[_heimdall]

Anyone bothered enough by advertising can stop using whatever product has been ruined by ads, or find ways to remove the advertising.

More laws and larger governments doesn't have to be the answer to all problems. If consumers care enough they'll change their usage, if they don't change their usage they likely don't care enough.

[dspillett]

> Anyone bothered enough by advertising

I don't particularly have an issue with advertising itself. If adverts get on my nerves on a product or page I just leave, as you suggest: problem solved.

The actual issue is the stalky tracking of me throughout my life that is currently inseparable from the advertising. I can't just walk away from that: it happens behind my back, it has happened before I get the chance to walk away.

> can stop using whatever product has been ruined by ads

Which will not stop the stalky behaviour of the ad industry. They'll still track me if I happen to click the wrong thing, or track me through my connections to other people. I suppose I could walk away from life and become a hermit, but that would be just a little extreme.

> or find ways to remove the advertising.

Which is, while I do take part, an ultimately fruitless task. Every block we make for the stalky behaviour, be it technical or legislative (other than outright banning the tracking of personal data except with explicit opt-in without exceptions, and properly enforcing punishments for breaking the ban), they'll find a way around. Removing it is not a long term solution, it is a war or attrition where we have to have our guard up all the time and they only have to get lucky, or just be particularly sneaky, every now and again.

> More laws and larger governments doesn't have to be the answer to all problems.

This has often been said by companies and their shills. Oddly, they are all in favour of extra laws and government reach when it is, for example, to protect what they consider to be their intellectual property.

[_heimdall]

> Which will not stop the stalky behaviour of the ad industry. They'll still track me if I happen to click the wrong thing, or track me through my connections to other people. I suppose I could walk away from life and become a hermit, but that would be just a little extreme.

You could make some real progress without being a hermit though, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Don't use a smartphone, limit as much of your time online as you can, and pay in cash when you can. Those wouldn't make you a hermit but would seriously limit the data you make available to be gobbled up in the first place.

> This has often been said by companies and their shills. Oddly, they are all in favour of extra laws and government reach when it is, for example, to protect what they consider to be their intellectual property.

Well that's actually what I see as a better approach, remove protections for those companies and industries rather than trying to create new laws to limit them. Its a strange balancing act to attempt to both protect and limit an industry with different laws, we would be better off not doing either.

[sloowm]

If I walk outside I'm bombarded by ads. Almost all websites have been tailored to include ads and hide information. You're tracked on all devices you touch.

Vaguely referencing more laws or larger government doesn't mean anything. We're not talking about all problems but a specific one. There is an obvious imbalance between the power and information an individual consumer can use to shield themselves from activities by companies that are detrimental to them. We are also not expected to test our own food for toxins.

More platitudes and soundbites doesn't have to be the answer to all problems.

[_heimdall]

Seeing ads outside likely doesn't harm you though, you can ignore them. If your city is plastered with ads to a point at where you can't stand it you can always move, that's just another part of a city that someone may decide they don't like and want something different.

> Almost all websites have been tailored to include ads and hide information. You're tracked on all devices you touch.

That's really the crux of it though. The problem isn't just that companies are gobbling up all this data, it's also that we make the data available in the first place.

Stop using a smartphone and taking it everywhere with you, limit what you do online in general, and pay cash when you can. A few simple changes would really reduce the data you make available, I'm sure there are other simple changes I'm missing here but the point is that we don't have to protect data that doesn't exist.

[Y_Y]

> Seeing ads outside likely doesn't harm you though, you can ignore them.

Just for a different perspective, I can't ignore them. I read more-or-less all text that comes into my field of vision, and cannot help but look at bright flashing lights. To my knowledge this isn't recognized anywhere as a disability (though it is associated with a standard diagnosis).

For me, and presumably others like me, flashing road signs that tell me I'm driving the right speed thanks are a serious dustraction even though I've seen the same one hundreds of times. I stopped watching association football when animated sideline ads became common because I could mot focus on the game.

If it makes sense to put in wheelchair ramps at the stadium couldn't it make sense to accommodate me, even if most people can redirect their attention just as easily as walking up the stairs?

[_heimdall]

When it comes to driving, that's seems like a totally reasonable concern. I also find roadside signs, digital boards, etc really distracting when driving. That one falls into a safety concern for everyone on the road too, where as ads in general may just be distracting, that distrsction could literally kill someone on the road.

In general, it is a really tough line to draw what is considered a protected disability. I don't know where I would draw the line, and it just gets harder as we create more diagnoses. I don't mean that to demonize the diagnoses at all, but it does make drawing a line for what to legally protect that much harder.

[hfsh]

> To my knowledge this isn't recognized anywhere as a disability (though it is associated with a standard diagnosis)

I have the same issue, and I strongly suspect it has to do with my ADHD. I absolutely hate ads in pretty much all forms.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

<< Seeing ads outside likely doesn't harm you though, you can ignore them.

I honestly do not think it is possible to ignore ads unless you do not see/smell/hear/experience them. Even if you dismiss them, you have received an impression of that ad. Your mind has been affected. It just happens that we normalized it as a normal function of society ( not completely unlike how we normalized cameras everywhere including on doorbell ). I have no interest in dating farmers, but I still remember being exposed to farmers only ad.

edit:

<< Stop using a smartphone and taking it everywhere with you.

It seems less and less of an option. Amtrak gatekeeps its best prices behind an app. Parking lot wants me to use an app. My workplace now effectively forced me to have phone on me ( even if I come into office.. I can understand the need for it while remote ).

The current societal construct practically requires a smartphone. You could technically go on without it the same way you COULD technically not have a car. It is possible, but very, very limiting. And I would argue that not having a car now is way more forgiving than not having a cell and that is saying something.

