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Comment by maybelsyrup | Hacker News Reader

Not saying anything about real world feasibility, but honestly, if I'm emperor? Advertising to minors outlawed.

Ads for minors are incredible trash. Basically the point of all tv channels that are for kids is to show ads for toys. Even a lot of shows are themselves nothing else than ads for toys. Let a child watch TV for an hour and the only thing that will happen is that they will come with a huge list of things they want. It's really sad. I watched a lot of TV when I was a child but it wasn't all made for you to buy licensed merchandise.

I must be a different age, 39, but outside of PBS, I don’t recall too much programming that was not funded by licensed merchandising and unhealthy foods. Of course many of those unhealthy foods were licensed too.

You're probably right, but I'm not from the US.

It seems like these days PBS Kids is the only kids' network that doesn't have ads and toys and trash like that.

in the USA.

Here in the UK we have CBeebies and CBBC.

It's true, I remember Life cereal commercials, Saturday morning, and later He-Man. Adverts have only gotten more sophisticated.

Luckily, I had a parent that mostly said "no," and that was the end of it.

It's true that platforms and advertisers can build early brand recognition on young people, but it was always there, it used to be tv mainly,but now with mobile devices, how can this possibly be controlled or regulated?

If I was your vice emperor, I would agree btw.

This happens in some Scandinavian countries already and seems to work well.

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