[kerkeslager]

Advertising is inherently immoral and it's our moral obligation to drive advertisers into bankruptcy.

All advertisers are liars. Even when they're not directly saying untrue things, they're presenting a one-sided view of the truth, to the extent of being intentionally misleading.

The harm done by these lies is incalculable. The distraction. The loss of self-esteem caused by ads always telling us we aren't enough, don't have enough. The fear caused by ads telling us we'll lose what we have. The loss of financial stability on things we don't need or want.

And that's just what ads are. That's not even talking about how advertising is done, with a million dishonest tricks to jam themselves in front of you or gather your data to lie to you more interestingly and convincingly.

The only good ad is a blocked ad that cost the advertisers money.

[kelnos]

> Advertising is inherently immoral and it's our moral obligation to drive advertisers into bankruptcy.

I agree with this on principle, but in reality I wonder how we'll pay for content online if this were to happen.

Micropayments will never be a thing, and subscriptions don't make sense for random one-off videos or articles.

[hughesjj]

> Micropayments will never be a thing

Why not?

I'd love to see something like "I donate xx CPU cycles upon viewing this content" or something. Computebis a resource, same with networking, and there's already a lot of them demanded by shitty ad platforms.

I'd much rather donate those cycles to BOINC or hell, even ETH over ads

[robertlagrant]

Isn't that just gating websites with crypto payments?

[kerkeslager]

Cryptocurrencies would be an extremely poor way to implement micropayments, as their high transaction fees make them inefficient and their fluctuations in price make them unsuitable for payment in general.

The banking system moves at glacial speed, but I do believe we'll see banking plugins integrated with browsers at some point.

[hughesjj]

That would be gating websites with contributing to a crypto mining pool, although crypto microtransactions are indeed a way the web could evolve to handle non ad payments, and I'm surprised (but also kinda thankful) that the web 3.0 people never pushed that possibility.

Right now, I'm saying that compute is useful. If you've ever used BOINC or folding@home, you've seen the "download some data, do some work, upload the data" paradigm in action.

Idk. Right now, the only paradigms I'm seeing are "paywall, totally free, or sell your data" for accessing web content. I wish there was another alternative of "sell my computer" or "sell my bandwidth" (like maybe acting as a cache for can). I get those are easier to abuse, but I'd still love to at least see some content provider exploring such options.

[blackbear_]

> Advertising is inherently immoral

Why? In principle, advertising is a way to propagate information in a market, trying to match offer with demand. Without any such mechanism, markets would be hugely inefficient (i.e., it would be annoying to find a shop selling what you are looking for, since you would need to visit many before finding one that sells that thing).

The problem with ads, like you are saying, is that being scummy and dishonest is by far the most effective way of attracting demand.

[kerkeslager]

> In principle, advertising is a way to propagate information in a market, trying to match offer with demand.

No, that's what a Consumer Reports-style review site is. Independent review matches offer with demand. Search engines (not including the ads on search engines) match offer with demand.

There's no "matching" with ads: the goal is to jam your product in front of people as much as possible. And in fact there's often no demand to match with. Ads are just rich barging into your attention to beg for more money with lies.

> Without any such mechanism, markets would be hugely inefficient (i.e., it would be annoying to find a shop selling what you are looking for, since you would need to visit many before finding one that sells that thing).

I'd caution you against trusting anyone who talks about "efficient" without talking about what benefit is being maximized and what cost is being minimized. Ads are efficient in the sense that they help maximize sales for minimum quality of product: that's not a desirable efficiency. If we (consumers) want to maximize quality and minimize cost, then independent review is a much better way to find products.

[t0bia_s]

And that is a huge part of problem with sustainability and magnification of problems that would otherwise stay local. PFAS, microplastics, pollution... It's all consequence of overproduction of useless things that are consumed by society manipulated by ads.

The product is "ad" itself if it is good. If not, you need extra advertisements.

For me it is immoral to consume ads.

[robertlagrant]

I think this is a category error. Those bad things aren't driven by ads. Ads drive economies of scale possible if people have heard of your product without word of mouth, which lower prices and help producers understand what people want. Productiveness will sometimes drive things like microplastics, as it's hard to know the effects of doing something new without doing that thing.

That's the theoretical response. In practice: how would I sell my car without ads? Would I sit and wait for people to be attracted to it and ask me if it's for sale?

[kerkeslager]

In a functioning society, ads would be illegal, and we'd have independent review sites you could submit your car to, which would give consumers true information about your car in comparison to other cars.

In the society we have: you have to advertise. I don't blame companies with a product for advertising it, because that's the only way to sell a product within our broken system. But I do insist that we identify this blight correctly and stop pretending that it's a necessary thing, because that's the only way we fix it.

[mcpackieh]

Announce your car sale in a catalogue of local cars for sale. Ads in catalogues are tolerable because only people desiring to see ads will pick up such a catalogue. Ads placed in places intended to be visible to people who aren't specifically trying to look for ads are the problem. Those ads which try to force themselves on people have an inherently adversarial relationship with people, and therefore we're under no moral obligation to tolerate it. People who make it their business to advertise in that manner are absolute gutter scum.

[skydhash]

> That's the theoretical response. In practice: how would I sell my car without ads?

