[_jab]

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present.

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware this is impractical. But it's fun to think about sometimes.

[iammjm]

The world would definitely be better without ads. All ads are poisonous. All of them first convince you that you and your life as it is is not good enough, and that in order to be happy again you need to spend money to buy a $product.

[al_borland]

As much as I hate ads, I don’t know that it’s so simple.

There are products that do solve legitimate problems people have. Maybe there is less of that now, but in this past this was very true, and advertising helped make people aware that solutions to their problems have been developed. The first washing machine, for example.

The problem comes when the advertisement manufacturers problems that didn’t previously exist.

[iso1631]

Adverts I specifically request are fine. Trailers for example -- I specifically go to youtube to find trailers.

Or I'll go to rightmove if I want to look at adverts for houses. I'm happy to spend both time and even money on seeking out new products.

But it seems that people have a parasitical relationship with adverts, they can't imagine a world where there aren't wall to wall adverts on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written in the sky.

Adverts should be for my benefit, i.e. I can turn them on or off.

[spencerflem]

And the worst part is, from a societal point of view - it doesnt matter if $companyA wins over $companyB, if the reason they won is that there was more Geico ads than Liberty ads etc.

We allow every space to be overrun with these things, wasting our time and infecting our brains and in the end its zero-sum for the companies and negative-sum for us. No value anywhere is created.

[serial_dev]

Even as a consumer I am legitimately happy that I’ve seen ads for some products.

Now sure, it probably happens about once a quarter, and for that I watched probably hundreds if not thousands of ads, so was it worth it, I don’t know, probably not.

[kibwen]

Furiously seconded. Ads are just a tax that we pay both with our attention and then with our wallets. Every dollar that a company forks over to Google is a dollar they recoup by passing the costs on to you, for absolutely no benefit whatsoever to the product you're paying for. Destroy this heinous rent-seeking industry.

[Blikkentrekker]

Advertisement also more or less puts a wrench in the theory of capitalistic competition in that companies would be incentivized to create the best product for the lowest price supposedly. They're now just incentivized to create the best ad campaign which costs money and does not improve the product in any way.

Also, the existence of crippleware, where companies actually invest resources into removing features from a product is interesting. It would be interesting if we were to live in a world were both advertisement and crippleware are forbidden. It's already forbidden in many jurisdictions for various public function professions such as medical services or legal services so it's not as though it couldn't be implemented.

[charlieyu1]

As much as I hate ads, if you don’t make yourself known to potential customers you’re very screwed

[hoorayimhelping]

>All ads are poisonous

This is a silly and short-sighted blanket statement. People used to love getting catalogs, which are just big books full of ads. In the right context, people appreciate being informed of products that can help improve their lives.

[shuntress]

The problem is not ads. The problem is SPAM.

There are plenty of legitimately well-intentioned ads that can connect someone who needs a good/service with someone that supplies it and everyone wins.

The problem is that we use a nearly totally free unregulated market where anyone can advertise anything anywhere.

edit: I'm not saying we should necessarily try to optimize for good ads over bad ads or even assuming that is possible. I would settle for just somehow reducing the total volume of ads to help make email, snail main, voice mail, and other methods of communication more usable.

[presentation]

Hard disagree, without any ads the only way to find out about new things is via word of mouth, which would make many valuable products never get off the ground. Ads done badly are poison but ads done well educate people about new things they can benefit from and drive the entire economy. I have had many experiences where I’ve seen an ad that I genuinely think is interesting and was enlightening to find.

[citizenpaul]

>The world would definitely be better without ads.

I don't have the proof but I'm guessing that this is provably wrong. Without advertising in some existance it would be nearly impossible to start a business which means everyone would be peasants farming for subsistence living. I think the problem is that the propose of ads has become divorced from product. The issue is poor regulation not the existence of ads.

Think about it, how as a small or competitive business owner would you get people to buy your soda vs coke/pepsi without advertising in some way? The issue is that coke/pepsi know they have a simple product so they blast ads not to sell their product but to adversarially drown out competitors before they can exist. Tons of advertising has counter agenda purposes like this rather than selling a product, its propaganda not advertisement. There are probably tons of unenforced laws already about this but IANAL.

[tzs]

How are the ads that local grocers and restaurants mail to me telling me of sales or giving me coupons which let me get things I'd be buying anyway for less money poisonous?

