Mildly Interesting

20039 readers

1021 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

marcar@lemmy.world

Jimbabwe@lemmy.ml

WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world

1405

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

submitted 2 weeks ago by sundrei@lemmy.sdf.org to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world

380 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

What do you mean by campaigning? Do you mean no political ads or PACs then yeah definitely agree. But if you mean all forms of campaigning then how are politicians supposed to communicate who they are and why you should vote for them to the people? And outside of politicians if political campaigning is not allowed would that also not allow grass roots movements who door knock or hold rallys about specific issues? Political campaigning is all of those things, I definitely agree we need to get big money out of it but I don't think it should be gotten rid of all together.

[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Almost all forms of political campaigns. I think every candidate should be given some modest and equal amount of TV time (in a channel that is specially dedicated to this) to explain their ideology and plans for their next term and allowed to distribute one type of written booklet to communicate it and then that is it. The second you allow more than this money starts having a huge influence on results. Of course this still does not prevent huge amounts of billionaire owned social media and news outlets for disinformation campaigns so this would only be a start.

[–] WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

I mean I think if anything that makes it worse and easier for billionaires to control the narrative as now politicians can't campaign for themselves which means in practice most people are gonna hear about politicians from billionaire owned media. Especially for more worker centered causes which right now tend to be championed by door knocking and more grass roots campaigning. I personally think just abolishing PACs and limiting campaign donations would be enough to make it so politicians have to actually appeal and listen to the people rather then the rich. Could also combine this with a government provider donation that you can choose whichever candidate you want to receive it to help people without the means to donate to be appealed to as well. But I feel like the moment you outlaw campaigning then how do you advocate for ballot measures you like at the state level of you can't go out and door knock or hold rallies for it? As much as the one TV channel style thing would be an ideal idea it wouldn't really work in reality as we already have a channel for that, C-Span, which covers government related things which no one really watches. You have to meet people where they are, and I think trying to stop that is a bad idea for getting people involved in the political process which is something we need more of.