it is absolutely wild to me that you would allow companies to air adverts without pre-approval.
Then when you add in the ability to advertise prescription drugs?
Well, what could go wrong?
Then when you add in the ability to advertise prescription drugs?
Well, what could go wrong?
It's also nigh-impossible for a libel suit to succeed. And the government can't stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers.
You can make strong arguments either way, but at the very least you have to acknowledge that it's not all downsides.
It is possible to restrict one without the other. The UK, can quite easily stop an advert from saying things like:
>> A paid-for Meta ad and a website listing for an online clothing company misleadingly claimed they were established and owned by armed forces veterans and that they donated a share of profits to PTSD support organisations.
And still allow The Guardian to run a campaign on shadowy organisations funding politics.
Conflating them is done, i feel by those who run companies... i dunno, like VPN's, for the purposes of viral marketing and generating outrage.
That's the thing: the idea that one must be allowed. No; you publish it, and the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so.
Note that I'm not defending the US system as perfect, or even necessarily good in all places and at all times. But it is a system that has benefits.
We don't see this as censorship, it's a safeguard against an ideology that destroyed democracy.
The decisive factor is whether the joke attacks the ideology or reinforces it. So if a comedian in Berlin says "the Holocaust didn’t happen" as a punchline, and it comes across as actual denial or trivialization, that can be illegal.
I can say that the moon is made of cheese, and if you punish me for doing so, you’re engaging in censorship, despite my claim being untrue.
> the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so.
Yes - and, because of this, Clearcast exists with a sort of "TSA pre-clear" role. If Clearcast pass it, it's very unlikely to result in subsequent legal action.
TV stations are in principle free to broadcast unrestricted ads live and deal with the consequences. Obviously, they have no interest in doing that.
Soooo.... if I approach a US tv network with an ad that explicitly shows naked people doing cocaine, and carries the message that drugs are amazing, and ask for it to be scheduled during the kids tv peak slot, the networks are going to say "Hey, cool, yeah we'll do that"?
This seems very unlikely to me. It seems much more likely their internal compliance departments will look at it and say "Nope". So much for "you publish it".
Because that's basically what's happened here - the UK networks have outsourced checks on advertising to a third party they own, which itself gets its advertising code of conduct from an industry association the networks are part of. The third party makes decisions about whether an ad is OK. If it's not OK then the networks won't usually want to air it.
But that is still missing the point. I said that the US way isn’t all downsides. Curiosly enough, I haven’t seen a reply (but I might miss some downstream) that acknowledges this. I’m not a moron. The US way isn’t the most perfect bestest ever with no faults. If you want to argue that there is nothing redeeming about the First Amendment, then do so. But unless you are prepared to do that, don’t act like it has no benefits.
Yet. Give this administration a little time and they’ll solve that problem too.
(They’ve already addressed it to some degree by intimidating the press.)