
French cities trying to ban public adverts - Vinnl
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/dec/23/advertising-breaks-your-spirit-the-french-cities-trying-to-ban-public-adverts
======
q845712
It's kind of an open secret that the city of Santa Barbara (CA, US) has banned
several forms of public outdoor advertising: we have no billboards, no
promotional posters, no taxi toppers... It's delightful, and very high on my
list of reasons why I enjoy living here. Every time I leave I'm reminded how
noisy space is when it's filled with advertisements. I wholeheartedly
recommend others advocate for similar policies in their municipality - it can
be done!

~~~
reaperducer
Lots of places in America have severe restrictions on advertising. Hilton
Head, South Carolina; and along the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey leap to
mind. I think along some of the toll roads in Houston this is also true (It's
been a while, I might be remembering that wrong).

Billboards are banned in downtown Chicago, so big companies rent storefronts
in tourist areas and put in stores that are not supposed to make money, just
to be billboards for their brand.

~~~
jakemal
I live in downtown Chicago and I find the lack of billboards everywhere
refreshing. Michigan Avenue has very few advertisements with the exception of
unintrusive storefront signs.

------
mr_custard
Quite simply, advertising is visual pollution; whether it be on large
billboards, on bus stops or freestanding in the middle of the sidewalk.

It's visual pollution and it has ruined our towns and cities. I'm excited to
read this article and see that people are taking a stand.

~~~
Joe-Z
The first time I started thinking about it that way was when I bought a book
featuring a selection of Banksy's works [0]. In the opening pages it had a
quote of him, making pretty much that point:

The public space is ours. It's not their for corporations. It's to be enjoyed
by the people and if you want to come in with your hands full of money to make
something else of it you can fuck right off. He's a true artist.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Piece-
Banksy/dp/1844137872](https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Piece-Banksy/dp/1844137872)

~~~
andrepd
Banksy quote on advertising.

\---

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take
a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings
and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply
you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They
are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most
sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it.
They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property
rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they
like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you
see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do
whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock
someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe
them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put
themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even
start asking for theirs.

------
ajna91
I think in the near future we'll have empirical evidence that most ads are
malicious exploits of flaws in human psychology.

Ideally, all ads should be plain text listing of facts. Pictures only allowed
for demonstrative purposes. And they should be listed in "Ad sections", like a
phone book.

~~~
sosborn
> plain text listing of facts

Coca-Cola tastes great!

Coca-Cola gives you an extra pep in your step!

Coca-Cola will rot you teeth!

These are all true statements (the first one is subjective, I'll admit), but I
suspect that many believe the effect of plain test listing of facts would only
allow the third statement.

> Pictures only allowed for demonstrative purposes.

Wouldn't a photo of someone drinking a Coke and enjoying it be allowed under
this rule?

~~~
oehpr
I agree with you. And I suspect 9 out of 10 doctors do as well.

I want to neuter advertising more than anything, but I can't think of any kind
of "rule" we could establish that would make public mind hacking illegal.

~~~
Barrin92
you don't need any hardcoded rules. When in doubt have a local municipal
office or whatever decide whether to take down ads or not based on residential
complaints.

Consensus and some common sense and case by case judgement ought to be enough
to decide whether ad placement is appropriate.

~~~
bobbydroptables
This doesn't work from a first amendment perspective. The town council is BFE,
Mississippi is not going to approach its censor role in a fair way, for better
or worse.

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99chrisbard
The Indian city of Chennai banned billboard advertising completely;
[https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/adblocking-the-
globa...](https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/adblocking-the-global-
cities-clearing-streets-of-advertising-to-promote-human-and-environmental-
health/)

Public advertising is company sponsored graffiti;
[http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/litter-on-a-
stick/](http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/litter-on-a-stick/)

