Comment on Ad companies are the ones destroying civilization
A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 6 days agoa bunch of firms compete to sell you a good or service, you pick the best one for your situation and buy it, then the firm that produces the best good or service gets more resources (money) to grow, rewarding the best product maker.
Advertising breaks this.
TBF, the original meaning of advertising was just that: spread the word about your product. Sure, praise it, add nice pictures, but that’s about it. People need to know that your product is out there.
The systematic psychological manipulation only started in the 20th century, particularly when a relative of Sigmund Freud came to the USA (there’s an interesting documentary about it called The Century of the Self).
masterspace@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
I get that, if you’re arguing from an economic efficiency standpoint, there was an argument to be made that the spreading of new information through advertising helps to spread new innovative ideas and thus increases overall societal efficiency.
It’s just that a) in the Internet age, we have other, non-advertising ways to spread information (i.e. specs and reviews), and b) if advertising was actually still about genuine education, then it would not scale in effectiveness the way it does with volume and repetition.
A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 5 days ago
I’m not generally disagreeing with your assessment of the current situation, just a little historical BTW.
Interesting, I never thought of it that way.
However, most of that is still part of advertising; producers proactively strive to get reviewed.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Reaching out to reviewers is still technically advertising in the broadest definition of the word, but it is distinct from commercial advertising where companies pay to broadcast their specific messages to users.