It’s fun to imagine the implications of dramatically raising the standard for commercial speech, such that statements which intend to mislead are prohibited.
I’d argue that a simple law “companies may not lie to people,” with wide latitude for judges to define lying, would instantly and massively upend business for the better.
It would upend US media companies and politics, to the benefit of the entire world.
It would never get passed, though. The government relies on being able to force companies to lie to people for things like criminal investigations and so on.
I worked at a large online retailer in NL that got told they needed to change their delivery promise because that’s not a promise you can actually keep.
So it does happen, but probably not often enough.
Which online retailer was that? Happen to have a news item to link to?
Don’t have a news article because I learned about it through internal channels.
I’m glad to hear that! It also lines up with my anecdotal experience overseeing a marketing department that Benelux, German, and Japanese teams were on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to American, Israeli, and Chinese teams with respect to “marketing bullshit” practices.
apply it to physical stores, see how far it goes
my point being i did some stuff on 'x' available, hurry now - and went. and they never had them, but the difference is that i traded a quantifiable unit (human life expectancy) vs those online that just annoyed people