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.
  • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    8 hours ago

    This year, companies worldwide are expected to spend 1.08 trillion U.S. dollars on advertising. But the amount of value lost to humanity is about double that. Here is why: advertising actually works. Companies gain at least as much from it as they spend on it, or they wouldn’t do it. Advertising works by manipulating people to make objectively bad decisions. To buy stuff they don’t need or buy stuff at elevated prices keeping up monopoly like pricing. How much useless stuff? How much higher prices? Well at least another $1.08 trillion worth of course, or companies would spend less on advertising. Basically people need to work to make the ad, that makes you buy useless shit and then people need to work to make the superfluous product and/or to afford an overpriced one.

    And this is just advertising, not general marketing, branding and public relations. People like to think, that ads are just annoying or that they work on everyone else but them, but the truth is, they work on all of us and cost us a lot of money. Not to mention the often cited ideological effects of making us feel unhappy, inadequate, fearful, sad, sexualized, pressed into gender norms and social classes and so on.

    So the material loss to humanity is about $2,160,000,000,000 this year. Poverty, hunger, climate change, take your pick - oh wait, with this kind of money you wouldn’t have to choose, just end them all and still have a lot left over. An alien race looking on earth from the outside might be amazed at how we spend so much energy, time and effort, just to dull our own minds.

    From a Marxist perspective, advertising is driven by the capitalists urge to avoid what they hate most (at least in their own sector, not necessarily for their suppliers): fair competition. By manipulating demand with advertising, they get closer to monopoly prices. That’s why, we can’t realistically hope to get rid of advertising within capitalism. It’s part of the ideological manifestation of the tendency of capital to form monopolies.

    • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      6 hours ago

      Here is why: advertising actually works. Companies gain at least as much from it as they spend on it, or they wouldn’t do it

      I mean, yes and no. This is why ad rates for online ads have cratered in the last few years is because everyone realized they don’t work.

      • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        6 hours ago

        Yes, that illustrates my point: what doesn’t work gets funding cut until expenses match gains. It works on average. They collect our data to see what works.

  • DickFuckarelli [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    4 hours ago

    Le sigh… so much I want to say. But it would be borderline self doxxing.

    I’ve been to places, very metropolitan places, where advertising is all but nonexistent. And it was amazing. Startling at first, but then mind blowing when you realize the harmony in the absence of treat propaganda.

    I literally think about it every day.

  • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    681·
    23 hours ago

    I vandalize ads. Including billboards. Be the change you want to see smuglord

    Sometimes they give up and stop posting them. Its extremely easy to do. Paintball guns (incl shooting ball bearings at a LCD billboard), aerosol cans, a pocket knife… its trivial!

    Install ublock on your browser. Stop watching TV straight from the hose. I have made it so that any area I can walk to or interact with has no ads.

    If everyone who hated ads vandalized them they would no longer exist.

  • geese_feces [comrade/them, love/loves]@hexbear.netEnglish
    24·
    20 hours ago

    Advertisements are detrimental to mental health. There should be studies to measure the amount of advertising hours the average person is exposed to in a day, and regulations to limit this amount. Websites like Youtube and Facebook should stop showing ads to a user after they’ve hit their quota, and there should be stricter regulations to limit the amount of advertising shown to minors.

    Companies like Google and Microsoft should be limited in what percentage of their revenue is from advertising. Ad revenue has warped these companies, every update Microsoft releases for Windows is focused on adding more features to trick the user into searching for something with Bing. All the money they’re burning with their Copilot AI, is just in the hopes that a few more people will use Bing instead of Google. After a company makes a certain amount of money from advertising, all future profits should be donated to a charity or refunded to the users.

    We should also get rid of billboards. They are distracting to drivers and make roads less safe. The only public advertising allowed should be, if your band is playing nearby, you can put some posters up.

      • Lamprey [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        8 hours ago

        It’s also inconsistent with the premise that advertising incentives brain rot and misinformation, since state propaganda is not a source of money

      • restless [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        21 hours ago

        In the article it seems they’re equating the two and… want both forms banned.

