>Can I take this a step further and say that advertising is the true problem here?

no? promoting stuff with a plausible chance of adding value to someone's life is not bad imho

the problem is the stuff that kills value, like smoking and gambling. not advertising in general. so yes advertising (the many) bad stuffs is bad if that's what you mean by "most things"

> the problem is the stuff that kills value, like smoking and gambling

These are not the only things that kill value. Turn off adblock for a week and count the ads you see for quality products that you actually need, that you would not be worse-off for purchasing. Generally if something would actually add value to your life, nobody needs to trick you into buying it.

> stuff that kills value, like smoking and gambling.

but you decided (for others) that this stuff kills value. Not all people would agree with you. And while it's pretty clear that smoking is harmful, the smoker might want it as it relieves stress or for whatever reason, and they're willing to make the health trade-off. Ditto with gambling.

Most ads are not for something that adds value to your life. When was the last time you personally saw an ad that's anything other than a trailer for a piece of media, and was excited and happy to see it.

Some argue it’s gotten worse due to recent tradeoffs between privacy and accuracy, such as the negative effect Apple’s ATT has purportedly had on Meta’s targeted ad efficacy.

I really don't think this is true. The overwhelming majority of ads are just predatory and exploit all sort of psychological cues and tricks, like false association, just to sell more Product. Coke is one of the largest advertisers in the world, and a perfect example of this. They regularly imply that extremely healthy individuals, the sort that would never touch a Coke in real life, are avid Coke drinkers, implicitly suggesting that if you drink Coke - you can also be like them.

This clip [1] where Coke managed to get a couple of bottles placed in front of Ronaldo during a presser is awesome. A visibly agitated Ronaldo places them aside out of the frame, grabs a water, holds it up, says 'Agua!' and the carries on. But Coke is so dependent on these false associations, that that one little event saw them lose some $4 billion in market capitalization! Imagine if advertising wasn't a thing, and people only associated Coke with the sort of people who regularly drink Coke. The world be a much better, and healthier, place.

And Coke, as scummy as they are, are one of the less scummy advertisers in the advertising world - such as it is.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nw7FOgOgtA

What would you recommend as an alternative to advertisements? I do think a lot of ads go too far, but I think some form of advertisement is necessary to get new awareness of new brands and products. Otherwise only the pre-established large brands and products will ever get sales, which would lead to a lack of competition and all the negatives that come with that.

It sometimes confuses me how people seem to not think that word of mouth is a thing. It absolutely is. In the games industry, there are endless examples. Because on places like Steam, you generally only get promoted if you're already doing well - yet there are countless games that flop at launch meaning 0 visibility, yet they also see great long-tail success.

One of my favorite is Kenshi. [1] Within a few months after launch, the dev was left with literally tens of users. Yet he continued working on it endlessly (while working as a part time security guard) and today it has near to more players than ever. And that's because of word of mouth. Which I suppose is something I'm also here partaking in. It's a great game!

[1] - https://steamcharts.com/app/233860

Word of mouth is a great way to grow, but only once you already have users. Word of mouth requires people to already be your customer to bring in new customers, so the less business you have the less potentially useful it is.

If word of mouth is the only advertisement replacement allowed, it would force many companies to rely on fake sockpuppet customers to try to get started.

> What would you recommend as an alternative to advertisements?

Not Having Enough Information is the least of anyone’s problems.

> I do think a lot of ads go too far, but I think some form of advertisement is necessary to get new awareness of new brands and products. Otherwise only the pre-established large brands and products will ever get sales, which would lead to a lack of competition and all the negatives that come with that.

This is a very post-hoc rationalization. Given that this isn’t how advertisement was invented and I have seen no evidence that this is how it works in practice, I don’t see a reason to accept it as a premise.

See political advertisement in America. That massively, massively favors the big players, not the little ones. Not only to boost them directly but also by actively smearing the other candidates, which moves the outsider candidates from the category of “never heard of” to “scumbag” in the minds of voters. (If you have no other information you have nothing else to go on.)

