this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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Mildly Interesting

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What If We Made Advertising Illegal? (simone.org)
submitted 2 days ago by sundrei@lemmy.sdf.org to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Then we’d have a centrally-planned economy I guess. I don’t really see how a free market would work without advertising.

[–] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

At the very least it comes down to regulation of speech. Advertising is speech. Even if you got rid of like actual commercials, you'll just shift advertising towards product placement and utilization rather than over advertisements.

Definitely a complex thing.