What if we banned all advertising? Not regulate it—abolish it. This proposal would transform manipulation machines, and maybe save democracy itself. A thought experiment worth considering.

The idea feels like sci-fi because you’re so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.

The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn’t been valid for decades.

  • RowRowRowYourBotEnglish
    11·
    7 hours ago

    And the fakse equivalence is we were talking about graffiti at that point. Hence the false equivalence between them. We have had ads like billboards for thousands of years in some places. Anywhere you find a whole bunch of people you find ads for the extra stuff people have. The only times when this isn’t true is when no one has extra stuff they don’t need.