Advertising is necessary (paid or not it's the same shit) for small businesses to get off the ground, at all. Cut off ads and you'll strangle thousands of startups/SMBs. Physical ads haven't lost their effectiveness. If they had then we'd be in real trouble.

I don't like ads either but remember there are multiple perspectives here. We should focus on purging bad actors than the entire practice. For now though, I see ad blockers as the tools of change and fully support them.

There is nothing wrong with simple ads. The problem is that at least a century of research into persuasion techniques have morphed ads into objects that can seriously compromise your beliefs and emotions in ways that you did not consent to. Modern ads are the equivalent of refined sugar products we have today compared to the relatively tame fruits. Eating fruits is great, eating refined sugar products is terrible for human health.

Currently, once a few businesses in the market start using refined-sugar type ads everyone else has to or they die. I want legislation that only allow ads that are the fruit kind, not the refined-sugar kind. Until that happens, I will block all ads.

100% there on the analogy. It's incredibly difficult to define but I think we can put some boundaries on it straight away - flashing ads, usage of audio for static ads.

Those things are just annoying. They are not even remotely the most dangerous tactics. See the discussion here [1] on Google Fi's advertisement for medium level tactics. Things like font sizes, colors, placement of text have already primed your mind to think 50 dollars. It will take a huge amount of rational thought to overturn the good gut feeling one has developed toward Google's offering based on the false 50 dollars statement.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21011175

>Advertising is necessary (paid or not it's the same shit) for small businesses to get off the ground, at all.

I think there is an issue here because people are talking about different kinds of ads.

A new restaurant putting an ad out that lets people know what the attraction of the new restaurant is (the first Hispanic Sushi bar in town) is not a problem at all (to me, anyways). But if you listen to ads you will find that many don't fall into that category. Political ads are a big example, but also many ads for cosmetic surgery and weight loss. The ads for scams are some of the worst (though generally those last only a few days per scam). Ads for gold that try to scare people into making investment decisions that aren't likely in their best interest are another example.

If ads self policed themselves better perhaps people wouldn't be so set on blocking them.

Maybe we don't need yet another penis enlargement startup?

I'm not talking about that garbage. I'm talking about the mom and pop stores. The catering service, the stationery shop, etc.. These services are competing with shit (other ads) right now. Wouldn't it be nice if we could clean up the ecosystem and have these companies benefit?

Absolutely agreed! And these services you mention have to expend great amount of money and effort at advertising, and often resort to dishonest practices, because the market is already saturated with advertisements.

I like to picture it like this: if everyone around you is shouting through a bullhorn, you have to use a bullhorn too just to have a shot at being heard by the person next to you. But how about taking away everyone's bullhorns? Suddenly, people would have a chance to have an actual conversation.

A floor needs to be put, to stop the ethical race to the bottom, and that floor needs to be put way above where advertising industry currently is.

If I need a catering service or a stationery shop I do a search and look for the websites, not the ads (which are blocked anyway). I don't see how ads disappearing would prevent them from getting business through their website.

At the moment everyone "needs" ads because everyone else does it. If this cancer would disappear then everyone is on a level playing field and can attract business by ranking well on search engines, etc.

Sorry, I never saw such ads in my life before. That garbage, however...

I agree. These ads exist (I do see them a lot in Search) but at a much lower proportion than other places. The reason is it's a quantity game and it's much more expensive to buy ads for irrelevant keywords whereas display ads aren't like that.

This is an over exaggeration that doesn’t imply a lot of thought for the consequences.

How are new products and inventions supposed to create word of their existence? As a musician I see ads for new VSTs and instruments or accessories all the time I’ve never heard of, and affect my workflow in a massively significant and positive way.