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| ▲ | phantasmish 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is what a fucking store is for. They have catalogs. You could ask for one. If they think people will want something they will try to sell it and will tell you about it if you go looking. I see this pro-ads argument all the time and it’s so obviously-stupid that I’m truly baffled. Is this the kind of lie ad folks tell themselves so they can sleep at night? | | |
| ▲ | AuryGlenz 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | There are also ads for services. I used to be a photographer, and without my little Facebook/Instagram ads people would have had to largely rely on word of mouth, meaning the more established photographers would absolutely dominate my little rural market even when their photography was worse. Also, I'm not sure we want a world where only the largest corporations get to sell things. That's what would happen if people could only find things through stores and catalogs, especially pre-internet. | | |
| ▲ | phantasmish 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | If I go looking for a directory of [service, in my area] that’s hardly an ad! If those include, say, reviews and pricing info, great! Yes, please! I definitely don’t want that directory to be skewed with ads in favor of those with the most money, or who have decided to burn the most of their limited resources on ads instead of improving their services, lowering their prices, or hell, just taking more profit. The ads were the biggest problem with the good ol’ yellow pages. | | |
| ▲ | satvikpendem 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Your definition of ad is too narrow then, because those are all different types of ads. A store advertising its goods or even having billboard ads saying the store is at such and such street is, well, an ad. | | |
| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Directories aren’t ads. The crucial feature would be that nobody would have to pay to get listed, or only a small nominal fee that anyone can afford. Like in a phonebook. Paying for placement is what makes an ad. And that’s what would have to be prohibited. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > The crucial feature would be that nobody would have to pay to get listed, or only a small nominal fee that anyone can afford You see the contradiction. You’re essentially saying no bad ads, only good ads, without defunding the difference. (Anyone can afford a Google or Meta ad in the way they could a White Pages listing.) | | |
| ▲ | gpm 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I'd interpret this as a proposal for two new laws: 1. No non-invited display of paid messaging, period. If you go to a directory and ask for a list of people who paid to be part of that directory, it can show it. If you play a game, watch a movie, take the bus, or search a non-paid directory of sites they simply cannot show you things they were paid to show you. I think I'd call this making attention-theft a crime. 2. No payment for priority placement in paid directories. A paid directory has to charge the same (small, nominal) fee to everyone involved. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > No non-invited display of paid messaging, period. If you go to a directory and ask for a list of people who paid to be part of that directory, it can show it How would you distinguish someone asking for the directory versus asking for something else with said directory (which are totally not ads, pinky promise) displayed alongside? > I'd call this making attention-theft a crime Someone standing up to make a political speech in a public square is now a criminal? > A paid directory has to charge the same (small, nominal) fee to everyone involved This is just ads with a uniform, "small, nominal" fee. Uniformity is objectively measurable. Smallness and nominalness is not. Presumably you mean these directories have to be published at cost? | | |
| ▲ | gpm 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > How would you distinguish someone asking for the directory versus asking for something else with said directory (which are totally not ads, pinky promise) displayed alongside? You making sending the directory with something else unconditionally illegal, you either get the directory or the something else, not both at once. This is also necessary for the second part where you require everything in the directory paid the same amount. > Someone standing up to make a political speech in a public square is now a criminal? Only if they were paid to do so. > This is just ads with a uniform, "small, nominal" fee. Uniformity is objectively measurable. Smallness and nominalness is not. Presumably you mean these directories have to be published at cost? Personally I think uniform is more important than either small or nominal. It means that the person creating the directory can't be bribed to direct your attention to certain parts of the directory - i.e. steal it. Rather it's your choice to get the directory in the first place and pay attention to it, and everything inside it is at an equal playing level. I don't really care if it's at cost or if making directories is a profit making venture. I'm not entirely sure what the original proposers intent was with the "small and nominal" part though. They might have wanted something more like "at cost". |
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| ▲ | YetAnotherNick 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Fixed fee highly favors big players. Not even sure why you want fixed fee. Either remove fee at all or charge higher for bigger players or charge based on sale rather than listing. | | |
| ▲ | gpm 2 days ago | parent [-] | | By the same I mean equal non-discriminatory pricing - not necessarily "fixed" rather than "by sale" or "by view" or what have you but that if it's "by view" then it's "x cents per view" with the same x everyone and if it's "3% of referred sale revenue" it's that for everyone. The purpose being that because every item in any paid directory has paid the directory the same, the directory has no (monetary, at least) incentive to direct your attention towards sub-optimal listings. As an attempt at forcing the directory to sell itself as a useful directory of services, rather than as an object which sells its users attention to the highest bidder. |
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| ▲ | FridgeSeal 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think they’ve made the difference pretty clear? Rather than coverage being spend based, it’s a low, static price to be listed in the directory, with near zero extra differentiation other than what you choose to put in your little square/rectangle. | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Anyone can afford a Google or Meta ad in the way they could a White Pages listing. If I go buy a Google or Meta ad with the same negligible budget, I can get my product shown to 50 people and then the money runs out. That's completely different from getting onto a phonebook-like list where everyone that visits can see my company's offer. | |
| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I see no contradiction. Google or Meta ads are not a catalog. They are imposed on people who didn’t decide to browse a catalog, and also you can’t browse all Google/Meta ads as a catalog. A catalog listing products or businesses doesn’t constitute ads, just as a phonebook doesn’t. | |