[catlifeonmars]

> All ads are poisonous.

Yeah but the lethal dose is pretty high. 1 ad won’t kill you.

Unfortunately there can never be just 1 ad without regulation.

[thenewnewguy]

Obviously, if you could just delete the ads without changing anything else the world would be better, but that's not how it works.

Lots of businesses sustain themselves on ad revenue - would the world be a better place if we had no ads, but

- TV was twice the cost

- Google, YouTube, etc. (insert your favorite ad-supported website here) didn't exist or cost a monthly subscription

- All news was paywalled

- Any ad-supported website providing basic information (e.g. the weather) was paywalled or didn't exist

- etc etc

[tirant]

Definitely the world wouldn’t be better without all ads, because that would be a clear violation of free speech.

However ads should be limited only to communication channels that are optional to engage in. As for example, an ad on YouTube, a private video platform, should be perfectly fine. That’s part of the product. On the other hand, ads on a highway, on the street, should not be allowed. I have not given permission for them to enter my personal mental space. I’m fine with shops advertising their presence, but not full fledged advertising on roads, streets, etc.

[master-lincoln]

I think it would have been a better world without ads. There would be more competition which would improve products and thus outcome for customers.

Also most of the demand of goods is artificially created by ads, so there would be less production of crap and thus less resources wasted.

It would also mean a whole industry of people would do something else that is potentially not as detrimental to society.

The money spend on the digital marketing industry was estimated at 650 billion USD 2025. For comparison that is equivalent to the whole GDP of countries like Sweden or Israel.

[vladms]

While I agree that the world would be better without ads in their current form, we should think why are ads required and what are the benefits.

The main issue is how you discover a new product. The main benefit to society is/could be faster progress. The main downside to society could be unhappy people that consume crap.

I think smart people should think about alternative solutions, not just think "ads are the problem".

I personally have the exactly same issues as above when I look for example for open source libraries/programs for a task. There are popular ones, there are obscure ones, they are stable ones, etc. The search space is so big and complex that it is never easy.

My personal preference would be a network recommendation system. I would like to know what people I know (and in my extended network) are using and like - being it restaurants, clothes or open source software. I have 90% of friends (or friends of friends) satisfied with something - maybe I should try. Of course it is not a perfect system, but seems much better than what we currently have...

[jonny_eh]

> I think it would have been a better world without ads. There would be more competition which would improve products and thus outcome for customers.

How would people learn about various choices?

[adrr]

People don't care. Youtube has an option to watch it without ads, most people don't. I refuse to watch ads and pay for the ad-free versions of the streamers. Lots people won't pay. Would the average person pay $10/m for ad free social media? Or pay for add free search? Pretty sure there are search engines that you can pay that are ad free.

What needs to be regulated is ads that you can't avoid. You can avoid online ads by paying ad free versions or not browsing certain sites(eg: instagram, FB). Billboards need to go away, and some cities have outlawed them.

[jiri]

I am often frustrated by ads/sponsored content on YouTube that I cannot buy. Youtuber present me nice product targeted for US audience. I am in Europe. No way I can use it or buy it. I would do it sometimes, but I cannot. Still I have to watch such ads.

I dont think there is a practical way to prevent this case.

[johnnyanmac]

>Would the average person pay $10/m for ad free social media? Or pay for add free search?

At some point, yes. But by that point they switch to the next service with ads and the cycle repeats.

Its also important to note that many can't pay for such services. I.e. minors. So they don't get a choice unless their parents sympathize. That helps indoctrinate the next gen into accepting ads. I think that late Millenial/early Gen Z was a unique group that grew up with minimal ads (or easy ways to block ads) before smartphone hoisted most control from them.

[globular-toast]

Yeah but people also get addicted to things like cigarettes and gambling. Sometimes people need a little help to avoid harmful things.

[TechSquidTV]

When crypto was genuinely new, and I was young, I had hope that one day we might actually embrace micropayments. Turns out I was not only young, but stupid.

[octoberfranklin]

Ignoring the cryptocurrency angle for a second (to avoid distracting knee-jerks)...

Have you thought deeply about why micropayments have not been embraced?

[JumpCrisscross]

> often wondered whether the world would be better without ads

You’d probably have to compromise on free speech, since the line between ads and public persuasion is ambiguous to the point of non-existence.

