.Humanity had hatred and insular bubbles a millennia ago just fine without advertisements. There was genocides and wars before the current form of ads ever emerged. It&#x27;s a shame that so many people think that changing a financial policy is all that is needed to change an ingrained human behavior.

The internet is so full of authoritarians wanting to outlaw everything thinking that will work and not even thinking about supply and demand, definition of what is actually ilegtal and enforcement of that.It&#x27;s hilarious. For a forum where people pretend to be smart it&#x27;s absolutely missing critical thinking.

No worries, we can make those illegal too.

Define advertising. Studies suggest that as much as 80% of news articles may have been placed by PR firms rather than generated through independent reporting. This forum is a classic case where blog posts are masquerading as authentic content, when in reality, they&#x27;re simply another form of advertising.

I actually agree. Telling friends and family will get you more of a &#x27;flash in the pan&#x27; response. They are not content creators or influencers. You need to do advertising to figure out if your product&#x2F;business is even economically feasible.For example, run an ad campaign on Google, figure out your CPC (cost per customer). See if that is even below your LTV (lifetime value per customer) plus operating expenses. And then tweak all the variables in your product and campaign to actually create some sort of sustainable business flywheel.Having an amazing product and &#x27;waiting&#x27; for your network to spread the word to all potential customers.. it&#x27;s absurd to think that would work. It&#x27;s hard enough even with big ad campaigns to reach potential customers.

&gt;If someone mentions it to someone else, that alone should be grounds to shutter your company.I don&#x27;t agree. It should depend on whether such a mention leads to promotion of the product. We are not barbarians to limit freedom of speech.After any mention of a product by its user, a court should be held to decide whether this mention was advertising. Because even though the user received a benefit from purchasing the product from the company (otherwise he would not have bought it and would not have become a user), advertising also implies promotion, so the court must first determine whether this mention was made in such a way that it could potentially induce the purchase of the product by other people, and only then close the company.And it doesn&#x27;t even have to be a mention. Advertising is really mean, like a couple of days ago my girlfriend ate a pudding right in front of me. And it was the last pudding, and she ate it so well that I wanted one too. And you&#x27;ll never guess what I bought at the store today! Yes, that same pudding. Unfortunately, we are vulnerable to advertising even when we are fully aware of its destructive nature.

Well, personally, I think you shouldn’t even tell your friends and family. That kind of “native advertising” is ruining human relationships. People should stumble upon your product. If someone mentions it to someone else, that alone should be grounds to shutter your company. Even so-called “catchy domain names” are a deep evil that we didn’t have in the heyday of the US: the ‘70s. Your product should be named exactly what it does and your company should be named as the concatenation of its products.In this way we can eliminate manipulative marketing and rely purely on quality.Should parents even be allowed to name children or should the state choose a descriptive name based on their appearance and behaviour? Hard to tell but I think we need to think long and hard about manipulative naming in more than just the corporate sphere.

This makes no sense. I build a great product. How the hell am I supposed to tell anyone about it outside of my immediate friends and family? Am I supposed to rely on the network effect to reach an audience? That sounds insane.Capitalism depends on advertising to let people know of the product or service that is more cost effective than existing solutions. The advertising budget is dependent on knowing your product is actually good enough to justify the expense. Without advertising, competition itself doesn&#x27;t work.

Submissions from yesterday and 3 days ago:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43580586">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43580586</a> - 8 comments<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43558438">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43558438</a> - 4 comments

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. “Make illegal the parts of the economy I see and I don’t like, but not the parts of the economy that belong to the same category but I simply do not see” is just one of many flaws of low effort insight blogs.

&gt; And people who object to advertising live in a world in which their daily lives are provided for by companies that depend on advertising to exist.&quot;We should improve society somewhat.&quot;&quot;Yet you participate in society. Curious!&quot;&gt; Advertising has been around since Ancient Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago and will be around in 5,000 more years.Someone probably made the same argument about slavery hundreds of years ago, but here we are.