| ▲ | pharrington 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | What does "defunding the difference" mean? layer8 and phantasmish absolutely said what the difference was. |
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| ▲ | daedrdev 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | companies have to pay to get their products on shelve in many grocery stores |
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| ▲ | tracker1 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Even in the phone books of old, you had ads as part of the directories... Businesses paid for those listings... Even today's equivalent, yelp, etc. are trying to sell add-on services to the businesses and can harm your businss if you don't pay up for the features. | | |
| ▲ | kelnos 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Right, and in this new ad-free world, those things works not be allowed, and all businesses would be on a level playing field, with none privileged over the others simply because they have a larger advertising budget. | | |
| ▲ | wizzwizz4 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I own ten thousand businesses, all of whom employ me as a contractor. All businesses being on a level playing field puts me at quite an advantage! If people are using their advertising budget unethically, you should expect them to find new unethical ways to use their advertising budget once you've eliminated the existing ones. Rather than playing whack-a-mole, take a step back, and see if you can fundamentally change the rules of the game. Why is advertising bad? What do you want to happen? Fixing the "how" too firmly, too soon, is an effective way to produce bad policy, no matter how good your intentions. | |
| ▲ | tracker1 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's no such thing as a level playing field... you think EVERY brand can fit on store shelves for discovery? | | |
| ▲ | shimman 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This is entirely a human construct, we can absolutely make it a level playing field if we collectively choose so. What a sad comment. | | |
| ▲ | tpmoney 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You can make it more level, but in any system constrained by the physical world, you can never make it completely level. Ever notice that there used to be a lot of businesses with names like "A+ Heating and Cooling" or "AAA Chimney Sweeps"? That was because being at the top of the phone book's alphabetical listing was more likely to get you business since a lot of people would open to a section, start at the top and start calling. There's only so much shelf space to go around, eventually decisions will be made about who can put their products on a given shelf. Any large business with the ability to produce multiple different products will inherently have the advantage of getting more shelf space assuming you want to display all products. But even assuming you just wanted your shelf space to be a bunch of "per company" catalogs, businesses with more money to spend on glossier catalogs, or brighter inks, or more variations so thicker catalogs will have an advantage. Then there's names and numbers. Hooked on Phonics gets a leg up on every other competing reading program because they got the phone number that is 1-800-ABC-DEFG, no one else can have that number. The lawyer who gets 1-800-555-5555 (or other similarly easy to remember number) has a leg up on anyone with a random number out of the phone company's inventory. But I'm curious, what would this perfectly level field you envision look like? How would these sorts of problems be solved? | |
| ▲ | mvdtnz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Until you try to grapple with real world problems like limited shelf space, limited directory space, how the ads (ahem sorry, directory entries) should be sorted, how to deal with setting boundaries around local directories, etc. | | |
| ▲ | shimman a day ago | parent [-] | | Good thing there is no fundamental law of the universe forcing merchants to stock every single good ever invented. | | |
| ▲ | tracker1 a day ago | parent [-] | | Without advertising (or marketing of some kind), how do you propose for any new product to EVER reach a store shelf. | | |
| ▲ | shimman a day ago | parent [-] | | You convince the store owner in person, this was kinda the case throughout all of humanity until very recently. It's not society's problem to ensure corporations are able to take prime real estate by abusing their customers. They can meet with every shop owner and argue why their products should be sold, although if you ask me I bet the shop owner knows exactly what their customers want so once again where is the benefit for society here? That some greedy people aren't able to make a buck abusing human psychology? Once again, what is the benefit for society here? |
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| ▲ | mvdtnz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And who puts together this magic directory, without pay? | |
| ▲ | AuryGlenz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Who is maintaining and paying for this directory? | | |
| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Those who are interested in knowing what services exist. | | |
| ▲ | phantasmish 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's absolutely wild to me that people can have experienced any amount of the Internet and not think "word of mouth" will absolutely wholly suffice to fill the role of informing people about products. Of course many, many people would create and maintain all kinds of lists and review all kinds of products without being paid to. We know this would happen because it has, and it does, even with the noise of advertising around. The early Web was mostly this, outside the academic stuff and, I guess, porn & media piracy. Without ads clogging everything up, it might even be possible to find these folks' websites! | | |
| ▲ | tpmoney 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The early web very quickly gave rise to curated directories of information and stopped working on word of mouth. Yahoo was a directory before it was a "search engine". AOL was a curated walled garden. Web rings were a thing, great for playful discovery, terrible for finding a specific thing. Heck for that matter, web ring banners are arguably just interactive "banners ads". Word of mouth also requires a high degree of trust in the person spreading the word. Otherwise you get things like youtube "review" channels that are just paid reviews. Or the reddit bot farms where suddenly everyone in a given part of the web is suddenly dropping references to their new Bachelor Chow™ recipes. You can't even trust the news. We all know about submarine ads, but even without that, you can't ever be sure if you're hearing about some new thing on the news because it's really the best/popular, or because they just happen to know a lot of the reporters. | | |
| ▲ | strbean 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > The early web very quickly gave rise to curated directories of information and stopped working on word of mouth. Weren't those better before ads got involved? > Web rings were a thing Aren't those literally word of mouth? > Otherwise you get things like youtube "review" channels that are just paid reviews. That would be illegal under the laws we are discussing, presumably. | | |
