Philosophically, that's still not convincing.

Lets take the most basic form of advertising as an example. If I put a couch in my yard with a price tag on it, I'm wanting people to notice and desire to buy it, but there's no malicious intent. I have a thing I want to get rid of, maybe someone wants to buy it. If I don't do that, no one will know it's for sale.

So I do think advertising is fundamentally benign, and despite what the original comment said, is absolutely part of supply and demand. People are supposed to generate supply and then sit around waiting for people to come see it?

Of course there's lots of bad stuff going on in advertising. Lies, inducing FOMO, unnecessary gathering of personal data, etc. But I'm not convinced that advertising is morally wrong in it's purest form.

Can we perhaps draw a distinction between "selling" and "advertising"?

"Selling" is simply informing people of the availability of one half of an economic exchange. Putting a notice up that says "Sofa, $50 ONO" is no different than putting a notice up saying "will pay 50$ for sofa".

"Advertising", on the other hand, attempts to persuade. It endeavours to use psychology to create a transaction when one would otherwise not have taken place. It's a sign that says "Sofa, $50. Incredible value!!". This is not ethical because if we assume that the market would have converged on the correct price in the absence of advertising, then advertising distorts the market and makes it less efficient.

Note that unadorned "buying" and "selling" are mirror counterparts, but there's no buyer's counterpart to "advertising". This is because the value of money is well known and non-negotiable, while the value of the good or service is subject to influence. This is an inherent bias that always works in favor of the selling party.

I don't think this argument works. The acceptable price for a good is not actually clear cut. "True" market value is an equilibrium price between supply and demand. Both the supply and the demand will fluctuate and change over time, with many underlying factors influencing the aggregate number. The acceptable price is also different for different buyers, and in different regions. Advertising is just one of the factors that may affect demand alongside many others.

Additionally, you can argue there are many buyer's counterparts to advertising. At its most simple, the buyer has many tools to find items they want, i.e. search engines, etc. Additionally the buyer in many cases can inform the seller of an offer (generally below their desired pricing) and the seller can choose to accept or not. In some marketplaces, the buyer can effectively put out a request-to-buy, e.g. an open offer that many potential sellers can see and one may choose to fulfill.

Eh, there is a wide area here. For example there is abusive vs non-abusive advertising.

Selling = Sofa is $999 and that is a good price for a good couch.

Abusive advertising = This sofa is so wonderful that hot women are going to seek you out to have sex with you.

When advertizging starts selling lifestyles is where it becomes abuse.

The buyer often may not know a product even exists that would fill his need.

For example, my car's cooling system was leaking. I had a devil of a time trying to figure out where it was leaking.

It turns out there's a perfect product for it - a device that pumps air into the radiator. You spray some soapy water around, and where it bubbles is where the leak is.

So in 5 minutes I could have found the leak, rather than wasting a great deal of time because I did not know such a tool existed.

That's not a point in favor of advertising, it's a point for the lack of general education around maintenance or mechanical devices among the population. Using pressurized air and soapy water to find leaks in things is a well known technique among those who regularly have to find leaks in things.

I'm sure there was a point in the past where something like this would have been taught in school in a classroom that had all kinds of tools and machinery in it.

I think that's hanging onto the example the OP gave a little too closely.

I found out about the company I've bought several sets of sheets from because they were a podcast sponsor, I happened to need sheets, and I liked their designs more than other ones I was seeing at comparable prices. If I hadn't heard that ad, would I have still found sheets I liked? Maybe! But is that really a convincing moral argument against those ads?

That’s the thing, there’s no line between what’s an ad and what’s just informational. Somewhere between “Joe’s Sheet Emporium down on Main sells Egyptian cotton sheets” and psychologist-engineered gambling ads there’sa boundary that’s crossed, but I don’t know how you can quantify that, but I know the latter end of the spectrum is wrong. Unfortunately it’s kind of a matter of “I’ll know it when I see it”.