Most people who protest oil use cars, roads and plastics, all made of oil.And people who object to advertising live in a world in which their daily lives are provided for by companies that depend on advertising to exist.As PT Barnum said &quot;Without promotion, something terrible happens... nothing!&quot; and all the companies that make up our economic ecosystem depend on things happening …. sales, which don’t happen without promotion.Advertising has been around since Ancient Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago and will be around in 5,000 more years.

Some countries (Poland?) has experimented with banning advertising in public spaces. Think bill boards. This has lead to very clean and good looking cities. I don’t think the it’s unreasonable to ban ads in other places too.

São Paulo implemented &quot;Cidade Limpa&quot; which banned posted ads. It was said to renew the city.

Vermont bans billboards and it is amazing.

Redmond, WA has a ban on billboards. Locals can see this demonstrated by driving 124th St. and crossing Willows Rd into Kirkland. First thing you’ll see are billboards.Just got back from a trip to Florida. Billboards along every freeway, and 75% of them are personal injury lawyers. If you’re a resident of Redmond, it is an obnoxious contrast.

Some cities have exterior walls of buildings covered in ads.  Other cities have them covered in murals.  The latter are much more pleasant to be in.

My hometown did this, and I was surprised how bad billboards can be when I moved away

I love this article because I think this is the conversation we should be having. Lots of advertising is harmful, some of it is useful on balance, and some of it is too hard to ban without infringing on other desirable speech. But I do think we should be critically thinking about all advertising and outlawing certain flavors of it.Billboards let landlords skim extra money by making the public space significantly more hostile to everyone else. Fuck em.

There’s a ban here in BC except on indigenous land. Which is scattered throughout where I live. So you have these primitive, ugly things sticking out in clusters wherever people are allowed to put them. I wish people didn’t need the money to allow those on their land.

To go halfway to the extreme of this article, I think banning large-scale billboards in my city would make a big difference.It feels like having a calmer public space is more in the public interest than reminding them to drink Miller Lite.

I use ublock origin on Firefox and next dns on my router with a block list. I pay for ad free YouTube. My kids had a lesson in how annoying commercials are during a trip where they tried to watch a BBC animal documentary and had to see the same commercial five times in a row because I guess not enough advertisers signed up with the provider. I don&#x27;t like billboards. I&#x27;m pretty sympathetic to getting rid of advertising and do so as much as possible in my own life.That said this article glosses over the first amendment which absolutely needs to be considered because (at least in the United States) that is the big barrier to any sort of restriction.Also the idea of what constitutes an ad. Billboards? What about large signs showing where a store is? Are people with big social media accounts allowed to tell us about their favorite products? Only if they don&#x27;t get money? What if they get free products? We&#x27;ll have financial audits I assume to make sure they aren&#x27;t being sneaky. No more sponsored videos? What about listing the patreons that made the video possible?How will this be sold to the people that need ads for their small business? We&#x27;ll need a majority support to pass a constitutional amendment.Anyway, this seems impossible but good luck!

You don&#x27;t see how this could possibly be used by unethical politicians?Like, only Company A (who completely coincidentally contributed to my political campaign) is allowed to advertise inside the political boundaries I control?