| ▲ | tpmoney 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Weren't those better before ads got involved? The directories? Ads were part of those pretty early given that they were modeled on real world directories like the Yellow Pages in the first place. Here's a webarchive of yahoo from 1996[1]. Note the big broken banner at the top with the link text "Click here for the Net Radio Promotion". AOL was pretty much always full of ads, and don't forget the old AOL "keyword" searches which were ads by another name. > Aren't those literally word of mouth? Sure, and they were pretty lousy at helping you find information, which is why people stopped using them in preference to search engines, even though search engines had ads. Heck one of the selling points of Google originally was that their ads would actually be relevant to you and the things you were searching for. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/19961022175643/http://www10.yaho... |
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| ▲ | tpmoney 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | They won't. Notice that Angies list doesn't operate on the "customer pays for the list" model. That's because any directory service that depends on the searcher paying suffers from the problem that once you've found what you're looking for, you have no reason to keep paying for the directory. If I need a lawn guy, I only need to find one, and then I have their number. Why am I going to keep paying the "Lawn Guy Directory" $5 a month after I found someone? And if you're going to charge on a per-query basis, I note that Kagi isn't nearly as well funded or well known as Google, and that's with them offering an "unlimited" tier. And a per-query model disincentivizes me from using the service in the first place. The more digging I do, the more it costs me, so the more likely I am to take the first result I get back. Even the most classic "direct to the people who are most interested" advertising model where the consumer pays money for the ads (magazine ads) still is almost entirely subsidized by the advertisers, not the consumer. |
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| ▲ | stickfigure 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | phantasmish 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Oh, I know how it works. You could have read my whole comment and saved yourself typing anything about the yellow pages. You sweet summer child. |
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| ▲ | kelnos 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If I need a photographer, I'm going to go and search for one. If no one is allowed to advertise to me, then both the small and large players in the space are on an even playing field. Your photography website or Facebook page will be just as searchable or indexable as before, as will business directory sites that can help people find services they need, along with reviews and testimonials. Banning advertising could actually make it easier for new entrants. | |
| ▲ | trinix912 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Back then you'd have physical bulletin boards where you could either freely pin your handwritten note/"ad" onto or you'd have someone do it for you. Still technically an ad though. It's the big players who have the most money for ads, buy up all billboards, internet and TV ads, etc. A small shop can't afford to do that. If ads were completely banned (in all forms including the bulletin boards) then everyone would have to rely on the word of mouth not just small businesses. I also think that fields like photography are just highly competitive regardless of ads so it's then mostly a networking game. | |
| ▲ | keybored 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Capitalism always hides behind the petty business owner/store owner/craftsman. Then the haute bourgeoisie takes the bulk of the profits. | | |
| ▲ | engineer_22 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Maybe every advanced social system has a propensity towards totalitarianism. Similar criticisms can easily be foisted on feudalism, mercantilism, socialism, anarchism, etc. I think in Western Liberal Capitalism there's still space for a middle class. More, it appears the peculiar features of this system have enabled it to unlock tremendous social vigor and provide for the People historic material wealth. Perhaps what's missing in this system isn't material... | | |
| ▲ | keybored 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I’m at a loss as to what these abstract to the heavens responses even mean to reply to. What I commented on was the propaganda tactics of capitalism. The topic in itself wasn’t even about the merits of it (but see the last sentence). What you get in response though are these chin-stroking platitudes about but maybe all social systems have their faults, and ah but look at how full and bountiful my fridge is because of this social system. | | |
| ▲ | engineer_22 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Cadre, I can't help you. If the guy says meta advertising works for him, I'd take his word for it. | | | |
| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | yibg 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I see this pro-ads argument all the time and it’s so obviously-stupid that I’m truly baffled. If you're truly baffled by a view that many people share, you're probably missing something. How do you solve discoverability, especially of a new type of product or category? I invented this new gadget call "luminexel". People don't know what it is yet, because it's new. How do people find it in a catalog? Or the thing I sell is fairly technical and needs more space for descriptions / photos to communicate what it is. Do I get more space in the catalog? | | |
| ▲ | xigoi 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > How do you solve discoverability, especially of a new type of product or category? I invented this new gadget call "luminexel". People don't know what it is yet, because it's new. How do people find it in a catalog? You make a post on Hacker News titled “Show HN: I made this cool thing called Luminexel, check it out!” Some people will think it’s really cool and tell their friends about it. Eventually it will end up on some “curated list of awesome things” website. | | |
| ▲ | agoodusername63 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | My man that’s an ad Many posts on HN are ads. We’ve just collectively decided that some of them are OK | |
| ▲ | magicalhippo 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > You make a post on Hacker News titled “Show HN: I made this cool thing called Luminexel, check it out!” So, place an ad in other words. | | |
| ▲ | xigoi 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It’s not an ad if you’re not paying someone to forcibly show it to other people. | | |
| ▲ | magicalhippo 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | So if I put up posters in my neighborhood for my PC fixing service, it's not considered ads, but if I pay someone else to put the same posters up, they're suddenly ads? | |
| ▲ | jonfw 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | what if I payed a content marketing expert to craft my blog post and title in such a way that drew attention? Would that be paying for |