Better middle steps: ban on public advertising (e.g. no billboards, first-party-only signage). Ban on targeted digital advertising. Ban on bulk unsolicited mail or e-mail.

[tossaway0]

I haven’t given it enough thought, but would a ban on selling ad space do the trick?

You can self promote, but you can’t pay third parties to do it for you and you can’t sell it as a service.

[al_borland]

I pay for YouTube Premium, which would in theory pull me out of the perverse incentive structure around an ad-based model. Yet I feel like I still get pushed toward all the same “features” of ad-funded accounts. I find it incredibly frustrating and keep sending feature requests and reporting site issues as a result.

[pyth0]

Can you explain what features you're talking about? Do you mean stuff like "shorts"?

[simplicio]

Maybe, but on the otherside, ads make available a huge amount of media and services to people who would otherwise be unable to afford it. Like, I suspect a non-trivial percentage of people wouldn't have email if it weren't for gmail and other free w/ads services.

[Aachen]

> ads make available a huge amount of media and services to people who would otherwise be unable to afford it.

They don't. Follow the money: why do ads power free services? The advertiser needs to expect to make more money in the scenario where they run the ad as compared to where they don't. The viewer must be spending more money in response to having seen it

If the viewer doesn't have the money to pay the first party fair and straight (say, a video website), they also don't have money to splurge on that fancy vacuum cleaner in addition to the website and advertisement broker getting paid, no matter how many ads you throw at them

Ads are useful for honest products, like if I were to start a company and believe that I've made a vacuum cleaner that's genuinely better (more or better cleaning at a lower or equal cost) but nobody knows about it yet. However, I don't see the point in money redirection schemes where affluent people inefficiently pay for public services (if they're indistinguishable and the company shows ads to both, thereby funding the poor people's usage). Let's do that through taxes please

[iso1631]

If a company is willing to spend $5 to force you to watch an advert, then they are expecting more than $5 from you in return.

[abuob]

Probably not too popular of an opinion on HN but email in my opinion would be a great example of a service that could be run by the government. Just like postal service (at least in some parts of the world)

[stemlord]

Then we'd be living in a world that didn't require you to have an email in order to do anything like have a job or a social life, which is probably a good thing

[oneeyedpigeon]

Maybe. Or maybe we could fund those services from all the money we'd save without advertising.

[somenameforme]

Most internet services are very low cost to offer for any company that has some infrastructure setup already. So for instance 'back in the day', before Google hoovered up everybody's email, what would typically happen is you would get an email address with your ISP.

[fraboniface]

You're dead right, it would be the one killer move to remove a lot of perverse incentives, fix the internet, possibly even social media, and all live in a happier world. The whole economy would stop paying the ad tax to Google and Meta.

And it's not that impractical : just make a consumer-run search engine for products and services.

[dmix]

People already complain about having 10 differently monthly subscriptions for internet stuff. If you remove ads people will need 30 to do the same stuff they do now.

[jonplackett]

Nice linguistic explanation of social media just been coined as ‘ultra processed language’

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQh50UKkt10/?igsh=MWx6ZW41ZHV...

[ThrowawayTestr]

People won't pay a few bucks a month for YouTube. They won't pay to keep their favorite sites online. They won't pay for their news. Without ads, a lot of things wouldn't exist.

[SchemaLoad]

They will actually. Youtube premium has had explosive growth after YT started pushing more ads and blocking ad blockers. People pay for streaming services quite regularly. And youtube has one of the strongest platforms/content bases to sell a subscription.

[wolvoleo]

No I won't pay for premium because even if I pay for it I still get ads in the content itself.

Fix that and then I'll pay.

Until then I just block the ads and the sponsors.

[somenameforme]

There are already numerous competitors to YouTube. Of course they have collectively like 1% marketshare, but that's because it's basically impossible to compete against YouTube right now. But if YouTube died, these sites would rapidly become fully competent replacements - all they're missing is the users.

[godshatter]

This makes me wonder how the system makes any money. Presumably the same people that won't pay a few bucks a month for YouTube won't buy things from ads either. So how do the ad companies make any money on them?

[carlosjobim]

There is a huge chunk of companies who do not pay to advertise their products or services, because their value offering is good enough to not need to. And a huge chunk who does very little advertisement for the very same reason.

