My view is that all advertising is manipulation. I don't think it's possible to separate the two. Just some forms of manipulation are fairly benign, while others aren't.
Still, I think banning advertising is a bad idea, even if I personally would be happy if I never saw a bit of advertising again in my life. It can perform a valuable function, especially if there's an underdog that is trying to offer a competing widget, say one that is more sustainable and also cheaper. Without advertising, I could see a large incumbent making it nearly impossible for this underdog to make a dent, which would harm customers of that product category.
In that case the advertising isn't "hey, I'm going to use psychology to convince you to buy this thing you don't have and don't really need" (the thing I object to), but "hey, I know you already buy this thing, but I'd like you to consider buying my version of it, which is objectively and factually better than the thing you're already buying". I think that is valuable information to get into the hands of potential customers.
But I just don't see a way of legislating away the psychological-manipulation types of ads while keeping the genuinely informative and useful kind, at least not without purveyors of the former finding loopholes to pretend that they're pushing the latter.
Perhaps moving advertisements into spaces where people intentionally go to get this information, rather than getting advertisements in continual drive-bys?
At least one major city in Brazil has banned advertisements from public spaces. Removing the endemic product placement from entertainment would be a good start as well.
But data collection on the internet is the big prize.
I would love to look into the feasibility of anonymizing data so we don't throw out a powerful tool completely.
Still, I think banning advertising is a bad idea, even if I personally would be happy if I never saw a bit of advertising again in my life. It can perform a valuable function, especially if there's an underdog that is trying to offer a competing widget, say one that is more sustainable and also cheaper. Without advertising, I could see a large incumbent making it nearly impossible for this underdog to make a dent, which would harm customers of that product category.
In that case the advertising isn't "hey, I'm going to use psychology to convince you to buy this thing you don't have and don't really need" (the thing I object to), but "hey, I know you already buy this thing, but I'd like you to consider buying my version of it, which is objectively and factually better than the thing you're already buying". I think that is valuable information to get into the hands of potential customers.
But I just don't see a way of legislating away the psychological-manipulation types of ads while keeping the genuinely informative and useful kind, at least not without purveyors of the former finding loopholes to pretend that they're pushing the latter.