> People who sell things need ways to find buyers.
No, you've got that backwards. People who sell things should have a way of announcing their product to the world. Buyers who are interested in that type of product should be the ones seeking out the companies, not the other way around.
The current approach of companies pushing their products to everyone is how we got to the mess we are in today. Companies will cheat, lie, and break every law in existence in order to make more money. Laws need to be made in order for companies to stop abusing people.
You know what worked well? Product catalogs. Companies buy ad space in specific print or digital media. Consumers can consult that media whenever they want to purchase a specific product. This is what ecommerce sites should be. Give the consumer the tools to search for specific product types, brands, specifications, etc.; get rid of fake reviews and only show honest reviews from verified purchases and vetted reviewers, and there you go. Consumers can discover products, and companies can advertise.
This, of course, is only wishful thinking, since companies would rather continue to lie, cheat, and steal, as that's how the big bucks are made.
I honestly find it disturbing that with all of humanity's progress and all the brilliant technology we've invented, all of our communication channels are corrupted by companies who want to make us buy stuff, and by propaganda from agencies that want to make us think or act a certain way. Like holy shit, people, is this really the best we can do? It's exhausting having to constantly fight against being manipulated or exploited.
Product catalogs are advertising... The Sears catalog was full of products made by other companies, and Sears paid a ton of money to get those catalogs to as many people as possible
I think everyone knows that, but the distinction is that the catalog is "pull" in the sense that if you decide to keep your catalog, the advertising is inside the catalog, and you have to physically retrieve your catalog and open it to find what you're looking for (when you're looking for it), instead of the "push" method of running advertisements in every news article and on every bus.
>I think everyone knows that, but the distinction is [...]
The discussion got muddied because in this subthread, it morphed from "What if we made _all_ advertising illegal?" (original article's exact words) ... to gp's (imiric) less restrictive example of "acceptable" advertising such as "product catalogs".
So when the person crafting a reply is using the article author's absolutist position of no ads, the distinction doesn't matter.
I wouldn't call a product catalog advertising, unless I'm forced to read it or receive it without asking. Otherwise it's my own choice to read about the products, which clearly isn't advertising.
You forget that people used to get spammed with catalogs, and you could opt-out of them with the postal service because it was such a problem. Receiving too many catalogs or magazines is absolutely a negative form of advertising, even though it is less of an issue today.
When Sears delivered the brand new Sear catelog to my door every year, all nicely wrapped in plastic with shiny images of brand new products, that sure as hell wasn't "pull".
I think the point is that they're opt-in advertising. You didn't pick up a book and find pages from the Sears catalog interspersed with the pages you were trying to read. You picked up the Sears catalog when you were considering a purchase and wanted to see what was available.
When you visit a ad-supported news website, you're opting in too... No one is forcing you to use that website versus it's ad-free subscription alternatives, it's just that most people have decided they'd prefer the former
The difference is that a catalog is advertising that the viewer actually wants to see. Ads on a news site are ads that the viewer merely tolerates because they go with the thing they want to see.
The appeal of a catalog is to interest a prospective buyer, not the general public. Once you start targeting the general public, you run into the issues the GP has identified.
What if we took the approach of creating a clear legal distinction between advertising companies and non-advertising companies?
For example, if you want to be an advertising company, there are limits on what and how you can publish (such as having to use pull instead of push channels), and you don't get to also try to be a product or service company. If you want to be a non-advertising company, then you can't publish advertising.
This seems effective and also a much easier scenario to envision for those who find legal restrictions on speech to be unpalatable or inconceivable. It is actually not that outlandish at all; rather it's well within the bounds of what we already do. We already categorize companies by function and apply all kinds of different rules (restrictions on where and when and how they can operate, requirements for licensing and registration, environmental standards, liability standards, taxation rules) to companies based on what they produce or what purpose they serve, and we already accept that doing so has societal benefits.
There is also plenty of precedent for regulations that discourage cross-category operations precisely to simplify enforcement and manage risk. Healthcare providers are separated from payers; drugs cannot also be dietary supplements; legal businesses can't combine with non-law businesses; and so on. Even if cross-category operations aren't completely banned, the rules create friction and deterrence that still has important effects.
> all of our communication channels are corrupted by companies who want to make us buy stuff
This is simply not true. You can buy or rent a server right now, run any kind of communication software on it that you want, and use that to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world, 100% ad-free. There are even pre-existing software stacks, like Mastodon, that make setting this up trivial.