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| ▲ | November_Echo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Ideally discoverability would be wholly solved by organic word-of-mouth recommendations. First from yourself as the only person who knows this product category exist then from the people who accepted your recommendation, had it solve their problem and finally saw fit to recommend it themselves. | |
| ▲ | zmgsabst 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I’ve yet to see a single product that isn’t related to domains existing products solve problems for. That is, I’m aware of any time in history a wholly new category emerged suddenly. So your question seems like pure fantasy to me — like asking how we’ll slay dragons without ads. I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s a thing which actually needs doing, either. New products within an existing category show up in catalogs, review articles, etc just fine without ads. As does your highly technical product, for which people in the relevant industry already know the information and/or are already used to narrowing their search to a few products and then requesting additional information. Your pro-ad arguments seem to be solving problems that don’t actually exist. |
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| ▲ | cortesoft 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don’t think all ads are the same, and I feel like you are choosing to pretend the ads you don’t mind aren’t ads at all. You say “that is what a store is for”… well, how would you even know a store exists to go check it out? In the physical world, you would walk by and see the store and be curious to check it out… well, what is a store front other than an ad for the store? Putting your name, product, and reasons you will want their product on the store front IS AN AD. You wouldn’t walk into a store front that was completely blank, with no information about what they are selling. And even that simple advertising is impossible online. If I create a new online store, how will people ever know it exists? There is simply no answer that doesn’t in some way act as an ad. I would love to hear how you would let people know your store exists in a way that isn’t just an ad in another form. | |
| ▲ | dangus 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Isn’t the catalog an ad? The issue is that anti-ad zealots won’t acknowledge that advertising is a spectrum. You can go full blown horrendous dystopia or enter into a commerce-free hermit kingdom where private property is banned and resources aren’t traded efficiently, with the end result being that everyone is poor because nobody trades anything with anyone. A sign for your store that identifies you is technically an ad. A brand logo printed on your product is technically an ad. A positive review is basically an ad. What lengths are we going to go to ban ads? Be honest: you’ve never bought a single useful thing that you found out about via an ad and ended up glad you saw an ad for? That is important because the wealth of nations is often predicated on the populace being able to trade their labor. For example, in recent years North Korea has developed their own Amazon-like delivery website for food and goods and has expanded intranet smartphone service because, obviously, fast communication and ease of transmitting a desire to buy or sell is helpful for growing an economy and keeping the nation from starving. Otherwise, why would they adopt an imperial capitalist concept like that? | | |
| ▲ | socialcommenter 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Just because something lies on a spectrum where some actors are totally doing the right thing (and others, well...), doesn't mean we shouldn't take a conservative approach to regulating that thing. No-one can legally exceed 70mph in their fancy new ADAS car with tiny stopping distance, just in case someone tries to do so in their beat-up 1950's Dodge. It's important to strike a healthy balance, even if it inconveniences some honest people (although we're talking about people who work in advertising...). I don't think you can claim we have a healthy balance currently. ETA: catalogs are not ads in this context; people seek out catalogs when they want to find something, which already makes a huge difference |
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| ▲ | kube-system 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are no successful economies without ads. Ads are a necessary evil for effective market discovery. They should be heavily regulated but you can't effectively operate a market economy without one. | | |
| ▲ | gtowey 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I understand what you mean, but I would modify this statement a bit: There are no successful economies without information exchange. Discovery can happen without advertising -- if you consider that the main feature of ads is that it's unwanted information distribution. | | |
| ▲ | kube-system 2 days ago | parent [-] | | There is not any real-world economy that has implemented that information exchange in the absence of activities that would be accurately described as advertising. Even thousands of years ago in illiterate societies people would advertise their goods/services via verbal campaigns, drawn pictures, songs, etc. |
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| ▲ | Dylan16807 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are no successful economies without blue paint, either. As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been enough testing to say much about the importance of ads. And even if they're necessary at some level, what if the US had 90% less ads, etc. | | |
| ▲ | kube-system 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > There are no successful economies without blue paint I don't think that is true. The oldest known mass printed advertising is about 2000 years older than the oldest known blue pigment. > As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been enough testing to say much about the importance of ads. I think if you look at some early advertising (e.g. BCE), you'll see that most have a painfully obvious functional form of just simply announcing the existence of a product/service for the world to observe. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I mean even vaguely vaguely modern-style economy. And you know that's not the point. The point is there's a lot of things that are omnipresent but also not important to the economy. > I think if you look at some early advertising (e.g. BCE), you'll see that most have a painfully obvious functional form of just simply announcing the existence of a product/service for the world to observe. That doesn't tell us how important it is to have advertising. And it doesn't tell us how important it is to have advertising anywhere near current levels. |
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| ▲ | Blikkentrekker 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | All that can be regulated though. In many jurisdictions, it's forbidden for lawyers or pharmaceutical companies to advertise their products with it being regulated what counts as an advertisement and putting oneself into the phone book or putting a big sign with “Lawyer” on one's practice is allowed but putting oneself into a magazine or on television is not. | | | |
| ▲ | pluralmonad 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Saying you want some sort of discovery mechanism is different than saying the current ad tech malware landscape is a "necessary evil." It certainly is not. | | | |
