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Comment by boplicity | Hacker News Reader

> We should just ban all ads

Please define what an ad is.

Comments like this are a weird form of semantic catnip nerd sniping that unproductively derails the discussion. "We should ban tall buildings." "Oh yeah? Well define exactly how tall a tall building is." Clearly there's a thing as an ad, because it's a common word everyone understands. If your point is that it would be hard to pin down the part of that that's actionable, well of course. It's always hard to get regulations right.

I'm fine with two, maybe three story buildings.

Higher screws up light.

It's important to practice like you play the game (we should debate the way we want the regulations to read, if we stand a chance of ever being represented).

It's fine to say "how tall of a building do you want to ban?" But time and again it derails things if you say "How tall is a tall building?"

Folks think advertisements are "showing me something I can buy"

But really ads are a huge detailed dossier on every person, being sold so that water filter companies can bid the highest to get a water filter ad in front of the people with the largest income.

Meanwhile, you like legos and lego will never be able to bid high enough to show you a lego ad (probably they don't need to anyhow)

and the off-label uses for these dossiers... I wonder if used car salesmen can find out your "price insensitivity" and charge accordingly?

> Please define what an ad is.

I made this comment[0], where I talk about "building buzz."

Basically, ads without ads.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28788169

Adblocks seem to have found a definition .. let's start with that.

I know it when I see it [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

I'm not sure how true that is for advertisements. For example, there are many forms of 'hidden' advertisements that are designed to not be seen, and yet influence people. Among them are product placements. Heck, even Hacker News is an advertisement for YCombinator, though it certainly isn't seen that way by many people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com