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

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

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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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[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In both situation you make it illegal for corporations to do something, and punish them with fines and criminal sentences for executives if they're caught doing so, leading to a decrease in that behaviour.

So what about the situations do you see as different that makes it a false equivalency?

[+] RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, we're talking about making advertising illegal, which would change advertising to be illegal, similar to how pollution is illegal.

You seem to be arguing that it would be impossible to make advertising illegal because you wouldn't pass laws to make advertising illegal....

That's not a false equivalency, that's you just insisting that advertising's not that bad and shouldn't be illegal. Nothing about your feelings on whether or not it should be illegal changes whether or not we could make it illegal.