[barnacs]

> if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising

Yes, please. Both online and offline. Advertising is probably the most useless, annoying and wasteful industry out there.

We could have pull-only databases of businesses, products and services instead. Ideally, with independently verified, fact-checked information and authentic reviews. Realistically though, this kind of objectivity would probably be infeasible to enforce and maintain. But even if we allow for misinformation, paid rankings and whatnot, the point stands: any such database should follow a pull-only model, users access it voluntarily to search for products and services and it's not an unsolicited broadcast to everyone everywhere all the time.

[ndriscoll]

Ideally governments would provide an index of registered businesses with some basic filtering (e.g. location or category of services provided) with a name, address, phone number, and url. Present in random order to be fair.

My state seems to have a search tool, but no list. It also only has name/address (so presumably it's more for serving legal papers or whatever).

If I want to find a plumber, I should be able to ask my government for a list of the licensed plumbers in my area.