        When I say advertising, I also mean propaganda. Propaganda is advertising for the state, and advertising is propaganda for the private. Same thing.

  • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    19·
    23 hours ago

    Sorry, my future communism includes constant drilling in all media about the successful elimination of imperialism globally as opposed to the prior horrors of imperialism, and the fact that employing others in private companies is tantamount to slavery morally.

  • proceduralnightshade@lemmy.mlEnglish
    10·
    22 hours ago

    People love advertising. Advertising itself is more addictive than the products it advertises.

    Friends call me crazy when I watch TV with them and am like “yooo what a sick ad! omg let’s goooo” I’m so hyped about this shit, because I ron’t see ads in my own spaces. When it cones to television they interest me more than the actual content. Ads are like sugar, fast food, a cigarette, or a slop blockbuster movie. You want to get dumb. You want it to get into your brain.

    It’s belletristic and from I think… 2000something? “99 francs” is the original title. There’s a book and a movie too. It’s pretty whacky but I found it to be very enjoyable, it portrays the sheer insanity of the ad industry from the inside and the outside.

    Sorry I’m still a bit ill, got the flu and my brain has turned into mush over the last few days. Glad hexbear is back I missed you so much

    edit: brain broke

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      12·
      22 hours ago

      Glad hexbear is back I missed you so much

      It never actually went anywhere you could still visit us by typing the url in!

      • proceduralnightshade@lemmy.mlEnglish
        11·
        22 hours ago

        I did lurk in my browser from time to time, but my app feed still felt empty :( I plan on creating a hexbear account when my English gets better anyway. Only a matter of years lol

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          15·
          21 hours ago

          You wouldn’t be criticised by a single person here for any level of language skills. The people here are less concerned with the tone or whether grammar/spelling is correct and more with the merit of what is being said. Plenty of the working class have less than adequate reading/writing skills, it should not exclude them from any space.

          The liberals use it as a tool of making people conform to a middle-class suburban way of speaking and writing. We do not.

          Also your English seems good to me!

          • proceduralnightshade@lemmy.mlEnglish
            6·
            20 hours ago

            This might be more of a problem stemming from ADHD/neurodiversity because I actually struggle to articulate myself in my first language too. I often have to revise a text twice or more before I’m sure it’s communicating what I meant.

            For example, the really interesting discussion of my original reply could come from me noting that advertisement has become a commodity itself. Look at mobile games, the line between the actual product and advertisement has become increasingly blurry over the last few years.

            If you need one more shitposter on hexbear, well I’m down for that too. .world doesn’t usually appreciate my shitposts, no idea why that is

            A very educated and smart now software engineer ML friend of mine always tried to express himself in the simplest way possible. He could’ve come up with a very sophisticated reason, but only said “if simple words are enough, why make it more complicated” when you asked him. This was fascinating to me, and reflected his approach to problem solving in general. “Use only the minimal amount of complex language necessary”. You want to communicate after all.

            Sorry I know I don’t seem like my English is bad but you have to trust me :D sometimes I use a wrong term or make very vague statements or generally talk shit (and I am pretty good at that, too).

        • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          9·
          21 hours ago

          just wanna echo what awoo said; this is maybe the only place on the internet where i have never seen someone smugly corrected for making a linguistic misstep

          we’d love to have you at any level of proficiency! stalin-heart (not to pressure you or anything of course)

          • proceduralnightshade@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            20 hours ago

            Thank you, I appreciate all your kind words :)

            Maybe a bit of pressure wouldn’t hurt, hexbear is The first only community I’m kinda vibing with, and be it only from a observer’s perspective most of the time.

      • Balefirex [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        6·
        21 hours ago

        you could still visit us by typing the url in!

        this is specifically not true, typing the url would take you to a domain name auction for a solid while

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          2·
          20 hours ago

          For the first few week yes but then it reverted to working again, except you couldn’t log in through it or something I don’t quite remember the nuances.