Hacker News Reader

Comment by mech1234 | Hacker News Reader

Advertising fraud is already illegal. The situations where case law dictates what is illegal are varied and nuanced. As a side note, there are many categories of claims that fall in neither "provably true" nor "provably untrue", and enforcing upon these claims is tricky.

You can google for "advertising fraud precedent" "advertising fraud case law" and "advertising fraud case studies" for more information.

View on HN

> Advertising fraud is already illegal.

Yeah, OK. But here's what happens if a company gets publicly caught. "At ConCo we take ethics seriously. The statements by the employees in question are not in line with ConCo's policies and practices. Those employees will be burned alive, then put on a personal improvement plan, and then their heads will be displayed on pikes at their respective places of employment."

I think punishing or firing the employees is appropriate. It is often, but not always, also appropriate for those employees to have criminal punishments imposed on them.

I suppose you think that current norms for these punishments are too lax. It's not easy to tell what you actually believe though. If you want to tease out your own actual beliefs on this, look up some advertising fraud cases and find one that was punished too loosely, and find one that was punished too severely.

Right... That’s why you have an “unlimited” data plan that is “guaranteed” or it’s “free”...

There is no such thing as truth in advertising. There is only a Make Lawyers Rich lawsuit..

Often there is fine print explaining the terms. You have to read it, though.

No. These are words and phrases that hold literal meanings. They are used by advertisers to deceive people. There are/is no fine print in broadcast or digital ads. Except in Pharma... which is only allowed to advertise in the US and NZ. No where else on earth allows pharmaceutical advertising on TV.

Sometimes the meaning can be different between the literal or regulatory defined meaning and what people assume or expect.

The USDA's minimum for "free range" labeling for example for non-certified organic foods can be met with a standard chicken coop with a door and a few feet of screened in porch the chickens may or may not ever actually use. "No Hormones" on the other hand has the technical definition and the layman definition aligned, but is federally mandated anyway making it a meaningless feature.

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-does-free-range-really-me...

Yes, and then there's the advertising get-out-of-jail-free card of "puffery". You can lie all you want in your marketing materials as long as your lawyers can convince a judge that no reasonable person would actually believe what you said.

It's this kind of of nonsense that led me to consider all marketing messages and claims to be lies by default.

Don't those unlimited plans state that data may be throttled, etc? Unless you cite a specific example it's pretty tough to argue against.

To argue against your theoretical case: If there is a data plan that advertises unlimited data without giving any fine print describing the throttling behavior, or other strange details after high data usage, then yes, they should be able to have false advertising claims pressed against them successfully.

Come on. In theory, with "unlimited" legal resources, you can take such matters to trial and onward to a victory...

What mechanism other than litigation and the consumer protection bureau do you think should enforce against false advertising? How much resources should be expended to fight it? Do you have an alternative to propose, or do you prefer instead to attack a known-to-be-imperfect system?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com