alt Hacker NewsI want ads to be confined to product directories where sellers can advertise their products in a standardized format, and where people can go search for products when they feel like buying something, not because some platform decided to push it in their face. Product directories should be run by consumer-owned cooperatives to make sure incentives are aligned with the consumers and commercial for-profit ad directories should be illegal.
The business model of ad-tech destroys everything it touches. It is virtually impossible to find a game on Play Store which is actually designed to be fun, they are all designed to manipulate you into watching more ads (most being ads for other games manipulating you to watch more ads).
It is time to just outlaw this nonsense.
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100% of ads exist to create demand. at all points in history. ever.
you're basically suggesting the complete elimination of the entire advertising industry.
Just wanted to say, I think this is actually a really good idea.
My (honestly hardliner) view for a while has been that ads shouldn't exist. If a product was really good (and was in demand) a consumer would seek it out. This would entail the consumer knowing first the problem they want to solve, and then secondarily what the solution might look like, and once having found a few different products that satisfy their solution, carefully analysing each and working out which one they want.
Your idea of a directory neatly aligns with the way I view the market. Nobody should be putting an advertisement in front of people, they should be sought out when a need has to be met.
Not to mention the amount of environmental problems, human time and labour we could spare if our world wasn't oriented around fashions, trends, and attention harvesting.
I'm sure such a setup would devastate the world economy, so obviously it'll never happen. We need everybody to be sat away designing, manufacturing, transporting and marketing junk to each other all the time, to keep the market ticking. Sometimes the current adtech-led / "gamblification" of the economy makes me imagine we're in the endgame, pretending that fad creams, supplements, gadgets and trinkets are somehow worth something, and therefore, so is all the advertising that is being used to sell it.