| ▲ | matthewkayin 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're right, but I think this just highlights the issue with market economies. There is this capitalist lie that money is a stand-in for "value provided to society". So, when you provide value, society gives you money, and you can use this money to ask society for value back. Which sounds great. And truly, I do believe that people should have to contribute to society if they expect society to support them, but the problem with this lie is that, despite how capitalists make it sound, the market was not designed with this ideal in mind, instead we have imposed it onto the market after-the-fact in order to justify why the market is good and worth keeping around. But the real truth is that money does not reward the person who contributes the most value, it simply rewards the person who makes the most money. Money is not "value", money is power. And the system rewards profit no matter how it's acquired. This means that you can provide a good service that people want, but you still need to advertise and compete in order to be rewarded for your contribution. It also means that you can do something valuable, like cleaning up all the trash off of a beach, but that doesn't mean that the market will reward you for your contribution. And it also means that if you have a thing and you want to make profit selling it, you can run a manipulative ad campaign that convinces people that they truly need it, and the market will reward you. | | |
| ▲ | satvikpendem 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > instead we have imposed it onto the market after-the-fact in order to justify why the market is good and worth keeping around Not sure about that, markets existed since forever and are still useful even without ads. | | |
| ▲ | pluralmonad 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think very many people in this thread actually mean markets when they say that. Sounds like they might mean corporate controlled markets? Otherwise the comments are gibberish. Markets are just a group of people exchanging time and resources. Wanting that to go away is... Bizarre and nonsensical. | |
| ▲ | kube-system 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Advertising exists in some form even in ancient barter economies. It is older than currency. |
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| ▲ | kube-system 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Alas, well-regulated market economies are the least-worst option we have. |
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| ▲ | shuntress 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes, the store has a catalog. They want you to see the catalog, so they pay someone to tell you that the catalog exists. | |
| ▲ | rick_dalton 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So instead of buying ad space we can now buy catalog space and reinvent the wheel. | | |
| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The principle would be that companies aren’t allow to buy placement. It would be like a phonebook. | | |
| ▲ | al_borland 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That would require regulation, as a catalog maker isn’t going to turn down what is effectively free money. This also doesn’t translate well to a physical store with more constraints on space. I recently got a catalog where everything was on pretty even footing. There was the occasional photo with someone wearing stuff, but it was a smattering of random brands, big and small. Nothing in it looked paid for. It was a catalog of stuff made in the US. The meat of the catalog was text that listed 1 item in a category per brand, when the brand may have had hundreds. A brand with literally one product was indistinguishable from a major brand. I actually found this quite frustrating as a potential buyer. If I was interested in a category I had to manually go to every single website to see what they actually had and if it was something I was interested in. There was no way to cut through the noise, other than my own past experience with companies that had some brand recognition (from advertising elsewhere). | |
| ▲ | Aerroon 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes, instead they register 1 million businesses that will all be listed in the phonebook. | |
| ▲ | mulmen 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How do you sort the directory? Alphabetical can be gamed with names like A1 Locksmith. Chronological favors incumbents or spammers depending on direction. | |
| ▲ | yibg 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Which company is on page 1? |
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| ▲ | carlosjobim 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Brands pay stores for shelf space. How would you stop that in practice? | | |
| ▲ | phantasmish 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Impossible to solve I’m sure. Probably lower priority than stopping them from putting lead in bread and selling cocaine snake-oil elixirs, or forcing them to list basic nutritional information on food packaging. Alas, we lack the tools to make businesses do or not do things. | |
| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | By making it illegal? Brands can still compete on price and quality. | | |
| ▲ | al_borland 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Grocery stores are a low margin business. If you make selling shelf space illegal, they lose that revenue and will have to raise food prices to stay in business. This isn’t a good outcome. I also question if the shelves would even changes much. They will probably prioritize their high margin products, which doesn’t sound any better. | | |
| ▲ | phantasmish 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Where does the money to pay for shelf space come from if not the money we pay for food? | | |
| ▲ | al_borland 2 days ago | parent [-] | | In theory, sure. In practice, the food makers aren’t going to lower their prices to the stores, they will just stop paying the shelf fees. |
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| ▲ | mulmen 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | What’s the legal way to arrange things on a shelf? |
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| ▲ | presentation 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So stores are just one form of ads then, let’s ban stores too while we’re at it. | |
| ▲ | Hnrobert42 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not everyone lives close to stores. | | |
| ▲ | defrost 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Not a counterpoint to the comment re: catalogs .. even less so in this modern age of ordering and shopping online. I grew up 1,000 km+ from any significant stores and shopping - everything we wanted we got via browsing catalogs, building order lists, and either ordering in via road train or taking a few days off to travel > 2,000 km with car and double axle multi tonne capacity trailer. |
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| ▲ | mulmen 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Catalogs are ads. |
