[gambiting]

>>Advertisements and marketing are immoral.

So if you are selling something it's literally immoral to tell other people about it? How do you think people will ever find your store or product that you make? Just randomly stumble upon it? I'm genuinely curious.

[tristor]

It is not immoral to tell someone the bare facts of your offer. It is immoral to construct an advertisement, that is a carefully crafted message intended to manipulate the recipient. If your idea of an advertisement is a written text box or a person reading in a monotone voice the "speeds and feeds" and the price, then by all means, go for it. But if you think it's okay to imply without specifically saying it that your product has capabilities it does not, or to make the viewer experience emotional responses leading them to believe your product will make them feel better after you intentionally made them feel bad, then I would strongly argue that your advertisements are immoral.

[ketralnis]

Further, almost all advertisement is party A selling party C's eyeballs to party B, without involving party C at all. Some people buy Vogue magazine specifically for the ads and cool, but my start menu on my monitor attached to my computer all belong to me, not Microsoft to then auction off to somebody else. A deal that changed after I made the deal with Microsoft that didn't include that. That's clearly immoral.

[voxic11]

When did you make a deal with Microsoft not to modify your start menu and how can I get in on that?

[figassis]

So, it’s really very simple. I either want ads or I don’t want ads. Only if I want ads should there be a choice between targeted, contextual or random. There is no “I don’t want ads but I should get them anyway because reasons”. And the fact that today it’s impossible for me to opt out of ads is the problem. Talking about the feasibility of the internet is also manipulative. The argument here is and always has been about choice. Google and friends want to protect their ability to remove choice from us.

If I visit a website with ad blockers, it has the right to block me. It’s business model will depend on whether the number of people it has to block will kill it. This means it should probably find a better business model, not force itself on everyone.

[pierat]

You smell bad.

You look terrible.

Your teeth are yellow.

Your hair is stringy.

But you can fix everything with our Cure-All Elixir, and you will be made whole again... but you had better keep drinking every day, or.....

----------

Advertisements are no longer "we make stuff. Come here to buy stuff".

It then progressed to "people who buy our stuff feel good". But that wasn't all.

Then it progressed to non-spoken feelings when in proximity of thing.

And it turns out, that you can manufacture want of your good or service. And if you gatekeep the emotions of good, wholesome, fresh, clean, happy behind your product, you can tell people they're horrible trolls unless you buy and consume.

But even those tactics weren't enough. Now, most sales are in tech related stuff. And instead of telling people over advertisement channels, now they get pushed to your devices.

And the current stage, also known as enshittification, is also cloud-tying to guarantee captive consumers, so they can't easily leave. Cloud is the ultimate hardware and data roach motel.

So yeah, looking at the recent history of advertisements is just broken, unethical, shits on the environment, and assails human thoughts just to sell more garbage.

[chromoblob]

I misread "data roach model" and wondered for a second what "data roaches" are :)

[endisneigh]

Your entire diatribe is not really about advertising inherently.

[pierat]

Those whom do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.

I am an anticapitalist, and I am acutely aware of what I am against. Advertisements, and how they solidified in the 1800s to current is one such thing I'm directly against.

I've also seen Rome Collesuem's chiseled graffiti to what amounts to "eat at restaurant". Rudimentary, when compared to hiring psychologists to extract as much wealth by exploiting the human psyche, but they were adverts nonetheless. And even those shat upon infrastructure and the humans who were there.

I do think there's a gradient of unethicalness in advertising. If I'm looking for a thing, and shown lists of things that match what I'm looking for, it's at least consensual behavior.

But these days, advertisements are anything but. They're invasive, insidious, and many a time try to fool the human that they're legitimate (and not paid) content.

But I'm guessing the emotional words you chose to use tells me you're probably in adtech.

[Hermitian909]

> If I'm looking for a thing, and shown lists of things that match what I'm looking for, it's at least consensual behavior.

An argument I find compelling here is as follows: sometimes I will look for something, and the world will tell me what I want does not exist. I will either build it myself or do without. If the state of the world changes, and a solution emerges, I would like that fact pushed to me (concrete example: new, more efficient battery chemistries for hot climates).

Waiting for everyone to pull slows down growth of whoever is innovating this new thing - which in turns hinders their innovation - which in turn slows down innovation in the economy.

There's a tradeoff here with all the bad things you lay out about advertising, but I'm not convinced I should prefer the more rapid rate of innovation.

[sekh60]

Well put comrade.

[svachalek]

It's about maximally effective advertising. Why would you choose anything less?

[ndriscoll]

Something like listing yourself in a business directory seems perfectly ethical. Something like yellow pages. Maybe where you are limited to a logo, 1-2 sentences, and a URL, with e.g. category or location metadata for the user to filter on. There could be a uniform nominal fee to pay for the service, or have it be a public service. Businesses could be presented in random order when browsing, or maybe in order of distance from a user-chosen location. Basically, a pull model for people to find businesses that provide products or services that they want. A similar model could be used for listing products, and then maybe the business directory could let you list retailers that carry a specific product or set of products.

