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What If We Made Advertising Illegal? (simone.org)

submitted 2 days ago by sundrei to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world

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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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[–] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do rural jokels not have phones already? It's not like you wouldn't have product announcements and news and forum discussing it.

[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Statistically, rural users always lag behind in pretty much every metric.

For example, globally, 83 percent of urban people have access to the internet, 49 percent rural. In the US, 83 percent of urban people have a smartphone. 65 percent rural. Urban people also use their phone more. And that's not even taking into account cultural differences between urban and rural settings. They simply aren’t as plugged in as you and I.

Farmer Bob isn’t going on tech forums to read up on new phone releases. But his TV will show him that phone exists and entice him to buy it.

Point isn’t about the phones as such, it’s about some things simply not reaching that rural bubble.

[–] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Thanks, those statistics are definitely more extreme than I imagined. I still would imagine that smartphone or TV you'd get more "new product review" shows because there is a demand and it's (somtimes) cheap content to make.

[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

I’d certainly love a good show like that. We used to have a lot of those back in the 80’s and 90’s. They’d test all sorts of gadgets and gizmos that weren’t available yet to consumers in Europe, much less your actual city. You’d see them test the latest camera that might be available ‘summer next year’ or something to that effect.

It drove stores up the wall back then, trying to keep up with stuff people saw on TV that simply wasn’t and wouldn’t be available there.