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What If We Made Advertising Illegal? (simone.org)
submitted 1 week ago by sundrei@lemmy.sdf.org to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
341 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.

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[-] rekabis@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 week ago

#YES, PLEASE.

I have been fighting advertising in my own way since the early 2000s:

  • I abandoned broadcast radio in the mid-1990s. I can’t recall the last time I turned on a car radio.
  • I abandoned broadcast TV in 2001
  • I jumped on board with Adblock the moment it was released for Phoenix (now Firefox) back in 2004
  • The lone streaming service I actually subscribe to is the cheapest non-advertising tier available
  • Torrenting covers many of the remaining gaps
  • Even my Internet Radio stations are chosen primarily through lack of advertising.

It’s gotten to the point where stumbling across an ad is the mental equivalent to nails on a chalkboard.

this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
604 points (97.5% liked)

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