I want to get as far away from the ad economy and ad culture as possible. Since there’s a 0% chance the morons supporting it will ever learn from their mistakes, I’m starting to realize the only option going forward is to create new places where we aren’t stuck with the “tunnel vision of the stupids.”
It doesn’t have to be large, start small and work our way out. It also doesn’t have to be expensive. It shouldn’t be too difficult to enforce a ban on physical advertisements within the borders, but digital advertising is a whole 'nother ballgame.
Even for a small town, would it be possible to sue companies for running ads in it? Similar to how the same company will show different content on their web services depending on where the user connects from to adhere to local laws. It would be fine if they just blocked connections from where advertising is illegal, but it’s not okay for them to show ads to our residents.
Any insight into this besides useful idiots saying advertising is good or necessary would be greatly appreciated!
I’ve thought about this quite a bit and really consider advertising to be a form of assault on attention. The presumption that companies are entitled to our attention without our consent feels like an attack on our own agency.
Before we get to banning advertising though we first need to figure out how to connect people to businesses that have goods and services they actually want to seek out. Word of mouth is great, but it’s insufficient. We need some sort of directory. The yellow pages were surprisingly functional, but some modern accessibility and ability to update info is needed. I think the 10,000 pound gorilla in this space is Google maps. However, alphabet is fundamentally an advertising company at this point and prioritizes selling ad placement over user experience. Could organic maps eventually serve as a searchable business directory? I’m not sure. I think any open source initiative would quickly be ruined if companies thought that rigging that system woild get them more customers.
Is a public option viable? I’m not sure. There’s a lot of equal access and gatekeeping concerns there. We shouldn’t allow obvious scams to be listed, but what’s the threshold and who makes that determination? Is someone’s Mary Kay mlm a legitimate business or scam? The potential for corruption is very high in an endeavor like this. Imagine if someone is buddies with an administrator and can get their competition completely delisted. Such an endeavor would likely face lots of litigation over claims of unfair treatment.
Many companies I think would be eager to stop paying for advertising if they had a means of connecting to customers that was effective and lower cost, but to achieve this, you’re literally trying to compete with the entirety of google/alphabet.
No.
Advertising is malign. We don’t stop to consider how the poor cotton farmer will harvest his cotton before abolishing slavery. We don’t stop to consider how the lead mine owner will make a profit before we swap to unleaded fuel. We don’t stop to consider how the poor government officials will afford their expensive lifestyle before we ban bribes. We prevent the harm. If anyone is benefitting from harming people, losing out on that benefit is the most lenient punishment they should ever hope for.
dont the yellow pages still exist?
Ads are okay if I am asking for them. So you have a dedicated ad search engine. Same rules as today for scams. The place that serves up scams will get that reputation. You could also make the specific engine liable to some degree if you want to curb it, but have to be careful not to create too high a barrier to entry or you will end up with a monopoly.