Glad to see this, been noodling on it for a long time. My crazy proposal is to make advertising illegal, in the US... by nationalizing Craigslist. USList or some such.No more billboards, no more ads on TV or radio or podcasts or when you&#x27;re on a plane or when you&#x27;re in an Uber and they have that screen. No more ads in something you&#x27;ve already paid for a la newspapers.You want to advertise to, say, all the people in Arkansas? You have to pay them directly to post your ad on Arkansas USList. Want to target further? Great, you have to pay the county to post on their board. Then, people that want to see your ads can go to their local board, filter by their interests, and maybe see your ad. Want to target all the electricians in a county? Their union runs a board and you can pay them.Cities&#x2F;counties&#x2F;states&#x2F;${localeType}s could opt to, say, issue an advertising dividend to their residents.My definition of advertising is the unwanted stealing of your attention by someone who wants you to buy something. Or be aware of something you could buy. It takes you out of a context you have put yourself in, stealing your attention (and therefore your time, which is all we really have in this life).My stupid USList idea flips this on its head by making it possible to only see ads when you want to.Movie trailers when you&#x27;re at the cinema are ads, sure. But they are ads that fit the context you&#x27;ve put yourself in. If you&#x27;re at the theater, it makes sense for the playbill to list other shows. If you&#x27;re at a restaurant, the list of specials, or a wine recommended by your server are both appropriate. Even a list of specials or deals in the window of a restaurant, as long as it isn&#x27;t 100x100ft and illuminaated, is fine by me.But an LED billboard distracting you with a 2-for-1 meal deal as you drive down the freeway is out of your context (and dangerous! and needlessly polluting!) When we consider the tracking and spying that has become possible thanks to online advertising companies like Google, Facebook, etc... it&#x27;s scary. And entirely needless.Like I said, I&#x27;ve been noodling on this for a while and am definitely the crazy anti-advertising guy in my circles. But once I point out the prevalence of ads and how it&#x27;s like being kicked in the knees all day, I&#x27;ve found people seem to start getting it. I&#x27;ve done more than a few pihole + wireguard installs, UBlock origin + Sponsorblock installs, etc.Fuck ads.

Article clearly says &quot;advertising&quot;.

People market themselves when they put on makeup. Should makeup be banned too?

A lot of corporate environment is perception manipulation. I feel it borrows a lot from the general public perception manipulation that companies and governments do which is through ads and media. There needs to be a better way to go about these things as it affects everything. Skills are less values these days, at least in Big tech, compared to perception manipulation.

Says the person paying a provider to get their voice out there to make themselves look better or influence the world.

It would also create a lot of new businesses. So allowing advertising at the moment has killed all those businesses.

“What if we made advertising illegal?”Many small companies would go out of business, that’s what. Yes we definitely need advertising reform, but advertising is a very important part of any business if they want to be successful. Making it illegal would cut a lot of businesses off from their potential customers. The author doesn’t seem to propose any alternative solution for this.

I’m not convinced by the argument that it shouldn’t be considered free speech. What exactly we mean by a private place… I dunno, but I definitely feel like I’m “going to” content, even if it is just digitally, when I’m on a phone. So, it doesn’t feel like they are invading my privacy. It is an annoying person in public, usually protected unless they are violent.In terms of “let’s try this surprising new change in the laws,” I’d rather see it become illegal to collect a lot of information about people. Maybe we can consider what Facebook&#x2F;Google and data brokers do something like stalking.

There are products people are either embarrassed to admit they need (many health care examples) or just don’t want to share for competitive reasons (a better parts supplier, or perhaps even a good SAT tutoring service).

What does “doesn’t lend itself to word of mouth” mean? Products you can’t speak about?

I like open questions like this. It forces us to think from first principles, and potentially tackle consequences.One problem that would come up… It would be very hard to get word out of new (better) products. If you have a great product that doesn’t lend itself to word of mouth, how will anyone know if you can’t advertise?

&gt;it&#x27;s not advertising if it&#x27;s on their own websiteIs SEO advertising though?

