Great point about speech

No it's far far more complicated than that.

See for example: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1029

The court upheld the City of Austin on prohibiting off-premises digital signs, even if some of what they displayed was non-commercial. So that's not a problem.

The court engaged in a complex analysis to determine the appropriate framework for analyzing this specific first amendment advertising case.

This shows there isn't a blanket exemption from first amendment scrutiny for advertising.

I didn't delve into the opinions but it seems like the decision relied on basic content-neutral doctrine. That's par for the course 1A stuff.

"par for the course 1A stuff" suggests that advertisements actually ARE first ammendment protected in the USA. Because... they are. Original commenter suggested they were not even considered "speech" and were not, which is not accurate description of the law.

(In fact, though, advertisements are not treated exactly the same way as other kinds of speech, say, political speech. The bar is different, and more regulation of advertisements is allowed than, say, political speech. Who knows if the current supreme court and other courts will change that though, they are changing a lot, often in favor of protections for commerce).

There's a fine line between free speech and fraud

"It's not hard. It just upsets vested interests."

Yeah, this is what makes regulating anything hard or pointless, if the "vested interests" are powerful enough.

This is primarily a problem in American where bribing politicians is seen as a fundamental freedom for corporations.

Do you really believe that doesn't happen in other countries?

If you forbid ads, then only political propaganda with bring funding to content creators. It’s not just because you hide money that it’s not there.

His point was to show ads only to adults.

I'd prefer not to see ads.

What are you talking about?

If there is no ad money, the only ones left will be those who pay for political influence.

That solution fails to sidestep the not minor issue of how do we determine it's a child online brought up by the article.

How's about we start testing for maturity, and despite a person being 45 years of age, their maturity tests to be 12 years of age, so no social media for them. That would actually be significantly better for everyone involved. But who can trust anyone with a "maturity test" and then who can be trusted to administer said test honestly? Perhaps our entire society is immature and nobody deserves social media?

Perhaps our entire society is immature...and it's time we grew tf up.

This is, in my opinion, a serious issue facing the human race today: we have a material number of flat out immature adults, and some of those immature idiots (looking at you Elon, and you Murdock, and many more) are far too powerful for their childish insatiable minds.

I don't disagree with that.

I just don't think banning people from the internet is the answer.

Who will test a maturity of maturity test developers? They will be kind of a shaping factor for a society.

My point was that such a test is impossible.

> how do we determine it's a child online

Why not use passport verification for any enough big social network? Anyway there is almost impossible to use them anonymously.

Not only can you tie all of your speech to a government-issued ID, you can do it for the low price of $160 and a piece of ID that forty-percent of Americans will have no other use for!

So use a government ID instead

Another problem is the definition of "ad". Is kid playing with fancy toys is an ad? Is product placement in movie an ad? How and who will determine if this is and ad or not?

Anytime someone exchanges cash, goods, or services to promote a product or service, and then repeat this inspection up the chain of shell companies!

> Is kid playing with fancy toys is an ad?

not enough context, maybe

> Is product placement in movie an ad?

yes, clearly

> How and who will determine if this is and ad or not?

Probably some corporate compliance drones and underfunded government stooges.

Doesn't that include most children-directed media, as it inevitably ends up being an ad for related merchandise?

Perhaps, and I'm fine with that. Children's media shouldn't be funded by corporate advertising directed at the children, period. I don't care what kind of sledgehammer that takes to the ad industry, I care about the children's well-being.

Next, let's ban all advertising, is what I'm thinking.

I like to play the Pokemon card game with my son. Yes - his interest in that corporate franchise leads us to some spending, but I don't find that excessive for the benefit we get from it, which goes beyond fun, as he learns strategy, focus, pattern application, counting etc. I don't think my son would be better off without that in his life. I also don't find it unreasonable for the corporation to profit of the product they provide.

How does banning advertising, even all advertising, prevent the company from making Pokemon card games? I assume you mean the mobile game, which is very predatory with microtransactions and such (check their recent price increases for shit you can use to win the game). I would be fine with that particular type of system ("freemium", "loot boxes", "pay to win") being banned and eliminated from existence. Pokemon existed long before all of the current bullshit and something similar will be around even without all the ad-driven nonsense.