I honestly find it disturbing that you don't appear to realise that you are asking for control over someone else's communication platform.
One person's desire for ignorance should not force that on everyone.
Don't want an add supported service? Don't use it. Don't want ads on TV? Don't watch it. Don't want ads on others property? Let them control the look of your property.
Lots of people like ads because it's how they discover movies, restaurants, better financial help, better doctors, new hobbies, and a world they'd not have found otherwise.
> I honestly find it disturbing that with all of humanity's progress and all the brilliant technology we've invented, all of our communication channels are corrupted by...
Honestly, you couldn't have said that any better. I always think exactly about that. Where we are today, the technology that we have at our disposal, and yet this whole machinery working 24hs non-stop to put these consumption ideas on our heads, cheap propaganda and useless stuff to manipulate us like puppets. Really disgusting.
> The current approach of companies pushing their products to everyone is how we got to the mess we are in today.
The most prosperous society ever known to man, a veritable wonderland of consumer choice and entrepreneurial opportunity that draws people from all over the world to study visit and move here. What a mess.
So we have some annoying advertising. Small price.
Having lived overseas, the US isn't a "veritable wonderland of consumer choice". There are 5 grocery store chains, for the great majority of the country there is one way to travel: car. At the store (Kroger), I can buy 2 kinds of salt on the shelves. Where is the "veritable choice"? It has been told in the advertising but the reality is very limited.
There are scores of grocery chains in the US, not 5. There are thousands of independent grocery stores. And literally hundreds of salt options, even at Kroger.
Seriously. Even the most basic supermarkets stock like at least 10 different kinds of salt. Iodized, non, kosher, sea, for grinding, packets, in disposable shakers, etc., and often a couple brands, e.g. Morton and Diamond. And a larger supermarket will have pink salt (Himalayan), various fancy sea salts, fleur de sel, flavored salts...
The "veritable wonderland" is big cities; come visit NYC or LA. Also affluent smaller cities. Elsewhere, it depends. You can reach parts of the consumption cornucopia by accessing sites like Amazon from basically anywhere in the US though.
Meh. This scenario does not seem broadly representative of the US to me. I mean, I don't live anywhere exceptional and near me alone there are Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Wegmans, Trader Joes, Aldi, and Whole Foods stores in addition to the grocery sections at Walmart and Target. And if one drives a little further, there are Publix, H-Mart, and several smaller local outfits - Compare, Li Ming's Global Mart, etc.
And just Food Lion alone has probably half a dozen to a dozen different salt varieties on the spice aisle.
I'm sure there are places in the US where choice is more limited, but that's the thing about a country of the size of the United States... you can find all kind of scenarios in different regions.
I've lived in a few overseas countries and consumer choice is absolutely limited. As a result you see a lot of people trying to import things they want that they can't otherwise get in their country.
If your hobby is cooking, good luck getting Arabic food ingredients in say Vietnam.
But in the US? If your own city doesn't have a store that carries them, you could easily order them online for next day delivery.
> So we have some annoying advertising. Small price.
Ha. Tell that to the millions of victims from false advertising of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma.
That prosperous society and veritable wonderland is not looking so great these days. Perhaps the fact that the tools built for psychologically manipulating people into buying things can also be used to manipulate people into thinking and acting a certain way could be related to your current situation? Maybe those tools shouldn't have been available to everyone, including your political adversaries?
No, you've got that backwards. People who sell things should have a way of announcing their product to the world. Buyers who are interested in that type of product should be the ones seeking out the companies, not the other way around.
The current approach of companies pushing their products to everyone is how we got to the mess we are in today. Companies will cheat, lie, and break every law in existence in order to make more money. Laws need to be made in order for companies to stop abusing people.
You know what worked well? Product catalogs. Companies buy ad space in specific print or digital media. Consumers can consult that media whenever they want to purchase a specific product. This is what ecommerce sites should be. Give the consumer the tools to search for specific product types, brands, specifications, etc.; get rid of fake reviews and only show honest reviews from verified purchases and vetted reviewers, and there you go. Consumers can discover products, and companies can advertise.
This, of course, is only wishful thinking, since companies would rather continue to lie, cheat, and steal, as that's how the big bucks are made.
I honestly find it disturbing that with all of humanity's progress and all the brilliant technology we've invented, all of our communication channels are corrupted by companies who want to make us buy stuff, and by propaganda from agencies that want to make us think or act a certain way. Like holy shit, people, is this really the best we can do? It's exhausting having to constantly fight against being manipulated or exploited.