For example, when was the last time you saw a TV or YouTube ad for a motorcycle from any of the big Japanese brands? The products are so mature and the value proposition is so good that they don't need to. And that's a 70 billion dollar annual market.

[redeuxx]

I was just in the Philippines, tons of ads for Japanese motorcycle brands. In places where competition and usage for the product or service is high, there will be ads, and lots of it. You use motorcycles as an example, but it probably isn't a very good example.

[arethuza]

I don't think that's impractical - isn't it exactly what YouTube Premium offers, ad free viewing for £12.99 a month.

I watch quite a lot of content on YouTube and really should sign up for Premium but I feel that the shockingly irrelevant ads I get presented with on YouTube are trying to drive me to sign for it - they're certainly not going to get me to buy anything!

[nalekberov]

Yet, most content on YouTube these days are sponsored by the companies trying to sell you a crap.

And with 'Native ads' it's nearly impossible to have ad-free experience nowadays.

[jaapz]

YouTube has been increasing both the amount, frequency and length of ads in their video's for a long time now. They know people will keep using them anyway because of the network effect, and people who are really fed up with these ads will buy premium anyway. For them it's a win/win.

[nielsbot]

> Lei Cidade Limpa (Portuguese for clean city law) is a law of the city of São Paulo, Brazil, put into law by proclamation in 2006 that prohibits advertising such as outdoor posters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

[testing22321]

Billboard ads are banned in cities in New Zealand. Have been for a long time

[fsflover]

> whether the world would be better without ads

What if we made advertising illegal? (simone.org)

1975 points by smnrg 9 months ago | 1409 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269

[bko]

Better from whom? As a user, maybe. But if you're trying to compete, it's incredibly useful to get exposure. For instance, suppose you run a competitor to Salesforce and you want to buy the Salesforce keyword because you provide a better product. I don't know how you would bootstrap that otherwise.

If anything the big businesses use advertising as a protection moat. As a small business, I would def prefer to be in a world that allows me to advertise, even if I have to compete for things like my own name

[MiddleEndian]

If I search for "Salesforce alternative" and something that isn't Salesforce shows up, great! That's what I want!

If I search for Salesforce and something that isn't Salesforce shows up above Salesforce, the tool I'm using is wrong and I will assume that the promoted product is a scam.

This happened to me yesterday when installing the mobile version of Brotato. Some other game appeared above Brotato in the Google Play store. I already hate Android but this only makes me hate it more. Google already gets an unjustified cut of the money I'm paying for the game, yet on top of that they serve me the wrong result at the top.

[titzer]

> If anything the big businesses use advertising as a protection moat. As a small business, I would def prefer to be in a world that allows me to advertise, even if I have to compete for things like my own name

These two sentences are contradictory. Big business uses it as a defensive measure, yet you think a small business can use it as an offensive measure. It's an absurd outcome of the SEO of the last two decades that people think it's fine to pay for get traffic using your own keywords. Stockholm syndrome.

[TeMPOraL]

> For instance, suppose you run a competitor to Salesforce and you want to buy the Salesforce keyword because you provide a better product. I don't know how you would bootstrap that otherwise.

Why would you assume I'm providing a better product? Ads are predominantly needed by those providing worse products, because spending money on marketing has much better ROI than actually creating a good product.

[cramsession]

“Users” are the only people who matter. Companies are artificial constructs and, in an ideal world, would never be prioritized over the public.

[whazor]

A big part of advertising on Google is making sure your own brand is the top result. This is essentially extortion from Google. Companies are burning money on something that should be the default result in Google.

[elevatortrim]

In reality, even if I provide a better product than Salesforce, they will outcompete me by their ad-buying power.

[squigz]

The problem isn't fundamentally advertising - it's stuff like toxic and anti-user advertisements, and the ad industry not knowing what the word "privacy" means.

[thfuran]

I think there is a fundamental problem with an ad-subsidized service. Even ignoring the privacy issues inherent to the way modern advertising works in practice (which you probably shouldn’t ignore), the mere presence of an advertiser as a third party whose interests the service provider must consider creates malign incentives.

I also think providing a service for free is fundamentally anti-competitive. It’s like the ultimate form of dumping. And there are many studies showing that people are irrational about zero-cost goods, so it’s even harder to compete against than might be expected.

