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What If We Made Advertising Illegal? (simone.org)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

How exactly do you define advertising? An overly broad definition would forbid, for example, a dentist from putting a sign in front of their office saying they're a dentist.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Paying somone else to advertise for you. You yourself holding up a sign promoting yourself is fine, paying someone else to hold up a sign for you is illegal.