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.
Another part of the problem I haven’t read in the comments is all the companies that rely on advertising to exist, especially media companies. Many newspapers, magazines, websites, TV channels etc would go bankrupt if they couldn’t earn money with advertising. There is a simple solution because we can ‘just pay them’ but I’m afraid we won’t. People hate advertising (someone commented “advertising is violence”, that really says it all), but still many of us choose to not get the subscription but use the ‘free’ option instead.
I’m not against banning all advertising, but I think working towards more peaceful advertising might be fruitful. Banning advertising of tabacco products and having disclaimers when financial and medical products show this can be done.
The future is not required to contain the business models of the past. More specially, I don’t believe “there are businesses that would fail” is a good argument. We need UBI or a better social safety net for the people in those businesses, but the businesses can simply fail and nothing will be lost.
That said, I think advertising can probably be reformed through a combination of removing the puffery exception, enhanced enforcement of existing truth in advertising laws, and increased civil liability for falsehoods at all layers: product (Kraft, Nestle, Tesla), production (“Mad men”), and propagation (networks, Hulu, YT)
If the product can’t exist without advertisement does it deserve to?
If a product wouldn’t sell if it isn’t heavily marketed I’d agree it doesn’t need to exist. But if a product is paid for by advertising other products, that is a different story. Newspapers have had advertising for ages because of the high cost of running a newspaper, many tv-channels wouldn’t be able to exist on a subscription basis. Same goes for a lot of websites online. Also no more free porn (not legally at least). Advertising pays for a lot of things in our society. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but this system cannot be changed overnight.
I think anything that can’t exist without money from advertising either shouldn’t exist, or should be subsidized by taxes, not ads.
Tricky territory when you’re talking about journalism.
No doubt. And plenty of other things. Since the government doesn’t actually have the best interests of it’s people in mind. Bring on the AI overlords, since AI doesn’t have emotional reasons to hurt us for it’s own gain, maybe it will be better. Lol
Let those companies fail. A nee similar company will emerge from the ashes with a better business model that doesn’t rely on force fucking ads down your throat.