I'm thinking of the classified ads that used to be in the back of gaming magazines. There would be pages of small print only black and white listings of everything from miniatures to game supplements that you could purchase by mailing the given address. You had to go looking for them.

In the front of the Mag between the articles you would have full page colour ads, some with skimpily dressed women selling boxed games, computer games etc.

In some of the mags, some of the articles were reviews of products, some of these reviews were obviously promotions, very much trying to sell the product. Very few were critical of the product under review.

There is a continuum in advertising from simple "this product exists" to "Will change your life". Far to many of the adverts we see today tend to the targeted "change your life" category.

Add to that that many of the ads on the internet have there own tracking built in that allows your existence to become a product that is sold without your knowledge or consent and you have a situation that has a bunch of moral questions to answer.

[edit spelling]

I took auto shop in high school.

>if we assume that the market would have converged on the correct price in the absence of advertising

>the value of money is well known and non-negotiable

I wouldn't start with these assumptions since prices fluctuate on their own for somewhat unpredictable reasons. Just because advertising is immoral in some ideal world, doesn't mean it's immoral in a real one.

The immorality is whether the product/service is any good.

Perversely, the more expensive a product the more perceived quality a product has, its perhaps why German cars are so popular. People like to show off their wealth which is what makes designer brands popular.

There is little point advertising monopoly products like fuel though, any advert is just going to be brand awareness maintenance in those situations, which also helps to keep the media/newspapers onboard for PR reasons to keep the bad press at bay!

The reciprocal to advertising is education. Not like professional training, but general citizenry that develops self-awareness and critical thinking skills.

This is relying on the assumption that it's unethical to distort the market, which I don't think is a given. Unless you're an anarco-capitalist, and I'm pretty sure they're cool with advertising.

Advertising is informing people that you've got a solution to their needs. The most effective salesmen are people who figure out what the customer needs and provides it to them.

> The most effective salesmen

Can you cite that? I would like to test it against lies, manipulation and coercion.

Have you given repeat business to salesmen who lied to you? Do you recommend them to your family & friends?

Yes of course. I just have to find out they lied after I do all the recommending.

If what you were saying were true, then it would not be economically profitable to lie to customers. However we see that lying to customers is more or less rife. Therefore we must conclude that it is profitable to do so.

Note I said "the most effective".

The guy who taught my accounting class was a former used car salesman. We were talking once, and I asked him how to tell an honest dealership from a scam one. He said it's easy, the honest ones have been in business for more than 5 years. In 5 years, one runs out of suckers, and goes bust. An honest dealership makes bank by selling again and again to the same people.

These days, with Yelp and such, it's even harder to get by by defrauding your customers.

I like to look at this through the lens of push vs pull.

I don't want people pushing things at me that I'm 100% uninterested in in the off chance that 1% of those ads is actually interesting to me and I otherwise wouldn't know it exists. I do want to be able to search a database of vendors (with degrees of trust associated with them) with objective descriptions of available goods and services at known costs, either one-time or recurring. If I'm looking for something that's completely new, I should still be able to find it by using relevant terms and weightings (cost, materials, origin of materials, shipping distance, labor chain, etc.)

So, no, I do think someone using their front yard to sell a couch is bad provided we have the internet and a good marketplace built on top of it. Who wants to see human junk covering nature solely so it can impinge on others' field-of-view in order to be sold? I don't think it's bad for them to register the availability of said couch in the hypothetical regulated marketplace.

And, for those who consent, they can ask to have relevant categories of ads pushed at them. But leave people like me out of it. No such consent can be obtained when you just e.g. put it on a billboard.

Yes, I know what I'm saying is probably naive and would never work, or something, or that's where governance is supposed to come in, but it's a nice dream.

>I do want to be able to search a database of vendors (with degrees of trust associated with them) with objective descriptions of available goods and services at known costs, either one-time or recurring. If I'm looking for something that's completely new, I should still be able to find it by using relevant terms and weightings (cost, materials, origin of materials, shipping distance, labor chain, etc.)