------
redis_mlc
For those who haven't been to Paris, there's moving/jittering electronic signs
everywhere like something out of Minority Report. They're a distracting
eyesore and should be banned.

~~~
K0SM0S
Compared to most global city I've seen (NYC, Amsterdam, Zurich, German cities,
Tokyo, Singapour, Bankgok, London...) I'd say Paris is of the least
'technological' kind.

It's actually so distinct that as a nerd I just don't feel 'home' in France,
architecturally, culturally, compared to most comparable countries/cities on
any continent. France feels somewhat stuck in time, which you may not be able
to tell looking at all the smartphones and 1Gb fiber, but could glimpse at by
talking with enough locals: they just don't like / trust / see value in high-
tech in general, more like a threat / disturbance / forced upon them). Again,
this is the feeling, the mindset, not 'reality' or 'objective truth' (the
French are the same as everyone else in this regard, obviously; I'm talking
about perceptions here, like the fact that the French are the most pessimistic
on Earth despite their incredible relative wealth (less than 1% of the world's
population for 3.25% GDP) and quality of life (GINI, whatever).

It's great that Paris and the French exists for those who'd rather live in a
more 'vintage' environment (this can be said for a lot of European small/mid
cities btw), but subjectively, France is everything but high-tech or 'nerdy'
compared to Germany, UK, USA, Japan (probably topping it all), Korea,
basically the world's top 10-15-20 countries (GDP per capita). Even
Switzerland, which is very old-school in a lot of ways, feels more "21st
century" than France in day-to-day living.

------
jeffrallen
In Lausanne, we have "le pub vous faites de-penser" stickers on many
billboards. Translation: Advertising makes you de-think (a pun on "spend")

~~~
notaregular
But also most of the billboards are ads for cultural events, theatre, city-
organised events, museums etc. I quite like that actually, where else would I
find about some shows or things to do.

~~~
oska
> I quite like that actually, where else would I find about some shows or
> things to do.

How about in a free magazine which advertises all such events? Or a website
that does similar? Also listings of "What's On" in more general media.

~~~
notaregular
All of that is also great too, but I find it’s less of a waste to print a
dozen of billboards at strategic locations vs. printing hundreds of thousands
of newspapers and spam peoples mailboxes.

In Lausanne specifically, those billboards are also works of art in their own
right so I do enjoy them.

------
OldGuyInTheClub
Good on them. In Los Angeles, the tonier the neighborhood the fewer the
billboards. The savagery of monster electronic signage and visual barrage
increases substantially as one goes into the less affluent locations.

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
Well, of course. Mental pollution is just another thing poor people are
subjected to, while the executives of those same advertising companies live in
suburbs without a single billboard in sight.

~~~
OldGuyInTheClub
Definitely true in America's saddle point society. A certain class will always
go back to equilibrium no matter the shove, the rest fall off the sides at the
slightest touch.

The poorer areas are subjected to architectural punishment, food as unhealthy
as it is cheap, lack of investment and services, and pollution of all
varieties. I see the "Cloud Minders" from the original Star Trek.

------
djohnston
There was an iPhone ad draped over the Louvre a few months ago. I was shocked
that the parisians of all people would debase themselves for Tim cook like
that.

~~~
justinclift
Yeah, the government in Victoria (Australia) forced the Sydney Opera House to
accept _gambling_ ads (for horse racing) projected onto it a few months ago.

Despite large public outcry, etc.

Definitely some money changed hands to bribe the gov people involved to make
it happen. Can't see any other excuse for it.

------
pastor_elm
>'Advertising breaks your spirit'

Anyone who has taken the NYC Subway understands this sentiment. The only way
to avoid them is to completely close your eyes and wish you were somewhere
else.

------
glangdale
Good on these guys. The French also are massive exporters of this garbage -
Sydney is lousy with billboards inflicted on us by JC Decaux.

Amusingly enough, the JC Decaux trucks are entirely festooned with Australian
flags, which is a _totally_ conventional for a 100% French company to use as
visual elements and not deceptive at all.

------
colejohnson66
A general sentiment I see here is that ads should be banned, but what can be
done in the US? The First Amendment protects truthful advertisements. In
addition, we have the FTC for misleading and lying ads (although their success
is not what it should be (case in point: OutBrain and Taboola)). So, what do
we do?

Further reading on the 1st Amendment and advertising:
[http://www.lawpublish.com/amend1.html](http://www.lawpublish.com/amend1.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Hudson_Gas_%26_Electri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Hudson_Gas_%26_Electric_Corp._v._Public_Service_Commission)

~~~
jimbob45
Nobody wants ads banned. The problem is that ads are being placed into
previously unused places and louder than before. The result is that all
companies have to compete with these new obnoxious ads or risk falling behind
their competitors that are willing to put ads in distasteful places.

In my opinion, the solution is to clearly define a discrete set of spaces for
ads and make sure everyone is able to compete on equal footing. It's not like
these companies _want_ to shell out more money for ads - they simply have to
in order to compete.

EDIT: Also the US needs to adopt Britain's ban on election ads outside of the
election month. We waste a phenomenal amount of time and money on election ads
that provide zero real benefit to the US.

~~~
munk-a
> Nobody wants ads banned.

I want ads banned.