&gt;but we&#x27;d also lose (free) search engines.I doubt this. more likely we&#x27;d end up in a scenario where, as a way of capturing market share, large companies subsidise their search engine with other branches of their business, for example, hosting. also since we&#x27;re speaking hypothetically about government interventions, there&#x27;s no reason that a government couldn&#x27;t set up a publicly owned search engine, in fact one may already exist, I don&#x27;t know&gt;Further, I&#x27;d argue that some forms of advertising are actually desirable. If I&#x27;m planning a vacation abroad, and want to make a reservation at a hotel, I&#x27;d typically go to booking.com or one of it&#x27;s competitors. Those sites are pretty much 100% advertising, but how else am I gonna find a hotel on the other side of the planet, in a country I&#x27;ve never been before?it&#x27;s not advertising if it&#x27;s on their own website&gt;You also run into some tricky hairsplitting questions. Where do you draw the line on advertising? Are webshops allowed to list 3rd party products? Or is that advertising? I don&#x27;t want to outlaw online shopping entirely, it&#x27;s extremely handy! What about search engine results from those webshops? Free search engines will disappear, but let&#x27;s say I have a paid account and search for &quot;buy dell laptop&quot;. Are the results advertising? How do you differentiate and define the cases legally?these are very simple dilemmas:are webshops allowed to list 3rd party products? yes, because you&#x27;re on a webshop. practically all shops sell 3rd party products. advertising is listing products and services on non-commercial public places where people haven&#x27;t chosen to engage with productsyou search for &quot;buy dell laptop&quot;, and the search engine has to produces the results that naturally bubble to the top from its algorithmthe issue I&#x27;d be more worried about with banning advertising is taking away the freedom it can allow small creators on places like Youtube, where now suddenly they&#x27;d be relying on subscriptions and&#x2F;or donations, which can be a lot harder to come by than baseline advertising revenue. you&#x27;d get a lot more begging and pleading, and you&#x27;d get a lot more creators needing to rely on working under the umbrella of a larger organisation like they did before the internet

lobste.rs is not though. Its not impossible to have such a thing without advertising

Reminder for everyone: HN is a advertisement for Ycombinator. This &quot;free discussion website&quot; is an ad.I really think people take so much for granted that even when they think about what they take for granted, they still can only scratch the surface.

Ooh, that&#x27;s pretty clever!This is why I like HN, people here are smarter than I am

Can product recommendation sites place a funny video on their website, unrelated to products, just so readers can have a little rest while doing all this product comparison?Can product recommendation sites _pay_ a video creator to create a funny video for their website? It&#x27;s a win-win for everyone, right? Product recommendation website gets more visitors, popular creator gets money, and visitors get to see a funny video from popular creator.If you allow ads on product recommendation websites, most entertainment websites will declare themselves &quot;product recommendation&quot;.

Already solved elsewhere in the thread: Ban unsolicited advertising.  Product recommendations in places where the consumer is explicitly visiting to get product recommendations are not unsolicited.

&gt; I&#x27;d typically go to booking.com or one of it&#x27;s competitorsThats the difference, you opted into the advertising by visiting a website which catalogs hotels. I think most people are against “push” advertising where you are fed an ad for something you were not looking for.

I had this idea before, but thinking about it, you very soon run into some pretty uncomfortable tradeoffs.The internet would change fundamentally. The article lists social networks as things that would disappear, and good riddance, but we&#x27;d also lose (free) search engines.Further, I&#x27;d argue that some forms of advertising are actually desirable. If I&#x27;m planning a vacation abroad, and want to make a reservation at a hotel, I&#x27;d typically go to booking.com or one of it&#x27;s competitors. Those sites are pretty much 100% advertising, but how else am I gonna find a hotel on the other side of the planet, in a country I&#x27;ve never been before?You also run into some tricky hairsplitting questions. Where do you draw the line on advertising? Are webshops allowed to list 3rd party products? Or is that advertising? I don&#x27;t want to outlaw online shopping entirely, it&#x27;s extremely handy! What about search engine results from those webshops? Free search engines will disappear, but let&#x27;s say I have a paid account and search for &quot;buy dell laptop&quot;. Are the results advertising? How do you differentiate and define the cases legally?I think it&#x27;s a good idea, but it&#x27;s gonna be quite tricky to implement well. And executing this idea poorly is potentially quite bad.Getting it implemented at all is going to be hard: even well executed, this idea is going to have a huge impact on the economy, and people are not going to like that. This idea would be good for democracy, but ironically democracy is not good for this idea.