Anything much above that starts to veer into the territory of paying to distort people's understanding of the market, or convince them they want things that they don't, etc.

[bostik]

Not immoral. Just potentially counterproductive.

I've taken a stance, DECADES ago, that all ads are telegraphing a very simple message: "my offering is not good enough to be discovered on its own merits, therefore I have to spend money to drown out the more worthy options".

[xyzelement]

//my offering is not good enough to be discovered on its own merits

That's kinda like assuming that because you're such a good guy, you never have to leave your basement and your future wife will find you.

You could just as well interpret advertising as "I am so convinced my offering is good, I am willing to spend money for you to become aware of it."

[gretch]

> Just potentially counterproductive.

It is definitely not counterproductive. Mountains of evidence and real $ back the fact that advertising works.

You have a quirky pocket theory

If you want to conduct an experiment, try making a product or starting a business and don't advertise it.

[bostik]

I wasn't trying to claim it didn't work. That's the whole point of it: to drown out other options. Hence for me advertising is a major negative signal as far as quality or suitability for purpose is concerned.

It's like being in the countryside, where each inn and resting spot has a fire going on. You can spot them by their smoke trails. Then some entrepreneurial individual wants to grab market share from the punters and puts up a massive tire fire. A billowing column of black smoke will be seen from way further off, and as luck would have it, blocks visibility to anything behind it. It also makes the surrounding environment worse off for everyone.

And anyone who is attracted by the big flames will soon find themselves inhaling toxins.

[sambazi]

now stretch that analogy and substitute the valuable service (lodging) for something benign, like astrology or pet barber.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

In theory it's possible for it to be perfectly ethical. In practice this happens so rarely that it's not worth discussing.

[rmbyrro]

It looks like a worthwhile discussion about which you have not yet been able to prepare a reasonably well thought argument to present.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Because I'm not arguing in that discussion: I would support ads that inform without manipulating. But since they statistically don't exist, pointing to them in an argument about real ads is just a motte-and-bailey.

[oehpr]

If I recommended something to you but didn't believe it was actually worth recommending, is that immoral? Well I basically lied to you...

But it's ok! Because I also financially benefited from it.

Yes, marketing is immoral.

[chromoblob]

If it pays me, then I believe it's worth recommending :)

Though if you reject this implication, I totally agree.

[sambazi]

imho rational beings have to reject it as it undermines trust and hence society as a whole.

[zlg_codes]

This is a bad faith argument. You ought to know what the social and psychological effects of what you're defending. It isn't just informing people that a business exists. It's getting in the way of their normal routine to shove your capitalist crap in someone's face to buy. You don't stop random conversations to bring up products in normal conversation, so it has no place to interrupt conversation.

Advertising is fucking everywhere. I don't want to hear about new products and services because all of them literally just want your money. I'm not always shopping or looking for a product. I find navigating markets a massive ass pain.

We need legislation that forces advertising to the margins of society, where it belongs. We aren't just sacks of meat to be manipulated. There is nothing just about commercial communication having a louder voice than the people.

[gambiting]

>>This is a bad faith argument. You ought to know what the social and psychological effects of what you're defending.

I don't understand why or how you see my question as one made in bad faith. OP said all advertising is immoral - I want to explore if they really think all advertising is immoral, or just some subset of it. Like, if you own a butcher shop and have a sign up front that says "fresh meat here!", is that immoral? If yes, why? Again, I'm genuienly curious.

[xyzelement]

//You don't stop random conversations to bring up products in normal conversation

Sure you do. If people are talking about cars for their families, and I have a suggestion for them based on my prior research, I'll share it. It's been raining a lot in my area recently, so lots of folks talking about which basement waterproofer they had a good experience with.

The reason these things don't feel like ads is because they are "super targeted" - I am telling someone about a product/service that I believe they would be interested in based on what I understand about them. Obviously I also don't get paid for this messaging but that's probably not the crux of the matter here. If advertising was "so good" that I would only see ads for products that are genuinely valuable and relevant to me at that time, that would be great.

[Nullabillity]

Who do you think the current system of "biggest malvertising budget wins" favours? Who do you think can afford those massive budgets?

[gambiting]

I don't see how that's relevant to my question. OP said that all advertising is immoral, I wonder if they really mean ALL advertising.

[charcircuit]

>Who do you think can afford those massive budgets?

Businesses that sell a lot of products that people actually want and do not end up returning. The money for advertising is not sustainable if it doesn't result in some sort of purchase down the line.

[chromoblob]

A business can also subsidize adverts for "bad" products by profit from "good" products.

[xyzelement]

Nobody would intentionally chose to do that...

[chromoblob]

Why? Looks pretty imaginable to me.

[xyzelement]

Because it would be more profitable to get rid of rather than subsidize the bad product in that scenario.