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Notes -
(Does this count as CW? Happy to post it somewhere else if that would be more appropriate.)
I really liked the idea of banning advertising from this blog post (though the post itself is somewhat poorly written and light on the details). HN has a lively discussion of it. I've seen some mentions of this idea here and there but never a really good analysis on it. And I want to change that!
The first step is of course to tighten up the definitions. The most important is to define advertising. I would define it as:
(Maybe the resident lawyers here could have a crack at cleaning this up?)
The underlying theory of harm is that party C is getting inaccurate information designed (often very well designed) to manipulate them into a decision not in their interests. Note that crowding out good information is also very much part of the harm. If C is getting good information from sources not paid for it, it is reasonable that these unpaid sources won't put as much effort into disseminating information as sources paid to spread information (which presumably won't be as truthful due to the conflicting interests from party A).
To clean up potential fuzzy boundaries (I'm sure I've missed a bunch):
So, what is illegal?
Why do I want this?
Possible objections?
Any thoughts?
I don't think there's any good way to make this work, but I do sympathize with the idea. Especially on the internet, so many ads just seem malicious. They're not there because anyone would actually see them and think "ooh, good product, I want to buy that!" They're there to trick you into accidentally clicking on them by completely covering the scream, or to screach at you with obnoxious sounds until you get so fed up that you buy a premium subscription to make them go away. If there was a way to buy a "premium internet pass" that would get rid of all internet ads I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately I have to do that individiually for every single website, which is its own sort of pain. My personal pet peave is trying to read a news article from some small local news site, which is technically open and not paywalled, it's just crammed full of so many ads that it's basically impossible to read for anyone not subscribed to "the Daily Times of Gary, Indiana" or whatever. I wouldn't mind subscribing to one or two newspapers, maybe even more if I was a professional journalist or something, but it seems unreasonable to expect me to subscribe to every single newspaper on Earth just so I can read one random article.
There... is a place that has managed to remove advertising completely: North Korea. It's kind of bleak and dystopian but... oddly calming? (Other than the state propaganda posters of course) Well, I've never been there so I can't say what it's like, but it's interesting that such a place can even exists, and gives us a glimpse of a different sort of life with a very different aesthetic.
Your current best option is a pi-hole, which cuts off ads at the DNS level. It’s not something advertisers can easily distinguish from a genuine failed connection.
interesting, thanks!
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