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| ▲ | tensor 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The fix is actually fairly simple IMO, though will never be implemented. Make all ads passive, e.g. require people to explicitly ask to see them. For example, when I want to see what new video games are around, I go to review sites and forums. It's opt-in. Making all ads only legal in bazar-like environments, banning all other forms of "forced" ad viewing, and also banning personalized ads completely, would go a very long way to fixing the issues. Hell, we can start with simply banning personalized ads, that alone would effectively destroy the surveillance economy by making it illegal to use that data for anything other than providing the service the customer purchases. | | |
| ▲ | Aerroon 2 days ago | parent [-] | | But you are buying into viewing ads when you use services that show you ads. Also, ad bazaars sound great until you realize that every locality needs to have their own bazaar. Seeing ads for New York barbers is kind of useless when you're in Los Angeles. Now you have a million ad bazaars and that's the only advertisement allowed. A little bit of corruption and your ads outshine all your competitors in that locality and they go out of business, since signs are an ad too. Also also non-personalized ads mean that the only things that can be advertised online are digital goods or things that are available globally. Basically, it will work for Amazon and AliExpress but that's about it. And adsls in Russian or Japanese or Korean or German or French or Swedish or Portuguese aren't going to be that useful for you, are they? Ads in English but for a product in another country might be even worse. |
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| ▲ | titzer 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Magazines, phone books, friends, stores. You know you could go to a store (or call them on the phone!) and talk to a person. "Hello, I am trying to find a thing to help me with X." Turns out that products that work well tend to get remembered, and ones that don't get forgotten. | | |
| ▲ | cortesoft 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Call what store? How do I know a store even exists to call it? How do I find out the store’s name and phone number? How do I find out where the store is located? You say products that work tend to get remembered, and sure, for existing products with a market you might be right… people would continue buying those things even with no advertising. But how did the FIRST person who bought the product find out about it? Someone has to try it once before you can even know the product works. How would a new product enter the market? | | |
| ▲ | xigoi 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Call what store? How do I know a store even exists to call it? How do I find out the store’s name and phone number? How do I find out where the store is located? Maps exist. Search engines exist. Have you been stuck in a cave the last 50 years? |
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| ▲ | vel0city 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Magazines and phone books are often largely ad-supported. They largely wouldn't exist without some amount of advertising. | | |
| ▲ | hackable_sand 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Mmmmmno? | | |
| ▲ | vel0city 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Go to any bookstore and open practically any paid magazine. Count how many pages are ads. It's far from a small percentage. Some I've looked at recently were practically 1/3 to 1/2 ads. This isn't far from how things were decades ago. Yellow pages (phone books) were essentially entirely advertising. They didn't just list businesses out of the goodness of their heart, they took listing fees. This is a form of advertising! |
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| ▲ | wolvoleo 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If a product is really that good than people will legit recommend it. It's not a problem at all. | | |
| ▲ | kyralis 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Depends on the niche, really. I despise ads, but I can also admit to having learned about products from them that I have subsequently purchased and been pleased with. Sometimes the ad lets me know about an entire type of product that I didn't know existed but found very useful, and I probably didn't even by the actual brand that was advertised. If you consider the general concept of "letting people know what products are available for purchase", I think it's hard to disagree that it's a reasonable thing to do. That doesn't excuse the manner in which it is done today, of course, but that core functionality is not fundamentally evil. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Advertising isn't the general concept of letting people know what products are available for purchase. It's more specifically doing this for money and showing it to people who don't want to see it. One might quibble about exactly what the word "advertising" encompasses, but that description covers the bad stuff pretty well, whatever name you want to give it. I'd boil it down to: if you added a "don't show this" option, would anyone use it? A catalog that comes in the mail because you requested it is not advertising, since you requested it. Products mentioned on the front page of this site aren't advertising, because they're organic, and it's part of what I'm here for. Classified ads, despite the name, don't really qualify since they're in a separate section that nobody reads unless they're specifically seeking out those ads. A useful product doesn't have "don't show this" buttons because it would be completely pointless. I seek it out because I want it. I don't get upset at the company that made my office chair foisting it on me, because they didn't. I ordered the chair and got what I wanted. But ad companies don't resist "skip" buttons because they think they're pointless because everyone loves their products. They resist "skip" buttons because they know people don't want to see their shit. Their entire business model is based around forcing people to see things they don't want to see, but might accept as part of a package deal for seeing the stuff they do want to see. That is the stuff that should be completely destroyed. | | |
| ▲ | drdeca 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > and showing it to people who don't want to see it. So, do superbowl ads not count as ads because a non-negligible portion of the viewership wants to see them? Or are you saying that there needs to be a non-negligible fraction of the viewers who don’t want to see it for it to be an ad? | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | In the end it doesn't really matter. That's under 0.1% of TV viewing and it's a unique situation. Yes edge cases exist, edge cases always exist, but that's a very tiny one. | | |
| ▲ | drdeca a day ago | parent [-] | | If a definition can be changed in a way that makes it both simpler and removes an edge case, I think that is often (but not always) a sign that the change may be a good one. (Though, that doesn’t imply that the best available definition won’t have any edge cases like this.) I think it works better to define whether or not something is advertising based on, rather than whether the viewer wants to see it, instead by whether those putting the media where it is intend for viewing it to be (as far as they can make it) a requirement for something else. Though, I’m not sure that even that should be considered a requirement.
