[mrob]

Advertising causes great harm. Banning advertising, or better yet, making it economically nonviable without restricting freedom of speech, solves this problem. As already pointed out by several other posts in this thread, the purported benefits of advertising are already available through non-harmful means.

But I acknowledge that there may be edge cases. My point is that the existence of edge cases does not mean we should permit the harm to continue. Those specific edge cases can be identified and patched. My suggestion is a hypothetical example of a potential such patch, one that might possibly be a net benefit. Maybe it would actually be a net harm, and the restriction should be absolute. The specifics don't matter, it's merely an example to illustrate how edge cases might be patched.

Your objections to this hypothetical example are nit-picking the edge cases of an edge case. They're so insignificant in comparison to the potential harm reduction of preventing advertising that they can be safely ignored.

[AnthonyMouse]

No, the problem is that the "edge cases" will swallow the rule if you make an exception for every instance where advertising is actually serving a purpose, but if you don't make those exceptions then you would have created so many new problems or require so many patches that each carry its own overhead and opportunity for cheating or corruption that the costs would vastly exceed the benefits.

> The specifics don't matter, it's merely an example to illustrate how edge cases might be patched.

Only it turned out to be an example to illustrate how patching the edge cases might be a quagmire.