Exactly this. It's not necessarily wrong that advertising is justified on the grounds that it serves the interests of advertisers. But the attempt to justify it as beneficial to the consumer, well, every case where advertising is serving such a pro-consumer purpose is a case where a general purpose information directory would serve that same purpose better.

It's not convincing if you look at it through the lense of a one-off cartesian hypothetical. But that is not a systematic understanding of what advertising is that makes clear the underlying interests and incentives that drive the process.

It's a process that by its nature perpetually transforming in the never ending race to compete for your attention, and the "bad stuff" is a reflection of the interests and incentives essential to the nature of what advertising is.

The anti-advertising stance taken to reasonable conclusion is indeed absurd. You couldn't even mention your sofa to a friend without risk of "inciting" unnatural demand in them for a sofa.

And you couldn't even allow third party mentions either as are fundamentally indistinguishable in terms of effects on artificial demands.

But hope isn't lost. A natural limit on advertising is completely eliminating surveillance capitalism. Even the kind enable by credit cards selling your purchase history. Or stores issuing loyalty cards.

> whatever the origins of our desires, advertising arises from the needs of advertisers and seeks to repurpose our attention and desires to align with those needs rather than our own.

It sounds like you're saying something like: "advertisers have their own desires that are different than ours, and so it's more likely that they'll get us to desire things that are bad for us"

This I think is a fair point. It's not especially unique to advertising as opposed to other forms of influence, though maybe it's most pronounced in advertising. Nonetheless, even if it applies to all forms of influence, it's a fair argument for why influence is categorically at least risky of being bad for us.

I think you're right of course that primal needs like Maslow's cannot really compare to needs or desires we create with advertising or other kinds of social influence. But I don't think that's what we're really talking about. I think it's more stuff like "I would have wanted to cook tonight but instead I saw a Dominos ad and so now I'm eating Dominos. This is a false desire!" Why? What makes the desire false just because it was created by an ad? You could have a genuine desire for Domino's created by the ad that you've now satisfied and feel good about.

To the extent that ads distract us from pursuing more basic human needs and cause us to be more consumerist, fair. I think that's a broader, different point about the nature of consumption period.

---

I don't think I'm making an argument for moral relativism here at all? I don't think I'd consider myself a moral relativist.

>It sounds like you're saying something like: "advertisers have their own desires that are different than ours, and so it's more likely that they'll get us to desire things that are bad for us"

It is a rare but very satisfying experience to see yourself quoted and feel like you're being interpreted correctly. Yes, you are right, I'm saying that, more or less.

>I think you're right of course that primal needs like Maslow's cannot really compare to needs or desires we create with advertising [...] But I don't think that's what we're really talking about.

I take something like Maslow to be comprehensive, and so always implicated. I think your dominos example serves to suggest that there are cases that are mundane, harmless, or where nothing is at stake.

I think so far as something like that is concerned, I think that's true and those things happen. However, I think (1) even seemingly benign examples really do have important issues at stake. I think American consumers have trouble budgeting and a huge input into that is innocent-seeming habit of ordering out, which, over time, ads up in significant ways. Also (2) while we can contemplate one-off examples, I think the primary frame of reference should be a big picture, systematic look at the incentives. The system writ large serves interests of advertisers, not consumers, and the legitimacy of that lives or dies with systematic arguments about the incentives.

>I don't think I'm making an argument for moral relativism here at all?

I think the idea that our preferences are transient, that none are really more right than any other, and that therefore there's nothing really at stake in letting your interests be swapped out for different interests, is what I regard as moral relativism. You have to believe there's some underlying truth at stake and real interests being defended to make a case against ads.

> I think the idea that our preferences are transient, that none are really more right than any other, and that therefore there's nothing really at stake in letting your interests be swapped out for different interests, is what I regard as moral relativism.