It seems to me like the things businesses paid money to get put on the million dollar website, should count as “ads”. I don’t see why we should define “ads” to refer exclusively to objectionable ads. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Definitions aren't that important. What's important is figuring out what contributes to society and what ends up just looting our attention. A good (but not perfect) guideline is that voluntary transactions are beneficial to both parties because otherwise they wouldn't participate, and transactions where one party doesn't actively agree to it are often bad because the other party has no incentive to make it otherwise. That's why I focused on whether the viewer actually wants it. If I seek it out, then it's useful or at least entertaining. If I don't, then it's probably a net negative for me. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's a spectrum. Movie trailers are closer to the "not ads" portion of the spectrum, although when shown in theaters they are much more ad-like than when made available online. There are probably a decent number of football fans who would use a "skip ads" button if they had one for the Super Bowl, so they're still some way toward the "ads" end of the spectrum. But they're certainly less objectionable than most TV ads. |
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| ▲ | master-lincoln 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are still tests and reviews and content where people can show products without being paid by the people producing these products. | | |
| ▲ | tpmoney 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Even without being paid, unless someone is advertising the product somewhere the reviewer won't know it exists to review. And if the reviewer is being sent free product or solicited directly by the producer, that's still advertising. It may be more trustworthy if the reviewer is strict about not letting the producer have editorial control, but you better believe that the company is sending out free products to reviewers because that gets the product in front of eye-balls just like any other ad. The cost of the free review product is the price of the ad. | | |
| ▲ | wolvoleo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It does also happen that people get stuff to review and have to send it back of course. | | |
| ▲ | tpmoney 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure, but that’s still not free. The company is spending time, money and resources on soliciting the reviews, sending units out, receiving units back and then scrapping or selling those units as refurbs/open box. They’re not spending that money unless they think it’s going to drive sales / awareness. It’s still advertising. | |
| ▲ | yibg 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | So the company that can afford to send the most stuff to the most reviewers win? |
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| ▲ | wolvoleo 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I haven't really, most of the products I've bought after advertising were low quality. I do have some very high quality products that were recommended to me through friends. Like one local lady that makes really quality outfits. She doesn't advertise at all because she's already overwhelmed with orders as she's so good. |
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| ▲ | cortesoft 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | How does the first person find the product to recommend it, though? There has to be SOMEONE who tries the product without being recommended by a previous customer. |
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| ▲ | lm28469 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you waited for an ad to solve your "legitimate problem" you didn't have a problem to begin with imho | | |
| ▲ | kube-system 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | No, there are very few markets in which all of the buyers have perfect information. It is extremely common in the science/technology sector that buyers aren't looking for a solution to a problem they have because they are under the impression that a solution doesn't exist. The archetypal business-school case study for this is the story of Viagra. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/03/27/viagra... But it applies to most new technology in a less dramatic sense. | | |
| ▲ | kibwen 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | If the implication is that the ad industry helps to address the problem of buyers having imperfect information, that couldn't be more wrong. The entire point of the ad industry is to muddy the waters and psychologically manipulate consumers. It's not even remotely interested in informing, it's interested in propagandizing. | | |
| ▲ | kube-system 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Obviously a gigantic industry has more than a singular impact on society. I only mentioned the one impact above because that was specifically the topic of discussion. There are also many reasons that the ad industry needs to be tightly regulated, of which your point is one. |
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| ▲ | lm28469 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > No, there are very few markets in which all of the buyers have perfect information. This is solved by 5 minute of searches on the web in 99% of cases really. I never in my life bought something because I've seen an ad about it, meanwhile I solved countless of my problems by thinking about the issue and looking for a solution online or talking to people about it | | |
| ▲ | kube-system 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Absolutely! But, you're missing the cognitive part of this. People don't search for things that they don't think exists. |
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| ▲ | al_borland 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Having a problem and having a solution to that problem are two different things. I occasionally get the hiccups. When it happens, it’s a problem. There are many home remedies that exist, but nothing has ever actually worked. I was watching Shark Tank one day, which is basically a bunch of ads, and there was a guy selling the Hiccaway. Several years after seeing this, I decided to give it a shot. I’ve used it 2 or 3 times now and it’s instantly stopped my hiccups. I feel a little weird for a while afterward, but at least the hiccups stop. This was a legitimate problem and I waited for an ad to solve my problem, because nothing else I tried worked, and I didn’t know this thing existed until I saw the ad. I’ve also never heard anyone talk about it outside of Shark Tank, so word of mouth clearly isn’t doing much either (at least in my circles). The topic of hiccups doesn’t come up that often. Everyone gets hiccups, but they aren’t out there actively looking for solutions. It’s just something that happens, and it sucks. | | |
| ▲ | lm28469 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Man if hiccups are a "legitimate problem" then indeed we are fucked... let's pollute everything irl and on the web with ads to solve these "problems"... where do we draw the line ? Because it sounds like we'll have an infinite amount of problems and we certainly don't have an infinite amount of resources btw you can also try looking for solutions on your own, like going to a doctor, searching online ? type "hiccups solution" online and hiccaway is on the front page. | | |
| ▲ | al_borland 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Humans are wired to have problems. If all your basic problems are solved (shelter, food, etc), you will start inventing problems. This finding and solving of problems has led to all the development in human society, for better or worse. It has been this finding and solving of problems that led to our standards for what solves a problem increasing as well, for better or worse again. I think everyone has looked for hiccups solutions at some point in their life, found them not to work, and gave up. That’s why I think this is a decent example. Adults aren’t actively searching for hiccup solutions. They gave up long ago, and most of the time, it isn’t something they think about. But when they happen, they kind of suck. Depending on when they happen, like before a big presentation, they can also be a major problem. People tend to overlook it, because they know there isn’t a real cure. I’m not arguing for more advertisements or hiccup commercials 24x7. But there is value to some way of creating awareness of new things that are actually useful. Most advertising is trying to manufacture problems or just keep a product you already know about in the front of your mind. This is probably 95% of advertising. My argument is for a way to surface that 5%. |
