Re:Twitter says it will restrict retweeting world leaders wh...
by PeterisP on Tuesday October 15, 2019 @07:57PM
(#21265478)
I'm saying that political advertising is highly regulated in many countries.
You're not entitled to the services of any vendor, however, in pre-election period media outlets are (in some countries) prohibited to have any political ads (including pseudo-ads like "accidental talk show interviews with the candidate we like") unless multiple specific conditions are met, one of which is equal access to all parties/candidates. Even if you hate them. If you don't like these conditions, you can refuse to participate in political ads at all, which most media companies won't do because it's a decent source of revenue.
One way how this is soemtimes implemented is that before the pre-election period, you have to submit a public offer for what conditions and prices political adds will be available to any and all candidates; you can refuse to make such a public offer because you hate some of these candidates, but then you're not allowed to place advertisements from the candidates you like as well. Or if you're a foreign company (like Facebook) that doesn't care about some elections at all and does not submit such an offer, then all candidates are prohibited to buy political ads from you.
If your media company wants to support a particular candidate, then the only legal way is to donate money (which gets appropriately reported) and the candidates can (within specific campaign funding limits!) buy ads on equal conditions at equal prices. There's no "corporate money is free speech" assumption like it seems to be in USA, doing "free ad publicity" for candidates is a violation of campaign finance laws and would incur significant fines (IIRC double or triple the market value of that publicity).
You're not entitled to the services of any vendor, however, in pre-election period media outlets are (in some countries) prohibited to have any political ads (including pseudo-ads like "accidental talk show interviews with the candidate we like") unless multiple specific conditions are met, one of which is equal access to all parties/candidates. Even if you hate them. If you don't like these conditions, you can refuse to participate in political ads at all, which most media companies won't do because it's a decent source of revenue.
One way how this is soemtimes implemented is that before the pre-election period, you have to submit a public offer for what conditions and prices political adds will be available to any and all candidates; you can refuse to make such a public offer because you hate some of these candidates, but then you're not allowed to place advertisements from the candidates you like as well. Or if you're a foreign company (like Facebook) that doesn't care about some elections at all and does not submit such an offer, then all candidates are prohibited to buy political ads from you.
If your media company wants to support a particular candidate, then the only legal way is to donate money (which gets appropriately reported) and the candidates can (within specific campaign funding limits!) buy ads on equal conditions at equal prices. There's no "corporate money is free speech" assumption like it seems to be in USA, doing "free ad publicity" for candidates is a violation of campaign finance laws and would incur significant fines (IIRC double or triple the market value of that publicity).