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Comment by youngNed | Hacker News Reader

Conflating 'Advertising' with 'Speech' doesn't really work here i feel.

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.

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> still allow

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.

There are quite a few countries which consistently score higher than the US on democracy, overall freedom and press freedom indices, despite not having these absolutist freedom of speech provisions in their constitutions (if they even have constitutions). Because it's not about the piece of paper or what's written on it, is it? It's about the society and what it allows their government to get away with. If the US ever becomes an authoritarian dictatorship, it'll have the exact same constitution and reverence for Founding Fathers, plus a few extra Supreme Court decisions.

Like the RSF press freedom index, which ranks multiple countries in the top 10, where you can be jailed for expressing your earnest belief that something didn't happen?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial

I'm German. Punishing people for holocaust denial is exactly the right thing to do. There is no reason to deny that the holocaust has happened, because it has happened.

We don't see this as censorship, it's a safeguard against an ideology that destroyed democracy.

What about in the cases of satire? I make a joke about the holocaust not happening in a comedy club in Berlin, is that illegal? I think with it being such a slippery slope is why Americans take the stance they do.

It's not a slippery slope. It's a narrowly defined offense tied to a specific historical crime: the state-organized genocide carried out by Nazi Germany. It's a response to a specific historical responsibility.

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.

Interesting. Thanks for clarifying further.

This is censorship by definition. Just say you’re pro censorship

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.

Broadcasters themselves aren't subject to pre-clearance; obviously, live TV exists.

> 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.

> No; you publish it, and the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so.

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.

“You publish it” means you - not someone else. You can write your cocaine-is-great pamphlet and give it out. That’s it. Nobody has to agree to let you share your message on their platform.

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.

Advertising is clearly speech. But fraud and libel are widely recognized as exceptions to free speech, IF you can prove intent to defraud. If you squint, you could classify nearly anything as an advertisement, but not everything is classifiable as "true" or not in an objective, universal sense (or even a generally recognized sense). For example, an ad for a church may be an expression of free speech, but arguing that it is false advertisement is absurd.

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