Thanks for writing an essay so I no longer feel the need to lol. I hope your post gets more visibility.

I fucking hate advertising. I want it banned to the greatest extent that we can do so. But if we want actual change, it needs to be a lawfully applicable strategy. We don't need to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Banning ads for medication is a great start that everyone can agree on for instance. We should work up from there.

The most insidious stuff is the content you don't even realize is an ad, like comments and methods of boosting/lowering visibility on social media. That is a thorny issue.

So, first off, any content made to change your mind is propaganda. Doesn't matter how true or false it is, doesn't matter if it's cherry-picking info, doesn't matter if it doesn't make any claims at all

This is the second time this has been stated. I don't know why we're going backwards, I haven't challenged the definition of propaganda.

doesn't matter if it's paid for by a state or a religious group or a single individual

Exactly. Under this law all these scenarios would be banned.

That's the conversation we're having, how to ban it.

A poster that just says "hang in there" or "just give up" can be used as propaganda if you post it all over the place to raise or lower morale. It's not making any claims, it's not pushing a certain brand, it's just trying to change what you think about. That's propaganda.

The law wouldn't target things that "can be used" for propaganda, they'd target things that are used for propaganda.

If some individual wants to go around and spend his own money putting up "Hang in there" posters, that's fine.

If they want to pay someone to hang up posters for them, that's when they'd run into issues.

If a public space or place of business wants to put up a sign, you might make exceptions for things like emergency evacuations and informational material, but anything with "intent to advertise a brand or product" would certainly be banned.

"Hang in there" might end up being allowed or not in a workplace depending on how strict you'd like to get.

Second, this whole thing assumes no one ever wants to see an advertisement.

You want to know your favorite band is playing downtown. You want to know that the roofing company across town that does good work even exists. You want to know about whatever new silly product was made that aligns with your hobbies. In order to have an honest conversation, we need to agree that not all advertising is unwanted.

Its weird you're acting like I'm dishonest. This is a pretty simple concept.

Unwanted advertisement are unwanted.

The companies are still allowed to create materials, and you're allowed to view it. They just aren't allowed to pay people to shove it in your face when you're trying to watch TV or read the news.

Of course there's value in knowing about products and deals, but if company's are the ones paying for them then the companies with the most money get seen and heard the most.

That's a problem because throwing money at ads can compensate for a sub par product. Keeping advertisements independent from the companies selling them is better for consumers as it leads to less biased info.

If you want to buy a catalog of local events, that's fine people can make those "advertisements" and sell them. It would be illegal for the people operating them to have connections or take money from the companies, and these aren't explicitly ads but genuine reviews basically.

You can print a list of bands and distribute it, you just can't advertise the band in some unrelated product.

Would PSAs be banned? Those are nothing if not propaganda.

Exceptions could be made for anything if we want.

What do you think? Would you ban PSAs? I might not.

How about billboards advertising a religious group?

100% banned. No billboards allowed.

What if I buy a magazine because it does a great job at making me aware of products I actually do often want to buy?

Still exists. The magazine just can't take money to artificially promote shitty brands who pay them so the magazine is higher quality.

(That's obviously slightly naive, we're crashing the entire magazine industry by passing this law, it's too disruptive in the short term to the economy we've set up)

As a small business owner, how do I make customers aware that I exist?

You wouldn't have to. Word of mouth and the community curated lists would talk about you if you're worth talking about.

If no one can advertise then consumers are still gonna need to find the products they need and consumers will learn how to look for local businesses and the community will learn how to spotlight hidden gems.

Or maybe that's too much effort and we all just go to walmart and you go out of business. Hopefully not, but i don't fully know tbh, it's untested.

Where is that line? We've invented so many things that amplify our speech wider than what we could do "on our own". A megaphone reaches more people than if I yell. A 10ft sign in my yard reaches more people than a tshirt. A social media account with 1 million followers reaches people than 1000 followers reaches more than 10 followers. Should I be able to make a flyer? Should I be able to use a printing press to copy that flyer? Should i be able to nail copes of that flyer all over the door of the catholic church and start a Reformation? Where is the line?

Yep, you should be able to do all of that (except the social media one possibly depending on context) because they're all actions of a single individual and no money is being spent of the distribution of the material.

(You can pay a printer to print the flyers but not hand out essentially).

If you want to rent a plane and drop them from the sky go ahead but you can't do that as a business or to make money in any way.

In summary, this is a very hard problem, but...I think the solution could be solved democratically.

I agree, it would take a lot of trial and error but we could eventually figure it out.

We won't because money is too powerful, but we could.

Ex. If you poll the people, and they say "I see too many McDonalds ads" then the people (i.e. govt) should penalize McDonalds proportionally. If we poll again, and the penalty doesn't result in people reporting seeing fewer unwanted McDonalds ads, then increase the penalty. When the penalty is high enough, it won't be worth it for McDonalds to run so many aggressive ads, and they'll have to reduce advertising in order for the people to report fewer unwanted ads in order for the penalty to drop. That's the only possible implementation I see as actually working.

I honestly don't like that idea. We're not seeing less ads, we're just seeing more diverse ads.

Genuinely consider the implications of the fact that advertisements are effective.

Think of the most irritating, scummy, clickbait, insidious advertisement you've ever seen, and then consider that it objectively made the company more money than not running it.

Realize that your small business is directly losing customers because you aren't able to compete with the marketing budgets of megacorporations.

Its not fair for your company and thus us as consumers they get to pay to hold the megaphone longer than you do and don't compete by the quality of their products/service. It's a bad problem.