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- Hacker News
- We could just start making it illegal to advertise to children. Without age verification, it's just a burden of proof with the advertiser that their ad isn't targeting children and a ban on age specific target groups for ad platforms.by codingjoe
- Do you really want to give platforms more incentives to push for age verification?by pibaker
- What's the advantage to stopping there?by gorjusborg
- The best concert I ever went to was one I only knew about from a TV commercial. Somewhere along the way I started blocking ads and commercials aggressively and in hindsight I've noticed that (for example) there's fewer movies/concerts I'm seeing because I've cut off a mechanism for learning what's out there for subjects I'm not in the habit of actively researching.
After 30 years I've stopped watching baseball altogether because the announcers read tiny ads between pitches and at-bats and I can't stand it.
I accidentally let myself get too extreme about deciding that ads are evil. Not surprising I regret that, given the nature of extremism. For better or worse ads are a kind of information, and I should remember that I'm an adult and can tell the difference between the facts and opinions there in.
by gdulli - > I accidentally let myself get too extreme about deciding that ads are evil. Not surprising I regret that, given the nature of extremism.
Sounds like a good argumentation to consume some cocaine.
Not consuming it at all is just too extreme
by tcfhgj - > 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.
It's coupled to the financial incentives of the entities operating the platforms used to create and distribute this content (Google, Meta, ...). And as we depend on them in so many aspects of our life unfortunately, they'll initially start acting as usual when being "regulated":
"We're so sorry dear $REGION_OF_THE_WORLD, your legislators declared our products as ads. Due to how we've built these products (Pixel Phone, Gmail, WhatsApp, ...), we can't sell them to you in a legal way anymore. Yes, we made a ton of money from you, but it's your government's fault that you now loose access to what feels like essential communication services."
We all know it's been different in the early 2000s, but today these distribution/communication channels only exist because there's money to be made. We can't take them for granted and just expect different content on YouTube, non-addictive TikTok and less privacy-invasive Gmail or search engines.
I'm glad the author acknowledges this:
> Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.
Changing behavior and expectations will be necessary; and I'm all here for it. I'm hosting my own emails since 2013. *DAV works just fine and I never uploaded contacts or calendar events to iCloud. I pay for search results. And even though I like the iPhone or would prefer a MacBook, I could reactive my 10yrs old "gaming PC" as a Linux workstation to fulfill my computing needs.
I understand this is not for everyone, but I hope that after the band-aid got ripped off, the digital life will improve to become easily accessible again while staying privacy friendly and pro society.
by xplt - I'm blown away by author's refusal to spend even a second to adversarially pressure-test his idea and try to imagine for a second what the world would realistically looked like with advertisement banned.
Like, the movie industry as a whole cannot exist without advertisement. Nobody would spend hundreds of millions of dollars on production of the scale of Odyssey, if there's no way to communicate to enough people about the movie's existence so they could come to a theater on a given date and pay to watch it.
How can someone take risks and spend time and capital inventing or building a new product if there's no reliable way to let potentially interested people know about it other than word of mouth? What about antisocial people who don't have friends and prefer to not talk to strangers? How are they supposed to ever find out about new shit that could change their lives?
Am I allowed to walk around saying "I really like product X" out loud? If not, then it feels like a freedom of speech problem. If yes, how can you be sure I'm not financially or some other way incentivized to do so by the company producing product X?
The fact that the author doesn't even attempt to engage with any of these questions makes articles like these really infuriating to read.
by rwz - Having working in that area a little bit, simple heuristics to know if someone has dumb ideas about advertising are whether they: a) think it's some kind of magical MK-Ultra-level mind control technology, b) think the business that pays them for a living could exist without any form of advertising. Once that's acknowledged as fantasy you generally get into goal-post moving territory about what is or isn't really advertising but that's purely academic.
- It'll get replaced with something even more annoying that isn't called advertising but is functionally identical.
People make things then talk about them. It's normal.
A careful read of this piece should show you why advertising was invented in the first place and why it's fundamental to commerce.
Unless you want to go back to buying from your neighbor or buying only what your limited circle of friends can recommend you?
by cadamsdotcom - Why product needs advertisement? Because it's terrible and is unable to justify it's existence. Good product is advertisement to itself.
Imagine that market is filled only by useful products.
by t0bia_s - I liked it a whole lot better when advertising pharmaceuticals and legal services were still illegal, like it was for the better part of the 20th century.
It had always been unethical since at least the 19th century, before it was ever regulated overwhelmingly, so the regulations were mainly just codifying the common respectability that was already established from the most honest business operators.
Even if tobacco was allowed in ways that are no longer OK.
by fuzzfactor - As always there is also the gradual sunset option: slap a tax on it and increase over time.
- That's easier to get past the lobbies.
- It still surfaces unexpected consequences but reduces impact.
by ngruhn - I used to know one of the great ad execs from Mama Bell and he told me nothing happens in this world until a person decides to trade a dollar for something.
How do they decide such things? How do people become aware of what things are available for purchase?
Another thing he said was that they knew half of their ad spend was "wasted" on people who would never buy what you have to sell.
The feeling I get from the author is that targeted advertising is the problem, which also has a 50%+ waste factor (due in large part to fraud). I suspect it is unlikely all the complexities of contemporary marketing and advertising are worth it.
Also worth considering to what extent the author's website is a form of advertisement itself.
by verdverm - Flip side of it is - I love not seeing advertisements, of any type.
Sponsorblock and uBlock Origin makes YouTube a whole different experience. Locally backed-up or on-demand TV shows are so much more bingeable than the ones on DVR. I love watching livestreams and not being pulled aside for a 30 second sponsored interruption. It makes me giddy with excitement paying for software and media that does not have any advertisement in it whatsoever.