I have to go to sleep, but I'm militant in my hate for advertising. I would burn the entire idea of advertising to cinders.

As I said earlier, almost all media directed at children aims to create a brand loyalty and will try to convince them to buy more. In this case I'm talking about the actual card game - it's good and features cute pretend animals, thus it makes children want related merchandise.

Moreover, Pokemon was never immune to that. The very first game already introduced the mechanic where you couldn't actually get all the creatures, which was one of the goals. In order to do that, you had to trade with friends that happened to buy a different color version. That's great, because it created engagement and communities around the game, but it's also clearly a marketing ploy.

If you fail to see this in that case, what about The Lego Movie? It's was made to make Lego relevant with the next generation of kids. It's also a good movie. And Lego sets are not bad toys to have.

It's simply not black and white and there's a big difference between Studio Ghibli selling Totoro merch and placing unhealthy snacks at a 5 year old eye level in a checkout aisle.

There is nuance to this, sure, but I’m open to blowing it all up and seeing what emerges. Good thing I’m not the dictatorial ruler of America, I guess.

I just realized that banning blatant advertisement may be one of the most effective measures to help slow down the reckless consumption of natural resources

Imagine if people didn't think they needed 27 hilarious t-shirts they'll never wear or wear once, a tool to cut an apple into slices (plus one for all the other fruits and veg), plastic bags for everything they pack for their kids, toys that will go on the pile of other toys, a new phone and car each year, 137 pairs of sneakers, etc.

Not to mention no longer getting ear-and-eye-fucked with billboards, pop-ups, required logins, and product placements in media! Oh man, I would (almost) give up my only kid to have this dream come to fruition!

Sounds like a utopia to me

you had me on your side, but then you came for a tool to cut apples and now you have mortal enemy. i will defend a right to ikea apple cutter with all my might and will soread the word about it as far as possible.

no, really. its a very convenient and often used tool in my home.

Well, let's meet in the middle and say they should make stronger apple cutters (apple core-ers?), with stainless steel or something, that could be passed down for generations, and doesn't shed microplastics in the trash when it breaks :)

> not enough context, maybe > Probably some corporate compliance drones and underfunded government stooges.

Youtube alone has 720,000 hours of fresh video content per day Tiktok must have less number of hours but more Videos per day. Add Instagram, facebook, Twitter and it's impossible for anyone to verify this manually so in the end how is the platform supposed to decide what to show and what not where the "not enough context, maybe" is the most common answer?

> Is product placement in movie an ad? > yes, clearly

not so clearly even in this case. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-x8DYTOv7w, a very nice recap of what an ad is.

That’s the platforms problem, not ours. If they can’t validate the content then they’ll have to scale back to an amount they can.

"did the company selling the thing pay for any part of it" seems like a good enough place to start.

Even that isn't as clear-cut as it seems. It isn't just the company that you need to include.

Does your company produce ads for the company that produces Proprietary Toy and get money if they sell more products? Does your company supply batteries for Battery Operated Proprietary Toy? Does your store sell either Proprietary Toy?

And so on.

It really is though.

> Does your company produce ads

There it is, don't do that.

All these other questions are also just "yes." You're looking for nuance where there isn't any. Sponsorship is ads, product placement is ads, giving free product to influencer to review is ads. There are certainly edge cases some of them likely to be thorny but none of the things either of us has mentioned so far are them.

I think there’s absolutely nuance here and pretending “make it illegal for kids to see ads” is a simple or even attainable solution is a bit naive I think.

What about product placement? Nearly every movie in Hollywood from the past 40 years has some level of product placement, so under this new law we’ll either go back and edit it out or slap an R rating on it? How about arena ads or billboards? Special AR headsets for teens which will block ads from sight? It’s a silly hypothetical, of course, but you did just say that it’s a hypothetical without nuance.

I think it’s easier to imagine a world where advertising is outlaws entirely than one where we specifically shield it only for those underage.

On further reflection it may effectively ban advertising completely and this makes me like the idea even more.

I’d be on board with that!

