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.
You can find ads for products in Roman republic era graffiti. We have had ads for thousands of years.
Graffiti, you say? So it was probably illegal.
I know the rule of law is in sad shape right now, but companies still avoid doing illegal shit right out in the open, and that’s all that’s needed to cut back dramatically on advertising.
no it wasn’t illegal. Grafitti wasn’t always a crime.
People who think they have a right to deface other people’s property say the weirdest shit.
Again graffiti was not always seen as a crime. Remember many paints weren’t super permanent when applied to things like brickface for most of our history.
Yeah, and it used to be legal to dump your industrial waste in the river, now it’s not.
Laws change.
That’s a false equivalence though.
In both situation you make it illegal for corporations to do something, and punish them with fines and criminal sentences for executives if they’re caught doing so, leading to a decrease in that behaviour.
So what about the situations do you see as different that makes it a false equivalency?
Painting graffiti and dumping hazardous waste in rivers are not equivalent crimes hence the false equivalence. Did you really need that clarified?
Yes, we’re talking about making advertising illegal, which would change advertising to be illegal, similar to how pollution is illegal.
You seem to be arguing that it would be impossible to make advertising illegal because you wouldn’t pass laws to make advertising illegal…
That’s not a false equivalency, that’s you just insisting that advertising’s not that bad and shouldn’t be illegal. Nothing about your feelings on whether or not it should be illegal changes whether or not we could make it illegal.
That does not make equating graffiti and dumping hazardous waste equivalent. The false equivalence was you comparing graffiti to illegal river dumping. There’s no amount of sophistry that will make your claim logically valid.
I’m not being sophisticated, I’m trying to keep you on track.
If you want to have a different argument about whether or not advertising is deserving of jail sentences, steep GDPR level fines, slaps on the wrist, or nothing, that’s fine, we can have that one.
But this reply chain was about whether or not it’s possible to make advertising illegal, which it is.
I accused you of sophistry not of being sophisticated. You should look that word up to avoid this situation next time.
This part of the chain is me calling out. your false equivalence as you compared graffiti to river dumping which you keep trying to claim isn’t invalid and now you are trying to “keep me on track” because you seemingly cannot admit you made a terrible analogy.