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| ▲ | hk__2 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You might not know it is a problem and that it is solvable. | | |
| ▲ | elevatortrim 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes but the amount of that happening is nowhere near enough to justify the ad-world we are living in. | |
| ▲ | lm28469 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why would I care then? If people lived until now without it it can't be that big of a problem. Electricity, a car, a fridge, &c. solve legitimate problems. 99% of things being advertised today create the problem they solve and trick you into thinking you really need to solve this problem in your life |
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| ▲ | Panoramix 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I have never in my several decades of life seen and ad for anything and thought "I need to get that". | | |
| ▲ | tpmoney 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I sincerely do not believe this. I suspect that you have a very specific definition of ad that is far narrower than I do, but I do not believe you never once saw a movie trailer and decided to go see the film, or saw a billboard or sign for a restaurant while out on vacation and decided to check it out. Or that you never went to the grocery store to pick up the steak that was on sale this week. Or that every single tech purchase you have ever made in your life was exclusively and solely on the word of mouth recommendation of your close friends, all of whom had previously purchased identical products with their own money. Look I'm not saying you can't live a low ad lifestyle. I don't have cable or network TV and run ad-blockers on every device I own. And yet I can look around my home and see numerous products purchased at least in part due to an ad. The Retroid Pocket sitting on my table, the M series laptop sitting in front of me. The Sony TV across the room, the game consoles under it. Heck the dog at my feet was the one I adopted because I went to an adoption event being sponsored at a local business. Even when I'm seeking a specific product out and then seeking out information, I'm looking for reviews and a lot of those reviews are given sample/free product for the purposes of making their review. That's an ad. I might be able to place more trust in that review if the reviewer doesn't give the product manufacturer editorial control they way they'd have in a sponsorship, but you can be damn sure if sending free product to independent reviewers wasn't paying off in terms of higher sales, the manufacturer wouldn't be doing it. | |
| ▲ | Aloisius 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not even movie advertisements like trailers? Or job ads? Housing ads? I've definitely investigated and eventually purchased things I first learned about through an advertisement. Mind, usually that was from print ads in things like magazines/newspapers, the occasional direct mail ad like the old Fry's electronics mailer or movie trailers. Online ads are overwhelmingly ugly attention grabbers for things I have zero interest in or no time for when displayed. | | |
| ▲ | sjw987 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It would be interesting to be able to define if an advertisement is still an advertisement in the sense the OP was referring if it is something sought out. I myself usually choose to watch trailers for movies, look at job ads and housing ads when I actually want to watch a movie, change job or move house. What pisses me off is the 99% of ads in my life that are just blasted in front of me online and in public. It's probably silly and the answer is just that they are, but they at least meet two different types of advert to me, personally. I would partially agree with OP in that I can't believe any adverts I've ever seen have influence a purchase from me. I actually quite often blacklist brands and products for aggressively marketing to me. |
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| ▲ | meindnoch 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I remember having that experience as a kid - seeing an ad for Action Man™ during my Saturday morning cartoon block, and feeling that I need that toy right now. My dad then explained to me that these advertisements are carefully crafted to elicit this response from kids, and that I should always think critically about the messaging in ads. |
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| ▲ | mrweasel 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Part of the issue may also be that to many companies rely on selling ads as their main source of revenue and there simply isn't enough money in "good ads" to fund all the services we've come to expect to be free. There simply isn't enough ads for soft drinks, supermarkets or cars to reasonably fund the tech industry as it currently exists. Ad funded Facebook, perfectly fine, but that's not a $200B company, not without questionable ads for gambling, scams and shitty China plastic products. Platforms should have higher standards, accept lower profit margins and charge users if needed, rather than resort to running ads for stuff we all now is garbage. | |
| ▲ | SergeAx 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Can you remember the last 3 times when ads showed you products that solved your problem? I cannot. The closest experience I have had was with ads for new restaurants, of which two turned out good and one - not good. Also, twice last year, I saw trailers of new movies I wasn't aware of at the moment. However, I am sure I would later discover it via reviews or word of mouth. And mind that it was not problem solving, just an entertainment suggestion. I can live comfortably without new restaurants, or I will eventually discover them via other channels. | |
| ▲ | pluralmonad 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Word of mouth. It is okay for a system to be inefficient, especially when the tradeoff for efficiency is a poison pill (ad tech is definitely this). | |
| ▲ | stubish 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Historically, yes. People in their 70s might remember that time. But language has moved on. Advertising now means manipulation. The ad market is priced for that. The rare cases of someone wanting to use advertising channels to put out actual information now have to pay a premium. | |
| ▲ | tap-snap-or-nap 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Ads should be centralised state department and run through only approved and regulated bodies at regulated sites. | |
| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | haritha-j 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I wonder if there's a middle ground, where you only have statement based, textual ads. Amusing ourselves to Death (great book btw), discusses how until the 19th century, ads were basically just information dense textual statements. The invention of slogans and jingles was the start of the slow downfall in ads. I interned at an ad agency once, and I really enjoy creative advertising, but frankly there's just way too much advertising in this world. | | |
| ▲ | tpmoney 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > until the 19th century, ads were basically just information dense textual statements. I'm curious how does this account for "town criers" and the like? And there seems to be quite a few examples of less "information dense textual statement" in some of the articles on Wikipedia about advertising [1] [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_card | | |
| ▲ | haritha-j 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not an expert, but looking at those articles, most of the illustrated and colour designs seem to have become popular in the 19th century, though I do see a few illstrated examples from the 18th century as well. |
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| ▲ | Gerard0 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Damn! I have been reading about Amusing Ourselves to Death on here since weeks and I assumed it was a new book from a contemporary author! I'll get it now, thanks for being the one who finally got me to :) | |
| ▲ | vel0city 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I just wanted to second recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death. A very good and short read that I find continually relevant applying the same ideas to social media. |
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