The big picture is great and all, but watching something like the Super Bowl you get a sense of how wasteful all that marketing is. If half those companies reinvested their ad budget into their product, they'd be more likely to earn my money than if they jumped over a dolphin with a jet ski to promote H&R Block or Polymarket.
Marketing has always been one big, slippery slope of transgression that could always benefit from a reset.
by bigyabai - If I want to know what's available for purchase, I check out https://geizhals.de or visit a store and look what's there.
Hope I could give insight into a largely ad free life
by tcfhgj - Maybe it's not possible (tried and failed or just technical fantasy), but if the ad market could be inverted where I could manage what I am and am not interested in, as well as sell feedback on the ad (couldn't understand the value prop, thought it was dumb, loved it, etc) where the end user is not the product but a partner in that marketplace.
I've not thought it through deeply, but the notion intrigued me.
by pstuart - > half of their ad spend was "wasted"
That would be a phenomenal ROI. In almost all advertising contexts the hit rate is far, far lower. Resulting in everyone drowning in ads to hit the few targets.
To the commenters saying, "but how will people/companies know what to buy?"... 1) Through the same high-quality information channels you usually use today: customer reviews, word of mouth, point of sale, and lived experience. For B2B, you could still have industry events or demos where it is essentially a physical opt-in for advertising. 2) I could not possibly care. The offsetting benefit of living in a world where I am not surrounded by messages trying to deceive me into spending money is well worth losing whatever tiny signal might be in that noise.
by dweinus - That ad exec certainly had a myopic point of view. Just like the old saying, "If you wear shoes, the world is covered with leather."
For sure, our economy depends on buying and selling, and buying and selling depends on advertising. Like other things that can be abused, advertising needs regulation.
But to say that "nothing" happens without money changing hands ignores a vast swath of the human experience. I pity the person who thinks that everything has a price in dollars and cents.
by allears - > feeling I get from the author is that targeted advertising is the problem
Non-targeted advertising is also a blight. If you've never visited a place where billboards are illegal, it may be hard to imagine what a relief it is to be free of them.
by marssaxman - I LOVE this idea and advocate for it in private convos all the time. Banning ads and enabling (micro-)payments for accessing content that is currently ad-supported would be an unimaginable game-changer.by khatkhati
- Ban ads: yes. Or at least tax the motherlovin' heck out of 'em. And regulate the jebeezus too.
(See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49048747>.)
Micropayments: no.
As I've said before: Micropayments have an absolutely unblemished three decade history of perfectly and precisely failing to work.
(Why? See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41261063>.)
Alternative: an all-you-can-eat bundling option with a wide selection of publishers. We're already starting to see this with, e.g., commercial wireless / broadband plans, though largely limited to the major streaming platforms rather than news/journalism sources.
by dredmorbius - Definitely not. I don't want to pay for every single website I visit for example, it creates a chilling effect overall as to my want of visiting many different sites.by satvikpendem
- I think one way to look at this is that--why are Meta and Google so successful? Because they are basically an index fund on the world economy right. If you want to sell soup in Jakarta you advertise on Instagram. If you want to sell paint in France you advertise on Youtube. If you want to sell T-Shirts in Boston you advertise on Facebook
So then the flipside is that without ads these sellers now have to complete head on with giant companies who have all the brand recognition. Now you need to somehow make your Etsy store viral instead of just putting it in Facebook ads
by firasd - On the other hand, brand recognition is fundamentally a function of advertisement. This would mean that the money spent on advertising has to be invested into improving products instead, and without the ad industry actively destroying every halfway honest avenue of comparing actual product performance, you have a chance of customers recognizing your product's advantages.by Timon3
- Cities have banned billboards. Sao Paulo did it, so did parts of London: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...
Hard to quantify the benefits, but I think anyone other than advertisers would say it's a vast improvement. I cannot objectively prove that these cities, public spaces are more beautiful without ads, but all of us know that it is true. Then again you have places like times square where ads are integral to character of the place.
by carabiner - A happy middle ground might be a designated billboard zone (e.g. Times Square), with billboards outside a certain area being outlawed, or restricted by size.
But the Devil is always in the details: how would businesses advertise their presence? A sign is an ad of sorts, and regulations would have to be drawn up for every type of sign that might exist: size, wording, color, etc, lest it be deemed too "advertise-y."
How about mom-and-pop businesses or sole proprietors? Would it be illegal to tack your business card to the local laundromat bulletin board? All these questions, and many more, would have to be answered in the quest to fully (or nearly fully) ban ads.
by kmoser - > What if we made all advertising illegal? It's such a wild idea that I've never heard it in the public discourse.
Local jurisdictions have restricted or even forbidden outdoor advertising since it was invented.
by kfarr - Marin County (immediately north of San Francisco) has had a billboard ban since 1935:
<https://marinmagazine.com/community/history/history-of-a-hig...>
Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, and Alaska completely ban billboard advertising.
Oregon, California, and Washington strongly regulate practices.
Alcohol and gambling are regulated, tobacco billboards are entirely prohibited in the US.
<https://www.alluvitmedia.com/blog/which-states-ban-billboard...>
Several regional bans are noted here: <https://www.scenic.org/2024/08/29/an-update-on-national-bill...>.
by dredmorbius - Related:
Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36586632 - July 2023 (413 comments)
São Paulo’s Outdoor Advertising Ban (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20725409 - Aug 2019 (95 comments)
by dang - True, but the OXO Tower in London is a terrific example of a cheeky yet elegant workaround.by samizdis