[somenameforme]

I would disagree on this. The reason is that the main point of most ads is to induce artificial demand. When successful this is essentially making people think their lives are missing something, repeatedly. I think it is fairly self evident that at scale this simply leads to social discontent, materialism, and the overall degradation of a society.

There are endless studies, such as this [1] demonstrating a significant inverse relationship between ads and happiness. The more ads, the less happy people are. And I think it's very easy to see the causal relationship there. And this would apply even if the ad industry wasn't so scummy.

[1] - https://hbr.org/2020/01/advertising-makes-us-unhappy

[tcfhgj]

the fundamental problem is capitalism

[Zigurd]

When I first visited Latvia, I thought it was a charming side effect of communism that store names were quite small on the façades. Was there an ethic of abjuring crass commercialism? Then I noticed the shadows left by larger store names above the small Latvian store names. It wasn't that Marxism Leninism called for demure commercial logos. The Latvians had just taken down the Russian signs. Commercial promotion is, I suppose, a condition of life,

[matthewsinclair]

I've often wondered what would happen if we _taxed_ advertising [0]. The same rationale applies: it'll never work, and it'll never even be tested, but I agree, it was fun to think about.

[0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...

[whs]

In Thailand signs are taxed based on its size, text language (Thai only, No text or multilingual text and Thai text are placed lower than other languages, Multilingual text), and static/dynamic (I assume this applies to both digital and trivision).

This also not only for advertising but also normal signs like the logo of the business on buildings. You'll see most people circumvent the more expensive multilingual rate by adding small Thai text at the top of the sign.

Unrelated, but another interesting fact is that some bus stops in Bangkok are completely funded by an advertising company. Of course, they'll get the ads space for free as a result, and they only offer it in viable locations. The current governor doesn't like this idea and settle for a less fancy bus stop paid by public money.

[bee_rider]

He talks about a Pigovian tax for ads, which is interesting. I don’t have any thoughts other than “yeah good idea.”

But, something I haven’t fully worked out but have vague suspicions about: are ads actually a tax-favorable business model under the current system? We watch ads in exchange for some service, if it wasn’t an ad-supported service we’d have to pay money for it, and that transaction would be taxed.

Of course, the transaction between the ad network and the company placing the ad is taxed. But it seems like they could have a lot of play, as far as picking where that transaction takes place…

Ads should at least be taxed as heavily as if we had paid for the thing with money, IMO.

[croemer]

You're forgetting a very important problem: hard to implement. Sugar in drinks and CO2 emissions are easily measured. The definition of what's an ad is much harder.

[kelnos]

No need to wonder: the world would certainly be better without ads. Advertising is psychological manipulation. They should be illegal.

And don't whine about "how will new companies find customers?" They'll figure it out. Capitalism always finds a way. Business interests should always be secondary to the needs and safety of real people.

[mvdtnz]

My experience is that people who make sweeping claims like "all advertising should be banned" have never run or managed a small business. There is simply no way to survive as one of the little guys without some kind of marketing.

[tcfhgj]

people still would buy food in their favorite shops, so they probably will survive - perhaps even with higher profits as zero-sum ad spending is gone

[socalgal2]

It's not ads IMO, it's just reality. Remove the ads, people (instagram/tiktok/youtube) still get influence by "strive to addict their users"

[SchemaLoad]

Without adverts, the platform has less incentive to maximise engagement. They won't send you push notifications, they won't implement short form video, etc. My gym/ISP/email provider don't design their services on making me spend the whole day using them. If anything they don't want me using the service at all but I myself want to.

[gherkinnn]

As an experiment, think of a space that is improved by ads.

[aembleton]

I'm imagining a world where ads on screens generate enough revenue to mean that rail and bus services are free. It would be annoying, but free public transport would also reduce car volumes improving transport for all.

[maxglute]

I think my tolerance for ads would be higher if algos stop showing repeat ads, or limit same ad from playing more than X times to user.

[mock-possum]

It’s a well-established fact that my world would be much better without ads.

[amelius]

> I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads.

Of course. Ads make us buy more things. Things we don't need most of the time.

Think of the environmental win if we banned ads tomorrow!

