The idea that advertising is a new invention is nonsense.

Yes, it had different forms but it was there.

Eg: What are the priests if not sales people and what are the Sunday bells if not calls to action, and what are the icons and statues if not aspirational advertising and fomo?

What are shop windows? What are branding marks?

Here is advertising in Ancient Rome

before ads we need to get rid of political campaigning.

Oh please gods yes. Advertising is violence and even though most of my life is now ad free, I still can't avoid the advertising scourge being shoved into my eyeballs every time I leave my house. It would be a blessed weight lifted from my already tired brain to never see a single ad again.

I am kinda for it, but kinda against it because I like this 35% off coupon for weed in the bay area I get in the local ad magazine. I save so much fucking money with that coupon I love it

Imagine how much labour and money we’d free up to do actually useful things like help homeless people and disabled people etc. If we cut all those marketing and advertising departments.

It’s a whole massive industry that takes massive amounts of financial resources and human labour and doesn’t contribute to anyone’s wellbeing except the stockholders of the company.

Word of mouth works for someone with an already established customer base but I can't even imagine how I could have gotten my business going when I started a year ago without ads. That's how 99% of my customers found out about me. This is physical flyers though - I don't do online advertising except for maintaining a some kind of social media presence for my business.

The problem is: Where does advertising start. Is mentioning a brand name somewhere already advertising? If I have a brand, call it GLURP, am I allowed to print GLURP on the product, on the box, on the instructions? Am I allowed to have a website called GLURP.com, and what would be allowed to be shown there? Can I open a shop and have a sign "GLURP" over the window? Can I really exhibit my products there?

Because all of this is advertising.

I think we can all agree that 99.99% at least of intruding ads on the net, billboards, TV, radio, whatever, are annoying and should go away. But any ruling trying to reign this in needs to set 100% clear and undisputable limits, because they will sacrifice their own kids to somehow skirt such a law. If you don't believe me, look at tax laws and how the rich don't pay taxes (despite frequent bouts of crying over the 37% they never pay).

It's necessary for monopoly capitalism to induce demand. It's part of the planned economy.