this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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Mildly Interesting

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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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[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] Owlboi@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

considering tons of free services are paid for with advertising, a lot of such services would cease to exist/be free.

be it websites such as youtube and streaming sites like twitch, or almost any website for that matter.

someone made a brand of water thats free and is entirely paid by advertising printed on the bottle, that would be gone too.

hell, i hate ads, but considering i use ublock, i havent seen any in years, and in real life you can just not look at them.

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[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 0 points 8 months ago

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.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Then we’d have a centrally-planned economy I guess. I don’t really see how a free market would work without advertising.

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[–] turnip@lemm.ee 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I'd support a ban on advertising in public spaces, but in digital spaces its a bit nonsense given it funds a lot of things people then dont need to pay for.

[–] Ibaudia@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago

Advertising is too big of an industry to ever be banned. It also keeps lots of other sectors on life support, like sports and free online content. It's also extremely important to keep services like search engines free. Unless we transition away from capitalism ads are pretty much mandatory to keep the economy afloat. I agree they suck though. uBlock Origin until I die.

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