Advertising: Shades of Gray

I looked at two websites that both ask whether advertising is good or bad. While neither one actually took a stand on either side of the issue, both authors made recommendations about what they thought should be done to ensure that advertising doesn’t slip from moral ambiguity to outright evil.

The first website features an article from Wired Magazine entitled “Online Advertising: So Good, Yet So Bad for Us." In it, the author makes the point that internet advertising, while necessary to maintain websites, can become too invasive and would not only rob internet users of their privacy, but expose them to unfair and manipulative advertising practices. The author’s arguments are mainly based on pathos. She appeals to people’s fears of losing their privacy, being discriminated against, and getting overcharged. The author attempts to show both sides of the argument, but, whether intentional or not (though I suspect the former), she immediately sets reader opinion against the side of the advertisers by describing their representative as “dressed in a much better suit than any other CFP [Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference] participant, and sporting a John Edwards-quality coif and a smooth manner.” The entire article is meant to make people afraid of internet advertising and appeal to their sense of right and wrong. The author also uses ethos by noting her influential position dealing with internet law. At the end of the article, she suggests that there should be more regulations placed on internet advertising. Overall, this message is suspect because the people who would benefit most from new regulations wouldn’t be the consumers, but rather lawyers who specialize in cyberlaw like herself.

The next site is a blog entitled “Is Advertising Evil?” from the site Take Back Your Brain. The author here is arguing that advertising is neither good nor evil; it just is. She uses logos by giving examples of morally neutral predators in nature and comparing them to advertisers (we are the prey), concluding that if one cannot be considered evil, then the other, logically, cannot be evil either. The problem, she claims, is not that advertising is bad, just that it is biased. She warns that there are so many messages aimed at getting people to do what the advertisers want them to do and none trying to convince people to do what’s right for them. This emotional appeal is a good example of pathos. The point of the article is to convince people that what is best for them is to start their own personalized advertising campaign promoting their hopes and dreams as a way to push back against the thousands of ads they are exposed to on a daily basis. The irony of this message is that it is itself an advertisement; after readers are encouraged to start their own ad campaign, the website offers to sell their personalized ads printed on t-shirts, coffee mugs, key chains, etc. This doesn’t completely invalidate the points made in the article, but it does make one wonder, just like regular advertising, how much of this is intended to benefit the reader and how much is said to benefit the website?