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Comment by eveningcoffee | Hacker News Reader

It is time to criminalize targeted advertising.

"targeted advertising" isn't a binary property though, it's a spectrum. Hanging fliers for a football workshop near a football stadium is targeted advertising. Running your ad for a college during a show very popular with high schoolers is targeted advertising. Putting my online ad for belt sanders on a woodworking site is targeted advertising. I don't see anything wrong with any of those, do you?

Especially advertising targeted at children. The way I see it, an advert is a business proposal and children do not have the autonomy to engage in a deal.

It used to be illegal to direct TV ads at kids in Sweden but it's now been legalized to harmonize with the TV channels that were broadcasting from the UK. Even though it's legal the networks have refrained from doing it as far as I'm aware. Not sure about other mediums though.

IANAL but my understanding is that wether an advert is a business proposal or not is based around the idea of an 'invitation to treat'[0] in contract law. It's pretty interesting reading about some of the cases where this concept developed.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invitation_to_treat

>The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare

That's an absurdly broad definition. By that definition, clinical therapy is psychological warfare!

Clinical therapy is social engineering

What does that mean?

Not it's not. It's time to stop supporting ad-based businesses. Install an adblocker. Install an adblocker on your friends' and family's computers.

the vast majority of fb's usage is in-app mobile. how're you gonna ad-block that?

By not using Facebook's app.

good answer. Got any tips for getting other people to stop using it too?

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Installing an ad-blocker does not stop you from supporting FB indirectly. Your contacts, many of whom probably look to you for advice on all things technical, will still see your using FB as an example that it is a good platform. The only real way to change is to lead by example and leave FB permanently. Then foster communication and events outside of FB. Be the change.

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