Thread by @sarahmei

I read a story over the weekend imagining a future where advertising is illegal, and I can’t stop thinking about it - especially in light of our current efforts to understand how companies and countries purchase influence & outcomes.

It was written in 1973, but the author must have had a magic mirror to 45 years in the future, because their characterization of instagram influencers is just so spot on.

The story is this one. There’s A LOT of plot, & a lot of prescient imaginings, including:
- fast always-on internet
- realtime streams of audience sentiment used to tune content in realtime
- scripted “reality” tv

I’m still sifting through the layers.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_…

Another interesting layer is that the story was written by a fierce feminist woman, writing as a man for an audience of men.

In one part she’s explaining why a woman with a traumatic past might not be interested in sex, and I thought, “why on earth would she feel the need to explain something so obv- OH.”

Because men don’t know this stuff, and she’s a dude writing for dudes.

Anyway the big idea that I’ve been dwelling on is that if you outlaw advertising because of its pernicious negative influence on people, it doesn’t disappear - it just gets harder to identify. It gets subtle - the boundaries between content & advertising blur.

This makes the advertising, or as we’d call it, “paid content,” harder to identify. Which can lead to even more negative pernicious effects vs. when it’s out in the open.

The more I think about how to counteract the negative effects of advertising-driven services like facebook, the more I think the tech industry a) won’t self-regulate and b) won’t (and shouldn’t) be driving the eventual solution.

We had our shot & we fucked it up. Thanks, Zuck. You ruined it for everyone.

Time to get some adults in here who understand policy and actually consider the repercussions of various approaches.