Modern platforms have made things more complicated. Influencers use them to sell products while claiming to share their real lives, making it harder to tell advertisements from personal content.
Thankfully, different countries require influencers to disclose when posts are sponsored. That’s a good step toward transparency in advertising.
Of course, we haven’t reached a perfect state with advertising. Many campaigns still manage to raise more than a few eyebrows with their tactics and messaging.
What’s changed is that we’re more educated about how persuasion works and can recognize when selling products to women means first making them feel inadequate.
We have more systems in place now to call out harmful advertising, and more people are willing to ask whether certain desires should be manufactured in the first place.
