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.

  • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    In both situation you make it illegal for corporations to do something, and punish them with fines and criminal sentences for executives if they’re caught doing so, leading to a decrease in that behaviour.

    So what about the situations do you see as different that makes it a false equivalency?

      • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
        11·
        2 months ago

        Yes, we’re talking about making advertising illegal, which would change advertising to be illegal, similar to how pollution is illegal.

        You seem to be arguing that it would be impossible to make advertising illegal because you wouldn’t pass laws to make advertising illegal…

        That’s not a false equivalency, that’s you just insisting that advertising’s not that bad and shouldn’t be illegal. Nothing about your feelings on whether or not it should be illegal changes whether or not we could make it illegal.

          • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
            11·
            2 months ago

            I’m not being sophisticated, I’m trying to keep you on track.

            If you want to have a different argument about whether or not advertising is deserving of jail sentences, steep GDPR level fines, slaps on the wrist, or nothing, that’s fine, we can have that one.

            But this reply chain was about whether or not it’s possible to make advertising illegal, which it is.

              • masterspace@lemmy.caEnglish
                11·
                2 months ago

                This part of the chain is me calling out. your false equivalence as you compared graffiti to river dumping which you keep trying to claim isn’t invalid

                Because I never claimed they were equivalent, I said that river dumping laws are an example of how to make something illegal, after your dumb ass claimed it was impossible to make advertising illegal because it’s been around for a long time.