They provide nothing of value and exist only to sway people into buying your
product - a lot of advertising isn't overtly malicious but it all exists
dependent on an assumption that being told to buy a product is a more valuable
use of a time than whatever else you're doing.

I _suspect_ that being constantly bombarded with advertising has ill health
effects by making it harder to find peace of mind and de-stress yourself, but
that's just a gut feeling.

~~~
reificator
> > _Nobody wants ads banned._

> _I want ads banned._

> _They provide nothing of value and exist only to sway people into buying
> your product - a lot of advertising isn 't overtly malicious but it all
> exists dependent on an assumption that being told to buy a product is a more
> valuable use of a time than whatever else you're doing._

I'm a prolific adblocker, but I disagree with you here. I think if things were
kept at a reasonable balance, advertising would be a net positive.

There have been several times where I've tried new restaurants because of ads.
Sometimes I'll go searching to buy a specific thing, and realize that it
doesn't yet exist in the market. Then a few months or years later, I'll see an
advertisement for that thing, and I'm always very appreciative.

That's not to mention that if ads were banned tomorrow, the established brands
would have decades of advantage built up against newcomers, becoming a self-
reinforcing monopoly that I'd imagine would last decades after the last person
to have seen an ad dies.

And don't forget, making something illegal doesn't mean it goes away. Look at
how often people accuse accounts on social media of astroturfing. Do you think
that astroturfing will become more or less common after a ban on advertising?
At least with ads legal I can evaluate them as ads. I can't tell which glowing
reviews are legitimate and which are planted, and if you think you can I'd put
money against you.

> _I suspect that being constantly bombarded with advertising has ill health
> effects by making it harder to find peace of mind and de-stress yourself,
> but that 's just a gut feeling._

I definitely agree with you on that. The current state of ads is nothing less
than an assault on people's cognitive abilities and mental health. Something
needs to give here.

~~~
a1369209993
> Do you think that astroturfing will become more or less common after a ban
> on advertising.

A ban on advertising means the company can no longer tell the employee that
their job is to astroturf, or fire them for not astroturfing, because that
would be a admission that the company was engaging in advertising.

------
spodek
I look forward to the mainstream catching up to seeing advertising like
second-hand smoke: harmful enough to others to ban based on widespread
democratic support.

------
jabofh
My wife did her PhD in out-of-home media (which very much included
billboards).

I have yet to find a more rabid opponent to out-of-home advertising (in
general) and billboards (in particular), and she will explain why it is evil
at the drop of the proverbial hat...

As an amateur artist she will start with visual pollution and then veer into
psychological damage... /grin

~~~
Vinnl
Curious: does she have an argument for why in-home advertising _is_ good, or
is it just that she has not studied it?

~~~
jabofh
Mostly a lack of study, it would seem, but she is anti-advertising in general
as well...

------
QuadrupleA
This is great. For website owners, magazines etc. it's sorta their choice to
"pollute" their pages with ads, but out in the world you're polluting the
commons, where people have little choice in the matter. It depletes people's
ability to have a clear head & freely focus their attention.

------
docdeek
In Lyon the public ad space was traded to an ad company in exchange for
funding and maintaining the city's public bike share scheme. It's a trade off,
of course, but for just 30 euros à year I (and the rest of the city) get
virtually unlimited bike share.

The anti-ad groups here would be happy for the public ads to disappear but it
would be a real shame if the affordable bike share went with it.

FWIW there is a real debate about who got the better side of the deal between
the city and the ad company, but the Velov scheme is great. :)

~~~
magwa101
They wouldn't buy the advertising if they couldn't make a profit on your
attention. Pay with brain space, or pay through a tax. Which is more
expensive?

~~~
Vinnl
It's not the brain space that's paying for the advertising, it's your (or,
well, people's) buying of the advertised products. So in addition to the costs
of brain space, there are still also actual financial costs to it that are
borne by the city's citizens.

~~~
balfirevic
Well they got the product they bought, so it's a stretch to consider it a
cost. Perhaps only the marginal cost that went to advertising, but it's still
a stretch to consider it a cost if the buyer considers they got their money's
worth.

------
adenverd
Bit of a crypto-tangent: more than anything else, the hope of replacing
advertising as the economic engine of the Internet is why I care about the
cryptocurrency space. In most cases, I think crypto is a solution looking for
a problem, but the capability to trade edge compute/memory/disk/network for an
ad free Internet experience would be immeasurably good for our collective
mental health.

------
BurningFrog
OK, I'll make the case for ads:

Ads are disruptive. They allow new businesses to break into markets owned by
old dominant suppliers. This way they keep the market healthy and serving
consumers.

Based on that, you'd expect anti-ad initiatives to be aligned with powerful
established industries. Not that I know how to confirm or refute that.