You make an announcement that you have a car to sell. Maybe provide some details. I don't think people mind announcement. They mind the intrusion and manipulation. So, I don't mind seeing in the paper that someone has a car to sell. But I absolutely hate when I'm forced to watch that you have the most beautiful car when I'm just loading an article.

[robertlagrant]

What you call an announcement with details about something you're selling?

[skydhash]

Still an announcement. But if the goal is to promote, then it’s an advertisment. There’s a difference between making known that there’s something to buy and enticing people to buy something. It may be the way to do business (because competition) but that does not means I should subject myself to it, especially its current form.

[t0bia_s]

I should specify "corporate product advertisement".

Also... You advert a selling of product that is already made and used. I tough about those silly ads for new kind of electronics, cars, junk food, etc.

Btw, why are you selling your car?

- ...help producers understand what people want.

You always need what you don't have and others do. Do you?

[robertlagrant]

> Also... You advert a selling of product that is already made and used.

So no one should know about new products for sale, only second hand ones?

> You always need what you don't have and others do. Do you?

I'm selling it because it doesn't have 7 seats for when we have overseas relatives who can't afford to rent a car when they visit, and its diesel engine is not necessary for my much-reduced weekly mileage. Assuming I want just because others have is extremely shallow.

[t0bia_s]

- So no one should know about new products for sale, only second hand ones?

No, I mean advertisement that is made primary for profit and selling things that would otherwise shouldn't be sold. Promoting weak products.

[jraph]

You can look things up when you need something, you don't need to wait for an ad to annoy you to discover something.

What's more, usually, you hear ads for big players, not the small ones, which are often the most interesting.

In particular, hearing about NordVPN every other video is not necessary.

[robertlagrant]

Look things up where?

[jraph]

On the internet with a search engine, on a map, etc. Or ask friends / family, actually.

That's what I do when I need something I don't know where to find. Before the internet you had the yellow pages, I guess, and word of mouth.

In any case, I'm pretty sure I never ever ever heard or saw an ad that made be discover something I was interested in.

I don't want to allocate any time during which I passively listen or watch ads in the hope it will lead to some epiphany.

[midoridensha]

This is really extreme and reductionist. Without advertising, you wouldn't even know that many products and services exist. You can't rely on word-of-mouth for everything.

Of course, so many advertisers have abused their power that blocking ads is a good choice for many reasons, but don't make the mistake of calling all advertising "evil". Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon, or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral, for instance?

The old-style small, highly-targeted, text-only ads that Google used to show alongside search results really were the pinnacle of advertising I think. They were great for learning about something that would fix whatever problem you were googling about.

[imiric]

> Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon

By visiting and/or subscribing to cinema listing web sites, subscribing to cinema-related YouTube channels or social media accounts, visiting my local cinema and watching 30 minutes of trailers, seeing cinema listings in the newspaper, or calling Moviefone.

> or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral

By visiting and/or subscribing to computer-related web sites that announce, review or sell computer peripherals.

None of the advances in advertising in the last 50 years have improved my lifestyle or consumer experience. All it's done is improve the efficiency of manufacturing the need for a product, embedding brand names in the consumer subconscious, and manipulating them into buying a specific product, regardless if it solves their problem, or even if it's detrimental to their wellbeing and health. And since the advent of the internet, adtech is responsible for creating and supporting a user data gold rush, violating the privacy of every internet user in the process, as well as enabling hostile forces to use the same system for information warfare.

So, no, advertising is not a required or even necessary part of society, and is responsible for incalculable damages caused by the harmful products it promotes. The only reason it is so prevalent is because psychological subversion tactics are very effective, and it's the easiest way for companies to increase revenue.

[kerkeslager]

> Without advertising, you wouldn't even know that many products and services exist.

This is a vastly positive tradeoff. The number of products which would improve my life, versus the number of products I am inundated with daily, is a negligible ratio.

> You can't rely on word-of-mouth for everything.

That's true. However, I can rely on independent review sites, and I could probably rely on search engines to find me products that solve problems when I search for them, if they weren't controlled by advertisers.

Nobody is saying rely on word-of-mouth. That's a straw man.

> Of course, so many advertisers have abused their power that blocking ads is a good choice for many reasons, but don't make the mistake of calling all advertising "evil". Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon, or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral, for instance?

There are a number of movie reviewers I follow, and a few friends who have similar taste in movies as me. I'm not interested in computer peripherals, but if I were, I imagine Wirecutter contains information, and there are probably other similar sites.

Advertisers are not helping me find movies to watch or computer peripherals I need. They're helping themselves, and in a way that's aligned with harming me. I never saw an ad for Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was my favorite movie last year--my friend Adam invited me to see it. I did see a ton of astroturfing for White Lotus, which was a complete waste of my time to watch two episodes of. Why would I want ads?

Stop this nonsense about how we need ads. We don't.

> The old-style small, highly-targeted, text-only ads that Google used to show alongside search results really were the pinnacle of advertising I think. They were great for learning about something that would fix whatever problem you were googling about.

God forbid Google return the solution to your problem as a search result, you know, like a functioning search engine.

This really is the most absurdly missing-the-point example you could have chosen.