I don't really see this as moral relativism at all? It's maybe a kind of psychological relativism, a la nature vs. nurture. And there, yes, I'm definitely skeptical of the idea that we have "true" underlying desires/preferences/values as opposed to "false"/influenced ones.

This is (maybe a bit ironically) sort of inline with Buddhist views of self. Though I don't think you have to go as far as saying that the self is an _illusion_ to at least acknowledge that the self isn't immutable.

That said I'm _not_ claiming that any desire is as good as any other. There are certainly desires that are worse to have (smoking, murder) than others.

>I don't really see this as moral relativism at all? It's maybe a kind of psychological relativism, a la nature vs. nurture

These things all overlap, depending on what you are trying to emphasize. So it can be both. If you say it's psychological relativism, nature vs. nurture, whatever else I think there are senses in which those can all be true.

I think a pattern I'm seeing here, though, is to say that whatever is at stake in questions of advertising, surely it isn't moral. But morality isn't just trolley problems, it's everyday choices too. It's getting people to eat Dominos, getting people to smoke, getting people to accept credit cards with low introductory rates, it's getting people to pay more for Medicare advantage plans.

>This is (maybe a bit ironically) sort of inline with Buddhist views of self. Though I don't think you have to go as far as saying that the self is an _illusion_ to at least acknowledge that the self isn't immutable.

I think that's very commendable and good!

>And there, yes, I'm definitely skeptical of the idea that we have "true" underlying desires/preferences/values as opposed to "false"/influenced ones.

But you're also claiming there are definitely desires that are worse to have than others? And smoking (which is advertised!) is an example.

> whatever is at stake in questions of advertising, surely it isn't moral

Wait what? No, of course it is, almost everything effects morality in some way.

> But you're also claiming there are definitely desires that are worse to have than others?

Yes? I'm not seeing the contradiction. Whether a desire is bad or not is unrelated to whether it's a "true" desire (or whether the idea of true desires makes any sense at all).

Dumb on-the-spot analogy: there's a bunch of silver metallic balls rolling down different tubes, the tubes are painted so as they roll the balls get colored different colors. Further down, the balls all get merged and then a robot destroys any red balls, and sorts blue balls into one box and green balls into another.

Being red is clearly worse for the balls (smoking is clearly bad for you, moral absolutism). But the balls didn't start out red, green, or blue, their environment molded them. If a blue ball gets painted green at some point in the future, it doesn't make sense to say that the ball is _really_ blue: the ball was metallic, all of its color was painted on one way or the other.

Are you saying advertiser's influence is somehow making the fulfillment problem worse?

This kinda assumes our own thoughts and desires aren't influenced by outside factors (bad habits, intrusive thoughts, etc), and without advertisers input we are on our own jolly way.

There could be an argument made that we face challenges for fulfillment from the inside out. Therefore objecting to one external force misses the forest for one tree.

>Are you saying advertiser's influence is somehow making the fulfillment problem worse?

Yes.

>This kinda assumes our own thoughts and desires aren't influenced by outside factors (bad habits, intrusive thoughts, etc), and without advertisers input we are on our own jolly way.

It doesn't assume that. It just assumes we're influenced by everything else other than advertising.

>and without advertisers input we are on our own jolly way.

This however assumes that advertisers are beneficial correctives rather than accelerants of adverse behaviors.

Rather than building an encyclopedia where every positive and negative case is examined, I'm suggesting that you zoom out and think about the underlying incentives in a systematic way. Advertising is in the interest of the advertisers, not the consumers. You don't have to assume that consumers never make mistakes in seeking their own fulfillment.

Everything we do involves being influenced by the interests of others. I'm curious what makes advertising A) special B) necessarily negative.

Advertising is bad therefore it's bad doesn't really prove anything. Is that what you are saying? A good business will provide for at least some interests of its customers, so it's not clear to me that advertising is negative.