I would argue that larger brands have to have more ads to sway opinion because people are already familiar with their products. Coca-cola is one of the bigger advertisers, but everyone already knows what Coke tastes like and if they like it. Seeing dozens of Coke ads won't change someone's opinion much, compared with seeing a single ad for a new drink can take them from 100% unawareness of the product to knowing it exists.

Ads are not chiefly about awareness. They are about producing want, manufacturing desire. The idea that ads are about “hey we have a product, just thought we’d let you know my good sir” hasn’t been true for over a century.

You don’t advertise until you are confident that 90% of your potential market segment knows about you. You advertise continuously as long as the desire-making makes a profit according to whatever projections the marketing department makes.

You say that that Coca-cola is one of the biggest advertisers. At the same time everyone knows about them. Are they simply pouring money down the drain?

In a civilised society, among other regulations, advertisements would be shown only to people that have pro-actively searched for a service or product.

this would be great if everyone was rich enough to afford to pay for their services with money.

but it would cut off a lot of services and opportunities for everyone else who is able to pay with their attention (to ads) instead

I mean, we're basically heading towards a basic minimum income at that point, where you truncate the top 5% of the tax ladder and redistribute it to the bottom 25%. At that point, people could pay for services.

Dig a little into the idea that people can "pay" with their attention (and with their poor health, crappy buying decisions, personal freedoms) might fit the dictionary definition of sinister.

> truncate the top 5% of the tax ladder and redistribute it to the bottom 25%. At that point, people could pay for services.

why should those at the top 5% pay for more than basic subsistence to the 25% at the bottom? Welfare is for survival (and survival only), not for services that is not essential.

This space is too small for a philosophical debate about the merits of UBI. Suffice it to say, when the top 5% has 1,000x more than they need for subsistence and the bottom 25% has never had access to more than 1x more than they need for subsistence, nothing will ever change. And more to the point, because having 10-20 times more than you need for subsistence has a demonstrable impact on your ability to generate more wealth 1) some will always get richer and pull away from the majority over time and 2) eventually the majority of people without subsistence amounts of wealth will rise up and kill you.

Maybe that wont happen in our current system for a generation or two. But then the question those 5% at the top have to ask themselves is whether they feel lucky to avoid an uprising against them in their lifetime.

I suspect you have no idea what the “top 5%” looks like (in the US).

The bottom of that 5% looks like extremely upper middle class. Big houses, probably a vacation somewhere nice once a year, new cars fairly regularly, etc.

The middle most likely live in gated communities, with any kids going to private schools. They fly first/business class everywhere and can probably even afford to buy one of those tickets at a moments notice. Their closet is worth more than most people will earn in several years of working.

At the top end, these people have multiple tennis courts, pools, basketball courts, etc in their back yard. If there is something they want, they most likely have staff on hand to handle it. If they want to go somewhere, they hop in one of their private jets, helicopters, or chauffeured cars and go there. Oh, and they have a team of lawyers ensuring they never pay a dime in taxes.

Source: spent some time with each of these personas in my life.

Yeah, the trade-off of switching money for attention is not obviously beneficial to society. For example I can easily imagine that there's a significant mental health impact of being constantly advertised newer and better things.

most ads are not promoting new products, the biggest spenders are CocaCola and Disney

Advertising well known products is an exercising in bribing the media advertised in to look the other way on their abuses.

I'm not convinced. I've seen these ads work on myself- I see an Oreo ad and think, oh an Oreo does sound nice now actually. Or that something is popular and the best: why go to Bush Gardens when we all know that Disney is the Premiere theme park.

You don't offer alternatives. Either a product or service is valuable enought to get customers, or it's not and it dies.

It will actually benefit small structures that have no money for marketting anyway.

And big ones won't be able to rely on their treasure chest to generate more of it, they will have to earn it.

