I read this article asking, "What if we made advertising illegal?" At first, I thought there was no way. It's a crazy thought. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized that the reason everything is getting worse is because ads are everywhere.
But why? It makes perfect sense. The financial incentives to create addictive digital content would instantly disappear, and so would the mechanisms that allow both commercial and political actors to create personalized, reality-distorting bubbles:
- Clickbait, listicles, and affiliate marketing schemes would become worthless overnight.
- Algorithm-driven platforms like Instagram and TikTok that harvest and monetize attention, destroying youth, would lose their economic foundation.
- Facebook, X, Google, YouTube—all would cease to exist in their current forms.
Maybe an outright ban is too extreme. After all, we've built a large section of our economy around ads. The most powerful businesses are advertisers. If we can't ban them all, we should at the very least, regulate the hell out of them.
1. Ads Are Psychological Warfare
If ads were just telling us about some new product, I wouldn't mind it that much. But instead, advertising is attempting to hack your brain to make you want things you don't need.
Social media feeds you endless engagement-optimized trash because ads pay for it. YouTube prioritizes rage-bait and low-effort slop because that's what keeps you watching. Google buries honest reviews under sponsored listings.
If ads were illegal (or at least way more restricted), companies would have to compete on actual quality. The highest bidder won't automatically become the winner because they have the biggest marketing budget.
2. Word of Mouth Works Better Anyway
But how will businesses find customers? The same way they did for thousands of years. People talking. Google didn’t grow because of ads, it grew because it was so much better than other search engines that people told each other. Tesla didn't run a single ad for over a decade. People bought their cars because they were cool, not because of a billboard. Small businesses thrived before Facebook ads existed. They just had to make good stuff and let customers spread the word.
Imagine a world where you discover products because they're actually good, not because some algorithm shoved them in your face.
3. Ads Are Killing the Internet (And Maybe Democracy)
Clickbait, fake news, and outrage porn exist because ads reward attention. The truth is not even part of the equation. Populist politicians buy microtargeted ads to spread lies without journalists or anyone fact-checking them. Every website is bloated with trackers and pop-ups because they need to squeeze every penny from ads.
If ads were banned (or strictly regulated), maybe we'd get actual journalism instead of "10 SHOCKING SECRETS" listicles. Social media would have less incentives to radicalize people for profit. Websites would actually load faster because they’re not stuffed with 50 tracking scripts.
4. Ads Make Us Miserable
They fuel endless consumerism, convincing us we need to keep buying junk to be happy. They ruin public spaces with billboards, spam emails, and unskippable YouTube ads. They turn us into products, with every click tracked and sold to the highest bidder.
We banned cigarette ads because they were harmful. Why not do the same for ads that push fast fashion, junk food, and predatory loans?
I get it. Some businesses do need a way to tell people they exist. But instead of letting ads run wild, we could ban targeted ads (no more creepy tracking). Ban ads in public spaces (no more Times Square sensory overload). Force platforms to disclose paid promotions (no more disguised "sponsored content"). Tax ad revenue to fund better public information sources.
What if ads just... didn't exist? Imagine walking down a street with no billboards. Opening Instagram with no sponsored posts. Watching YouTube with no pre-roll ads. It sounds like a utopia because we've been trained to think ads are inevitable. But they’re not. We built this system and we can tear it down.
At the very least, we should stop letting ads run the world.