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

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

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

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

    Advertising needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.

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

  • RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world
    1·
    8 months ago

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

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

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

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

  • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

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

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

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

      • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
        0·
        8 months ago

        However that would work, i dont care. Open source software has next to no marketing and I’ve found it all through chat groups, etc.

        I’ve found my local super market and bakery simply by walking by

        I buy toothpaste by trying a few and sticking by one I like

        I never watch commercials, I don’t do advertising or marketing, and I’m missing out on nothing

  • Goun@lemmy.ml
    0·
    8 months ago

    Yes yes yes, this!

    I always joke w my gf, that when I’m president, I’ll ban marketing. It’s ugly, wasteful, useless (from the consumer’s pov,) annoying, etc. I can’t believe it’s not hyper-regulated and taxed into oblivion.

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
      0·
      8 months ago

      How…Would you do that?

      You do know that that marketing or advertising is far FAR more fundamental right? Yeah, there is a lot of BS these days, for sure.

      But the concept of trying to find someone to sell something you made too cannot be banned. Unless you have a solution to the entire concept of “selling” anything, and turn society into one without needs?

      It’s 5000 BC and I just made a pot with a lip that pours water easier. I tell someone about this in hopes they might want one too so i can survive on my work <----- that’s advertising.

      It’s 2000 BC and I discovered a new spice and am trying to sell it for cooking. I demonstrate how it smells <----- that’s advertising.

      …etc Apply this to almost everything anyone has made that they try to sell to someone else. They advertise and market it.

      right now, your own post, marketing what you might do as president… Is a form of marketing.

      It’s deeply engrained in every single society, and has been for thousands (tens of thousands?) of years. It’s a fundamental concept for humans and humans society.

      • Maldreamer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        8 months ago

        They and possibly op (with their argument that 99.9% ad free) is referring to modern day advertisements that mass manipulates people. A person in 2000 BC telling their spice is better doesn’t compare to our modern advertisement system which targets suggestible people with well placed targeted ads. They also are probably referring to those ads which you constantly see barging into your every day life in the form of billboards, banners etc. If you were to search for a something in Google, most often the front result would be non relevant SEO garbage or AI gibberish promoting something which is not relevant to something you searched. Oh you want to know why you have this BSOD screen and warning, check out this antivirus software sort of bullshit results.

        Even though what you said is right, that advertisement has fundamentally existed ever since human moved out of tribal society, the form of advertisement we see now is never before seen and in my opinion which I agree with OP is than we can indeed abolish current form of advertisement and move on without significant impact on normal people. Ofcourse we would still be documenting products and people who want that could still seek out what they want based on their requirement (this might qualify as advertisement since the product won’t be seen without information regarding it, but it’s no way comparable to the form of advertisement you and I mentioned above).