I don't propose any alternatives to advertisements. The simple fact of the matter is that as long as people also need to pay for mobile data or are subject to data caps that advertisements are a giant waste of bandwidth and at their very worst a distribution method for malware and other malfeasance on the web. It's a giant "pay for placement" that has no regulation because as long as the advertising companies are making money hand over fist they have no obligation to police the content being pushed through their networks because they get paid either way!

The age old use of advertisements that were generic and placed on TV channels were IMHO the "peak" of what advertising could be. All other forms of advertisements have proven to be predatory. Sites DEMAND you view their ads so that they can receive money to keep the site going.... That inevitably results in traffic to the site going elsewhere and the same result is that the site dies so I absolutely agree that if the site/product requires continuous profit through advertisements because otherwise it would not be able to continue operating then maybe that site/product does not need to continue existing.

How do you launch a new product, service or other business if you're not allowed to tell prospective customers that it exists?

Advertising can be annoying and a bad influence, but I think it's one of those things you'll really miss when it's gone.

There could be a searchable directory of products and services tagged by topics. Interested parties could subscribe to topics, to be notified about new products or services.

so you would approve of advertising then, because a notification is an advert (albeit for said topic). But then who would decide which topic for which product/services?

The bottom line is that advertising comes about from a need - that need will emerge again, even if you tried to make it inefficient to fulfil that need.

No, I would not approve, because ads come through channels that are unrelated to me looking for product information. The distinction is pull vs. push, and at the place and time of my choosing, and being unrelated to any other media.

We also have a need for food and sleep, but that doesn’t mean we should accept being forced into eating or sleeping when visiting web pages or consuming media. The absurdity of that example should prove the point.

> Can I take this a step further and say that advertising is the true problem here? I tend to think most things should be legal, but advertising most things should be banned.

Yes.

Advertisement is in practice predatory. Predatory psychology. It’s not a symmetrical exchange of want-information vs. has-information. It preys on us.

And I don’t think lotteries are particularly bad. They sell daydreaming and one-in-ten-million chances. Not a bad thing for anyone in moderation. Not that last part: all other vice sellers (candy, other unhealthy food, tobacco, alcohol) have no better arguments for their existence.

> It seems that society can't delineate between accepting a practice and promoting a practice.

There's no "society". Obviously people can tell the difference. You're the one saying the law should treat them differently - why? We have certain exceptions, but what's your case for a blanket rule, or a deny by default rule?

No. Perhaps gambling should be legal, but state lotteries are a regressive form of taxation.

> advertising most things should be banned. > It seems that society can't delineate between accepting a practice and promoting a practice.

If it were up to you, what would you allow to be advertised? What’s your allow-list? And how would you define it in a way to allow the advertising of future products and services?

not OP: but my take is that this can be handled by stores promoting certain products. So if youre not in a store, youre not looking to buy and will see no ads.

Yes, goddam the pusher.

Pot, meet kettle.

> Can I take this a step further and say that advertising is the true problem here?

No, you cannot. You are meddling with the forces of nature with this sort of talk!

Without unregulated online advertising, there is no Facebook or Google or Twitter. Modern Silicon Valley could not exist without the fortunes made by showing people ads. Apple, Netflix, Amazon are all deep in it now as well.

>Without unregulated online advertising, there is no Facebook or Google or Twitter. Modern Silicon Valley could not exist without the fortunes made by showing people ads.

Awesome!

> Modern Silicon Valley could not exist without the fortunes made by showing people ads.

The Silicon Valley full of genocide cheerleaders? Sounds like you're threatening me with a good time.

Facebook is ghoulish, and has scammed and brainwashed a huge portion of the most vulnerable people. Google is evil. Twitter is the dumpster fire other dumpster fires are ashamed of.

People seem to be missing your Network reference. Regardless of how you intended it, yes, advertising is undoubtedly one of the greatest and least noticed evils of our age. There have been many warnings over the decades, but they don't get much airtime for some completely unsurprising reason.