[_heimdall]

> I honestly do not think it is possible to ignore ads unless you do not see/smell/hear/experience them

While we can't avoid seeing ads in a public place, we can manage how we respond to them. That's really not much different than not liking what someone else says. We can try to regulate everything such that people can be comfortable and never have to build a thick skin, or we can trust that people can and should be able to manage their emotions well enough to ignore things they don't like.

> It seems less and less of an option. Amtrak gatekeeps its best prices behind an app. Parking lot wants me to use an app. My workplace now effectively forced me to have phone on me ( even if I come into office.. I can understand the need for it while remote

I can't stand when companies do this stuff, assuming that everyone has a smartphone and is willing to give them access to it. I choose not to patronize companies that do it, but yeah that's harder when your office building requires a smartphone to enter. When push comes to shove, I wonder what the employer would say if someone raised that it isn't an option for them and they need a different way to enter.

Broadly, we have a real issue today with society allowing conveniences to become necessities. We do it to ourselves, but just because smartphones and cars are convenient doesn't mean we should build a world where everyone has to have them. It locks us into certain paths, and when concerns like climate change come up for example we're hamstrung because we can't imagine giving up things like personal vehicles, air travel, smartphones, etc.

[sloowm]

So because we want to keep government small and ad companies can get so big they basically invade every part of your life you have to leave your phone, close your eyes, stay offline, just move bro. This doesn't seem like a very serious or productive line of reasoning.

[_heimdall]

> you have to leave your phone

Sure. A phone is a product, it isn't a right or necessity. I get that they are very convenient, and addictive, but they're a very new novelty on the scale of a legal system. There are good arguments for wanting to limit advertising and data privacy, but protecting our right to use a certain piece of technology really just isn't very compelling IMO.

> close your eyes

Advertising is nothing new though. If your concern is even just seeing ads at all, that's a problem that has existed much longer than digital data brokers.

> stay offline

Similar to smartphones, being online isn't a right and is a very new concept. We don't have to be online to live our lives, and we shouldn't expect that everyone is online.

> just move bro

Moving isn't easy, and may not be cheap depending on how you do it, but is there really something wrong with moving when you don't like the area you live in? To me that seems like a totally reasonable response for anyone that's able, and for those that aren't willing to move they can try to change the place they live. Moving is just easier than somehow convincing a locality to limit or remove advertising.

[throw10920]

> More laws and larger governments doesn't have to be the answer to all problems

More laws and larger governments are generally undesirable (for obvious reasons) but saying that we shouldn't make any laws at all is throwing the baby out of the bathwater.

If you're thoughtful and deliberate about how you write your legislation, you can have a disproportionately positive impact with a very small amount of additional weight.

For instance, instead of trying to enumerate every single way that data could be leaked and forbid that (see: HIPAA), you should just make the end state (PII in the hands of someone the user didn't explicitly authorize it to be in) illegal and mandate a fine per unit of information (e.g. 1% of the median US salary for SSN) to every entity in the leak chain (because a chain of custody for personal information is just about mandatory at this point).

Details will vary, but this general approach is vastly better than the crazy laws we have in other areas that attempt to "enumerate badness" in the intermediate rather than the end state.

[_heimdall]

I wasn't arguing for no laws though, only that we don't need to resch for them as quickly as we often do or want to do. I thought the topic here was about banning advertising as a whole, if we want to zoom into privacy concerns relates to the retention of PII data that is more doable and we already have a framework to start with based on the EU.

> If you're thoughtful and deliberate about how you write your legislation, you can have a disproportionately positive impact with a very small amount of additional weight.

Unfortunately that really is a non-starter in the US today. I have very little faith that Congress is interested in carefully considering and clarifying. I have even less faith that any bill with thousands of pages of text, which is how they appear to do business these days, could ever be clearly defined and scoped to avoid obvious unintended consequences or misplaced boundaries.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

We can, but, as OP noted, the change is only temporary, while political change is harder, but also tends to last longer. I still remember when pihole worked on most things. These days it is just a part of adblocking approach for me.

tldr: Some of us are tired of fiddling with things where were we shouldn't have to.

<< More laws and larger governments doesn't have to be the answer to all problems.

If market participants can't behave ( and they clearly can't help themselves ), it is the only real answer.

<< If consumers care enough they'll change their usage, if they don't change their usage they likely don't care enough.

Or.. options for consumers are limited, which affects what they do. In all seriousness, streaming execs seemed to admit the ads simply bring more money for them so they don't care if non-ad version is profitable. It is not enough.

My household dropped Netflix and Prime over their silliness. We currently still have Disney until they get too greedy. And that is just streaming. Regular net is soooo much worse without a way to scrub the ads away.

[_heimdall]

> My household dropped Netflix and Prime over their silliness. We currently still have Disney until they get too greedy. And that is just streaming. Regular net is soooo much worse without a way to scrub the ads away.

Isn't that a good example of consumers exercising their right to not patronize companies they don't agree with? You didn't need a law stopping you from using Prime, and you don't have a right to use it, you just decided you didn't like their product anymore.

The blindspot missing in a ban of advertising is what that does to the viability and price of a product. Prime and Netflix as it is today is built based partly on the advertising revenue. Presumably if that money disappears the product would get worse, disappear, or become more expensive.

[jcynix]

>Regular net is soooo much worse without a way to scrub the ads away.

Hmm, there are ways: I browse with NoScript and unlock Origin installed and see almost no ads. If a website doesn't work and I really need to visit it for some reason, I selectively enable part of the JS they want me to load. Other sites simply don't get my attention.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

It works for now and note that there already were some attempts to have solutions like origin stop working[1]. Unsuccessful, for now, but the intent is there and I am starting to get tired of the whack a mole.

[1]https://www.pcmag.com/news/rip-ublock-origin-google-proceeds...