[sensanaty]

I mean, infinitely so. I don't give a shit that you (the royal you, not literally you :p) and your business can't find their target demographic without ads, they are psychological manipulation of the worst kind and they should be eradicated from existence with prejudice. There is NO type of advertisement that is okay in my mind, whether it be a 5x5cm image in a black and white newspaper or the ubiquitous cancer that we're inundated with daily on the internet, none of it should exist. Moreover, if your business isn't possible without ads, then good riddance. Maybe at some point in the past I would've been okay with the "innocuous" ones like the newspaper ones, but the advertising industry and the psychotic, soulless ghouls that inhabit it have changed my opinion forever on it.

For every "innocent" and well intentioned ad out there, there are quite literally a billion cancerous ones that rely on pure deception to make the biggest buck out of you. Ads are the driving force behind the cancerous entity that is Meta and all the ills that they've brought upon the world such as actual fucking genocides. The "people" I've had the displeasure of meeting that come from advertising backgrounds have all been soulless psychopaths who would sell their own family for a bit of cash.

I mean just look at the type of shit they come up with in this very thread. It's all just games on how they can circumvent these kinda rules. "Oh you'll force me to let people skip my brainwashing? I'll just put up 20x more ads to make up for it!" Who even talks and thinks like this other than ghouls?

[throwawayk7h]

Instead of ads, we could have websites mine bitcoin in javascript. I feel like this would be better for everyone, especially in a world of AI agents.

[Babkock]

Billboards are outlawed in Alaska.

[goodpoint]

Of course it would be better.

[keybored]

Why not. Just run with it sometimes. Get people to argue for ads.

> Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware this is impractical. But it's fun to think about sometimes.

Yeah, sure. Get them to convince you how impractical it is. How the economy relies on it. How things “wouldn’t work” without it. Then you/they have just argued themselves into the position that society relies on this shitty practice to sustain itself. Then in turn: why ought we live like this?

[dyauspitr]

New businesses would never get off the ground. Advertising is probably one of the things that will never go away in a capitalist society.

[meonkeys]

How about a world without money?

[BiteCode_dev]

It would be much, much better:

- Improved incentive for the IT and medias industry. Users and viewers are the customers again.

- Removal of the culture of normalized lying that infects everyone to the point people don't see it anymore.

- Natural selection of product by actually asking people for money. Can't pay 2 euros / month for facebook? It deserves to die.

- Redirection of resources from marketing to useful things. Billions going back to R&D, quality control, etc.

- Brand forced to rely on quality and word of mouth again. No more temporary product trick. No more "one month brand lifetime" hack. No more "PR will save this disaster".

- Improved skin in the game. And you will see less reputation-damaging behavior because of this. Think twice about doing A/B testing, fake sales, use too many notifications. You need those saavy power users to spread the word now.

- Disappearance of old and new artificial social norms solely created by marketing firms to sell stuff that parasites our reality. No need for everybody to look the same, no need for diamonds for engagement rings, no "whole white family having breakfirst in a big house and everything is clean and they are all happy and hot" to sell coffee, no "big red guy with a beard" created by coca cola.

- Getting back on specs. You can't sell perfume and cars on an vague idea anymore.

- Children won't get conditioned from a young age to want stuff they don't need, think ideas they don't really have, and adopt behaviors that are harmful for them just so that a marketer can get 3% more engagement.

- Creating massive volume of bad content will not be a successful strategies anymore, since it's not about displaying ads. So content quality go up.

- Streets get nicer, with no more ads display. Clothes as well, with no more big logo making you look like a billboard.

- No more ads in your mail box! And you can redirect the money from the gov marketing budget to actually find email spammers as well.

- Removal of a huge means of accumulation and centralization of power. Right now, it's pay to win, and the more money you have, the more you can run ads, the more you can sell. Which means a small local shop cannot easily compete with a big one. But without ads, it's actually close to its own clients, and has an advantage to get their attention organically.

- People get back some part of their attention span.

The benefits are not superficial; they are immense!

Ads are a plague on our societies.

Evolving as humans requires us to find a way to ban them.

I doubt I will see it in my lifestyle, but we need to get rid of this parasite if we want to go to the next level.

[elevatortrim]

Absolutely. The world would be vastly better off without 2 things:

- Ads. Lower quality products/services perform better with more/better ads.

- Venture Capital. Services out-compete others by using free money early on, killing the free market.