Yeah, but in practice... the iPhone/Apple represents an example par excellence: Planned obsolescence, dated features, software deprecation, false narrative (e.g. privacy). The plan is to always provide that fulfillment until it is time for you to renew your subscription. Then the fulfillment reward is attached to a new product and the consumer must acquiesce. Consumerism is this forest. Stepping any deeper into the waters, keep this outdoorsy pun rolling, is an arbitrary excersize. "What does it mean to 'be'?" Abstraction does not undo the real harm caused by corporations.

> iPhone/Apple represents an example par excellence: Planned obsolescence, dated features, software deprecation, false narrative

I feel like people say this and then don't provide any decent examples. iPhones hold value and are usable much longer than most Androids thanks to Apple's willingness to support the devices.

HN loves to hate on Apple but I don't find these examples and arguments very compelling.

> iPhones hold value.

Really? How much? If you use your iPhone for two years, what would be the TCO?

> are usable much longer

Fairphone is supporting their devices for 5 years at a minimum. They promised 7 years for their latest model. And the Fairphone (who has the burden of promoting ethical manuafacturing, using only fair-sourced materials and fair pay to all their workers) still comes at less than half the price of the iPhone.

Or say that you don't care about ethics and you just want your devices to be as cheap as possible. You can buy "budget premium" Androids (Moto Gs, Nokia 6/7) that are very serviceable for less than €200. The Nokia I bought in end-2018 would still be in use today if I hadn't gone to /e/OS, so €180 bought 4 years of "phone". Economically speaking, there is no way that an Apple device can beat that.

I think iPhones are on a different quality level than a FairPhone so you can't compare it 1:1

They are absolutely on different categories.

One is a device made by a company with a minimal ethical standard, which is not willing to sacrifice those for profits.

The other is a trillion-dollar company that manages to convince billions of people world-wide that their products will make them smarter/more creative/just like the good guy on TV shows. This image and feel-good ads also gets them to convince people that is totally fine to pay hundreds/thousands of dollars to upgrade their devices while talking about "social good", "climate-conscious" and every fucking talking point of the "progressive/anti-capitalist" millenials. IOW, all the feel-good talk about issues gives them enough cover to get to exploit mass-scale consumerism.

I wonder how they do that? Perhaps it's this thing called "marketing"?

> Fairphone

These are really interesting and I hadn't seen them before thanks!

Yeah, you have missed the entire point and evidently context. You have been sold a narrative, which you choose to believe. There is evidence, some of which I have referenced, that you ignore. Nothing will be compelling for you because you have attached worth to the brand and by extension of possession, inhabit that worth. This was the intent of the brand marketing. We are taking about marketing

The mere fact that you believe that Android is the only alternative to an iPhone shows how effective the manipulation is.

That's because for all practical purposes, it is. Name one bank or payment system in the developed world that released a native mobile app for KaiOS.

First, name one bank that is not willing to provide you service if you don't have a smartphone. Even if you do find it, ask yourself if this is the type of bank that you really want to work with.

Second, how was it that banks managed to operate for centuries and now there is the idea that people simply can not live without a mobile banking app?

Third, minority rule[0]: the best way to make sure that we can see apps being develop for other platforms (not just KaiOS, but Linux devices and even ungoogled AOSP-based systems) is for us to cultivate the intolerant minorities who simply will refuse to run iOS/Android.

Convenience is nice, but freedom is much better.

[0]: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

> First, name one bank that is not willing to provide you service if you don't have a smartphone.

Monzo comes to mind. Also possibly Revolut and Starling.

> people simply can not live without a mobile banking app?

The idea isn't that I'm not capable of banking without an app. An app offers concrete advantages such as being able to view your current account balance in real time, and view the amount of recent transactions. This lets you keep a handle on spending, possibly help with making ends meet if you are a student living on their own, or in poverty. Sure you can do it by hand, but only the most dedicated did it because it's a significant effort.

> cultivate the intolerant minorities who simply will refuse to run iOS/Android.

