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What If We Made Advertising Illegal? (simone.org)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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The idea feels like sci-fi because you're so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.

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

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[–] 278 points 2 years ago (18 children)

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

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

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  • [–] 87 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    "what if you don't know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?"

    lol what? No way anyone says that with a straight face

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  • [–] 89 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    5 minutes ago on Hacker News, among a lot of stupid stuff like "your life is empty without having ads all around you."

    Reference for fun: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596333

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  • [–] 46 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I love that in Cyberpunk 2077 they're is often a channel on called "just ads". Of course in pure cyberpunk style those ads can be horrific.

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  • [–] 58 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    When I watch a US sport, I'm blown away that the ads are all medical, banking/insurance, cars, and maybe fast food. It's so weird.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What’s a normal selection of sports ads look like elsewhere?

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago

    The most stupid argument I’ve seen is from an American who said “what if you don’t know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?” Well, that’s the job of the doctor.

    Wow, even if we imagine some different situation where information about a new development, service or creation is needed, that's what reviews and journalism are supposed to cover, not advertisement. (In b4: the observation that those have tragically been becoming more and more indistinguishable from advertising.)

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The most stupid argument I've seen is from an American who said "what if you don't know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?"

    If only there was a system of interconnected knowledge bases where new information could be published and indexed for easy lookup... Nah what am I saying, who would have interest in such a thing...

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