• Sunsofold@lemmings.world
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        12 hours ago

        Cigarette advertising was banned in the US. It famously increased profit because they didn’t have to burn it all on advertising.

        Advertising is like nuclear weapons. It’s bad that it exists, harms people around it, and is only needed because the opposition has it. If it disappeared, everyone would benefit, but no one wants to be the first.

        • Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 hours ago

          Cigarettes don’t need advertising though to stay on your mind, nicotine does a pretty good job of that. I agree with you for things people need, or are addicted to, but there are a lot of things that need advertising to keep there growth.

          Like car insurance is a necessity and a fixed market, you aren’t going to buy more insurance or buy it more frequently, so their advertising is mostly to maintain their current market position. If the insurance companies all stopped advertising, their profits would probably go up. But cars you can get people to buy more expensive cars more often and expand the market if you advertise to the people enough and convince them to upgrade. If all the car companies stopped advertising, then people wouldn’t see the need to upgrade unless their car is broken, so there would be fewer car sales, and the market would shrink.

          The enemy of this infinite growth scheme called capitalism is satisfaction. If you don’t have a product like cigarettes that generate dissatisfaction from their absence, then you need to create that dissatisfaction with advertising.

      • MutilationWave@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        Shudders. Shutters are what people used to have in the US to get through the storms. People thought they were cool so a trend spread. Now almost every house has fake ones. Look on the sides of your windows from outside, ever wonder why that shit was screwed in beside the windows?

    • laranis@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Ok, honest question: In a world where all advertising is banned, how do I know who makes something I want/need?

      Like, is a website you find in a search result an ad? Is putting something in your local Yellow Pages an ad?

      Maybe we need to qualify “No advertising” with something?

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        7 hours ago

        Ok, dishonest question 😜: In a world where all prostitution is banned, how do I know who will fuck me?

        Like, is a website you find in a search result prostitution? Is putting something in the personals section an ad?

        Maybe we need to qualify “No prostitution” with something?

        /s

      • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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        1 day ago

        No. If you are actively searching for something, and go to a specific place that sells that thing. It is not advertising, the active party is you not them.

        The problem is when the active party is the ad-networks, the trackers, the junk pushers.

        If I go to a review site, for say lawn mowers, and they say hey brand 1 is great, but brand 2 is better because of ‘reasons’; I am active, engaging in the process. If however, I then go to a site that is about tigers, and brand 3 pushes their ad to intrude on the tiger info…this (in my opinion) is a major intrusion into my private space.

        • laranis@lemmy.zip
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          1 day ago

          Would you ban television commercials? Sponsored products unrelated to a YouTube video’s content?

          I completely agree with you. So tired of pushed garbage ads. There’s just a gray area so the language of a hypothetical “law” would have to carefully considered.

          • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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            1 day ago

            Television ads are a grey area, they don’t tend to track you and follow you around in a creepy way.

            Sponsored content, is in my opinion very similar to TV ads, the sponsor is the same for all viewer of the vid in a similar way to TV.

            • tal@lemmy.today
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              6 hours ago

              They didn’t track before the introduction of cable boxes with phone-home capabilities, at any rate.