Open letter: Ban surveillance-based advertising
Frankly, I don&#x27;t think this goes far enough: &quot;Ban advertising&quot; would be better.<p>Almost every problem with the internet right now is caused by advertising if you dig through the chain of causality. From social media patterns that addict you to conflict and conspiracy, to popups, adware and spam, to constant attacks on our attention even when we&#x27;re driving and could literally kill someone with inattention, to spreading dissatisfaction, fear, and poor financial advice, advertising is the root of much evil. And at its core, advertising is just never a good thing, in any context.<p>Proponents of advertising will say, &quot;How do people find out about products and services?&quot; but advertising is an extremely poor answer to that question: there&#x27;s an inherent conflict of interest when the people selling a product are the primary source of information about the product. In the worst case, this leads to advertisers just lying to consumers and manipulating people&#x27;s emotion. In the very best case, advertisers present information only about their own product, which doesn&#x27;t allow consumers to make educated decisions--it&#x27;s arguably not lying but the effect is the same. You might say, &quot;Why would advertisers be obligated to provide information about competitors?&quot; and you&#x27;re right, they aren&#x27;t, but we aren&#x27;t trying to establish blame or responsibility here, we&#x27;re trying to find a solution that&#x27;s good for consumers, and advertising just isn&#x27;t that.<p>A better solution is independent review sites. Consumer Reports[1] is a paid service, so you aren&#x27;t the product. More specialized sites exist for all sorts of product areas: I&#x27;m a rock climber, and when I want a new piece of rock climbing gear, the first places I look at are Outdoor Gear Lab[2] and Weigh My Rack [3]. There&#x27;s Labdoor[4] for supplements, Psychology Today[5] for therapists, WireCutter[6] for electronics, etc. But even here advertising has poisoned the water: many of these sites receive compensation from sellers, not from buyers, which has resulted in some dark patterns. It&#x27;s not a perfect solution, but it would work a lot better if advertising were banned, and these conflicts of interest were removed.<p>Another solution is simpler and older, and it&#x27;s exactly what I was doing in my previous post: word-of-mouth. That&#x27;s arguably one of the best solutions, because while it&#x27;s low-bandwidth, it&#x27;s high fidelity: people don&#x27;t go out of their way to promote a product unless it was actually quite good for them.<p>The other thing proponents of advertising will say is that advertising is necessary to fund existing sites, particularly content sites. On Hacker News, this often comes from someone who makes their money from advertising, directly or indirectly.<p>The thing is, the idea that people only produce content or software when it&#x27;s profitable to do so reflects a very narrow view of the world. It&#x27;s just not true. I&#x27;m old enough to remember the internet of the 90s, and in that time the internet was <i>full</i> of resources which were simply given away for free without advertising, which I&#x27;ll refer to roughly as &quot;old internet&quot;. Many old internet resources have yet to be reproduced in the new internet: Sheldon Brown&#x27;s page[7] is <i>still</i> the best resource on bikes (the advertising was added after his death). Erowid[8] remains the most comprehensive resource on drugs. Sites like Wikipedia have somewhat drunk the advertising poison--and were better before.<p>And that leads me to my third reason advertising should be banned: it&#x27;s infectious. Advertising is Scott Alexander&#x27;s Moloch[9]--if one entity does it, then all their competitors have to do it in order to compete. The entire purpose of the free market is supposedly that it results in the best outcomes, but this is clearly a hack that prevents that from happening: we want companies to compete by producing the best goods and services at the lowest cost, but when you allow advertising, companies can (and do) compete by manipulating consumers into buying inferior goods at higher costs. Advertising is an anticompetitive business practice that undermines the entire purpose of a free market.<p>Banning advertising is only a bad thing for bad companies: good companies would only stand to benefit. Banning advertising would free good companies to spend their resources on producing the best products and services at the lowest cost: every cent companies spend on advertising now is wasted money. Sure, some companies would go under without advertising. Good riddance: if your company can&#x27;t sell products and services without ramming them down consumer&#x27;s throats, your products&#x2F;services aren&#x27;t of value.<p>Contrary to the advertiser&#x27;s paternalistic views, the efficient market hypothesis means that people understand their own problems and can find solutions to them without your help. The world would be better off without advertising.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consumerreports.org&#x2F;cro&#x2F;index.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consumerreports.org&#x2F;cro&#x2F;index.htm</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.outdoorgearlab.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.outdoorgearlab.com&#x2F;</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;weighmyrack.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;weighmyrack.com&#x2F;</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;labdoor.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;labdoor.com&#x2F;</a><p>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;therapists" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;therapists</a><p>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;wirecutter&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;wirecutter&#x2F;</a><p>[7] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sheldonbrown.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sheldonbrown.com&#x2F;</a><p>[8] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.erowid.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.erowid.org&#x2F;</a><p>[9] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;30&#x2F;meditations-on-moloch&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;30&#x2F;meditations-on-moloch&#x2F;</a>