~~~
lordlic
Ads allow whomever has the deepest pockets to dominate the public's attention.
Incumbents will have more money to spend, chilling the influence of new
competitors. Most of the "disruptor" success stories that come to mind started
with some variation of "we didn't spend anything on advertising, relying on
word of mouth."

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Ads allow whomever has the deepest pockets to dominate the public's
> attention.

Not necessarily. Advertising has diminishing returns -- we know this because
companies don't buy unlimited advertising. If every ad dollar was as good as
the first (i.e. it generated more than a dollar in profit) then everybody
would buy an unlimited amount of advertising so they could make an unlimited
profit. At some point you hit saturation and it costs more than it makes you.

Meanwhile the little guy needs it more because they're unknown, i.e. their
baseline is further from the point of saturation so they have a higher
cost/benefit ratio. If nobody advertises then people keep buying from the
incumbent because they don't know of any alternatives.

The biggest problem with advertising isn't big vs. little, it's that it's a
signaling war. If Coke spends a dollar and Pepsi doesn't, Pepsi loses $2 in
sales. But if they both spend a dollar then they've each burned a dollar only
to both stay where they started.

What would really help is to have some industry of trustworthy third parties
whose job it is to tell you what to buy, but nobody has ever really cracked
it, because the buyers don't want to pay for it and the sellers only want to
pay if it will influence the results.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Advertising indeed seems to give an edge to newcomers over the incumbents, but
those same "little guys" would need to advertise _less_ if everyone's
attention wasn't already saturated by everyone else's ads. Everyone is still
wasting money; new players just waste less.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The question is, if you got rid of advertising, how do the customers find out
about a new product from a new business?

~~~
anoncake
Newspapers, magazines etc. Basically however they want.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Those are just other forms of advertising, and the entire print industry is
dying anyway. Where's the real answer?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Pull advertising isn't really the same kind of advertising as the predominant
push kind, and it's the latter that's considered a problem. Let people decide
where and when they want to be advertised to on their own. Let them visit
exhibitions, trade shows, buy or browse product catalogs and shopper's
magazines.

------
anigbrowl
Meanwhile, there are resources available for people who are stuck in areas of
high visual pollution, which require only a small investment in tools and
mindfulness of personal safety.

[http://brandalism.ch/take-action/](http://brandalism.ch/take-action/)
[http://www.billboardliberation.com/ArtAndScience-
BLF.pdf](http://www.billboardliberation.com/ArtAndScience-BLF.pdf)
[http://www.billboardliberation.com/](http://www.billboardliberation.com/)

------
idclip
Germany is FILLED by them, they often advert smoking brands on bus stations.

I hope germany learns from france, this is great news and very inspiring

------
asiachick
one reason I love living in Asia the shear amount of advertising is far more
interesting to walk around than say Irving California which is basically
Speilberg-esch E.T. suburbia.

~~~
oska
Question: can you read the advertising (i.e. read the native language)?
Because for me at least, chinese & japanese advertising can look 'picturesque'
but I think I would feel differently if I could actually read the banal
messages that are undoubtedly being pushed.

------
mlinksva
I personally prefer to tax rather than ban, but good on them.

What's different about the internet that has some countries trying digital
services taxes rather than digital ad bans?

~~~
TeMPOraL
My guess: no obvious immediate hazard + not enough public outrage + lots of
money flowing through = countries want to tax it to capture some of that
money.

------
CptFribble
Banning ads would be nice, but that's already old thinking.

The growth of the influencer model, advertorials/newsvertising, and individual
personality as brand experience means that even if all public ads were banned,
brands would just be paying thousands of micro-influencers for IRL mentions,
tracked silently through the mic on your phone.

When you take the influencer thing to it's logical conclusion (everyone is a
brand ambassador) then it becomes real murky real quick about what's an ad and
what's just a person's opinion.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That's just a reason to _also_ ban "influencing". Few other ways of
advertising damage the basic fabric of society - interpersonal trust - as
badly as influencers.

~~~
thebean11
How would that even work?

------
Scoundreller
My money is on JCDecaux winning this battle.

------
faissaloo
I can't wait for the day when we finally get rid of these coordinated assaults
on our senses, both online and in the real world. Things like Ublock Origin &
SponsorBlock have opened my eyes to a world without adverts.