Good luck with that. I tried the dumbphone lifestyle, but ultimately not running Android or iOS will cut you off from basic services like Uber or public transit navigation/timetables (unless you are lucky), group chats with family and friends, and basic conveniences like said mobile banking.

> Convenience is nice, but freedom is much better.

With all due respect, no. We all have a threshold where it's just not worth it. I am not Stallman and I am not willing to put up with this much pain (or to rope my family and friends into my crusade by demanding they accede to my idea of "mobile purity").

> An app offers concrete advantages such as being able to view your current account balance in real time, and view the amount of recent transactions.

Do you really need that? Did you ever get into a situation where you couldn't wait to see your bank statement? Couldn't you wait to get to an ATM or just get home to see in your computer?

How much of the things that are sold to us are really necessary? To get back to the topic: how much of the modern world is driven by manufactured demand?

> Sure you can do it by hand, but only the most dedicated did it because it's a significant effort.

False dichotomy. Plenty of budgeting/accounting software out there (free software, even) that you can use to connect to your bank account. They are just not made for mobile.

> basic services like Uber

Again, manufactured demand. There is nothing "basic" about Uber and we could go by in any big city without it before 2010.

> public transit navigation/timetables

There are free alternatives for Linux and ungoogled-android.

> group chats with family

Use Matrix, bridge it with whatever the others want to use.

> We all have a threshold where it's just not worth it.

Right. The problem is that you seem to be too quick to fold.

> Did you ever get into a situation where you couldn't wait to see your bank statement?

Yes. As I mentioned, students and people on the edge of poverty must keep a vigilant watch on their bank balance, lest they literally run out of money (or hit an overdraft, or an overdraft limit, and therefore have to pay banking charges) while shopping.

> how much of the modern world is driven by manufactured demand?

Rent is expensive, and rather essential.

> Plenty of budgeting/accounting software out there (free software, even) that you can use to connect to your bank account.

Majority of banks where I am don't expose an API. CSV exports don't cut it on GNUCash, and I tried it.

> There is nothing "basic" about Uber and we could go by in any big city without it before 2010.

Please realise that black cabs and taxis cost a fortune in some cities. An extensive public transit network doesn't help at all if you're stuck at the edge of a city, the transit network has already shut down because it's 2am, and you don't have any family or friends nearby to rescue you. This has happened more than once to me, and in the pre-Uber era, my only choices would be to eat the huge cost of a taxi or spend the night sleeping/waiting it out on a bench until things reopen.

> There are free alternatives for Linux and ungoogled-android.

You cannot assume that. Your city has this, it doesn't mean that mine does.

> The problem is that you seem to be too quick to fold

You think I'm too quick to fold, but have you considered that I spent over a decade trying to defend my privacy? That I gave up many, many things, to the extent that family and friends who don't share my beliefs would think I'm weird if they knew the full extent of what I've done? Having a pain tolerance makes me human, not weak. And it's already much higher than the average person's.

Sorry, still seems like a lot of your argument is just trying to rationalize your decision to not get out of Android/iOS - which was the whole point of the conversation.

- Even if a bank does not have a mobile app, they still have a website which you can then access from any phone with a web browser. It does not depend on an Android/iOS app.

- Even if your city does not have an alternative app like Magic Earth (doubtful) you can just use the Google Maps website.

- Uber also does not require the app: https://www.uber.com/en-GB/blog/request-uber-online-without-...

I don't have one, but don't iPhones typically work longer than many Android phones?

I do have an iMac that's at least a decade old. I should install Linux since the OS isn't supported anymore, but it seems like it's had a good run.

No. Try a lightweight distro & just install Kodi or Plex for a media server. I have several old laptops (hp 17yrs, Toshiba 8yrs, Acer 11yrs) for that purpose

> don't iPhones typically work longer than many Android phones

Given that Google only updates Android for half as many years on a Pixel phone, there is planned obsolescence in play here, but not from Apple.