[chrisoconnell]

Honestly, advertising is not inherently evil. Putting a sign out front of your business with your logo is advertising, though it also helps your customers find you. You are advertising your location.

How would you know where a restaurant is or what it serves if they did not have a logo or a menu located outside on their window? All of this is advertising.

What is immoral is advertising that holds your attention hostage. Advertising should be able to be rejected, or skipped.

I don't have to read a billboard. I don't want to stare at it for 5 seconds before saying "Skip Billboard". I just don't look at it.

Instagram does a great job of this with Reels. I can just swipe past a reel that's an ad. I can't even tell you what the last ad I saw on Instagram was, period.

In my opinion, advertising should be an inefficient way of communicating your services / products. Commercials, in-stream ads, popups, anything that forces you to interact with an advertisement should be banned, and any personalization of advertisements should also be banned.

[chrisoconnell]

It's interesting though, to imagine a dystopian future where instead of red lights, we are stopped by ads that we must watch before progressing through an intersection, and the advertisements are spaced perfectly to control traffic patterns.

Samsung should hire me to design their next smart city, imo.

[whimsicalism]

Advertising never holds your attention hostage because you never have to use the service with advertising.