What if we banned all advertising? Not regulate it—abolish it. This proposal would transform manipulation machines, and maybe save democracy itself. A thought experiment worth considering.

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.

  • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
    13·
    5 days ago

    As a neurodivergent (autism), with no exaggeration.

    • ads make the majority websites flat out unusable. I simply cant focus on the content anymore.

    • ads make the internet as a whole, which used to feel like a home, feel hostile.

    • ads that suddenly start playing in the middle of content is one of the ways to instantaneously make me angry and lose complete interest in the content

    • ads in public spaces are a cause to my real mental illness.

    How many times is society going to require me to pass homeless people who are exploited below signs with faces smiling begging to exploit me and everyone pretends this shit is normal and to be accepted while all of our jobs maintain the economy that made it like this.

    I can say exactly one good thing about ads:

    They drive me to reach full technological independence, going further and further banning all the enshitification at home and building ethical (foss) systems in their place.

    Tldr: Tldr, title was enough to get my unyielding support.