Aren't there already legal definitins for adverts? They're regulated today.

Edit: In the UK advertising regulations are handled by the Advertising Standards Authority who already have rules specific to advertising to children.

https://www.gov.uk/marketing-advertising-law/advertising-cod...

Problem with the ASA is that they can only react to advertising that's out there and by the time they do, the campaign is usually done.

I didn't mean to suggest the issues were already solved, only that there's already precedent for defining advertising in law as well as regulating adverts aimed at children.

Probably yes, so movies for kids should not have them I guess.

Not a problem. This question has already been asked and is settled.

Programmers tend get caught up with definitions and "loopholes". Laws don't care.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1494:_Insurance

To be generous to the OP, they may not be looking for "hacks" or "loopholes" but rather clarity. Vague laws tend to be bad laws.

What problem does that fix? It’s not particularly the corporations that are a bad influence on the kids, it’s their own peer group.

Ah, the subtle aspect you're missing: it is the corporations that created and promote the environment in which the kids abuse one another. It's similar to creating a large park, and then not policing the situation when bullies take over the park, and probably also accepting payments of some kind from the bullies for their extraordinary access to the corporation's "park for people and kids".

But then the bullies park will let you kid in for free and then charge an adult fee for you to retrieve them or supervise them. They still make money either way, so the problem will still exist - an attractive park built for kids which disregards safety.

Ads have very little to do with the harmful effects on minors of social media use.

And besides, banning ads will not prevent social media from trying to lock minors in, either to already have them when they turn 18, or to benefit from peer network effects to rope in more of the 18+ audience.

But the ability to show ads is the only reason to allow the youth on the apps. Remove the commercial reason for brainwashing kids, and the rest will probably sort itself out (I guess is the logic)

Addicting kids to the platform such that you can show ads to them when they turn 18 seems to have obvious value.

To some degree. But addiction describes a range of behavioral symptoms with a variety of durations and dynamics. The expected return of designing platforms to entertain 17-year-olds will decrease a little, but the expected return of designing a platform to entertain 13-year-olds will decrease a lot. By the time the latter group is monetizeable, they might move to a competitor's platform — just as prescription painkiller addicts have an easy time substituting heroin when they find it's cheaper.

One thing that's particularly convenient for regulators in this case is the tendency of adolescents to deliberately change their behavior as they approach adulthood in order to reinforce a sense of personal growth. 18-year-old me didn't want much to do with games and movies for 13-year-olds.

The problem is what is an Ad? Is the Cryptobro shilling for the coin of the week an Ad? is the Influencer that "casually" is using her brand of Mascara while talking an Ad? Do creators need to have two versions of the same video (one with promotion, one without)? Most ads now are difficult to tell apart from content. Is this review really a review or content length ad?

All of those are quite obviously ads and must be clearly labelled as such already within the UK and most of the EU.

Ads have everything to do with because they are the incentives shaping social media.

> will not prevent....

While "first drugs are free" is not unheard of, e.g. "gratis" licenses for schools, I think you vastly overestimate the willingness for long term investment. E.g. if the law says "no ads for under 18", they might stomach the costs for 16, 17, but starting at 13? 5 years of "gratis, adfree"? No change at all? You think so?

There's way too much gray area here for an effective law to ever be defined.

How do you define what is considered an ad here? How is age verified online? What if I have Hulu on TV from my account while my kids is in the room? Are other forms of ads banned as well, like cable TV commercials or billboards? Cereal boxes only use cartoon mascots to advertise to children...so also illegal?

>> It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff

> It's not hard. It just upsets vested interests.

Vested interests are precisely why it is hard.

He probably meant "it's not complicated" because it really is not complicated, it's just hard, the same way e.g. weight-lifting is simple but hard.

Take a look at the Fortune 500 list, and you can see exactly why the US has the problems it does. The largest companies correlate to the shortcomings, e.g. oil & gas & cars vs. public transit, or all of the healthcare companies that are in the F50 vs. affordable healthcare.

Vested interests rule the US at this point.

So... I'm not sure that ads are the center of negative consequences... AND it's not actually true that advertisements aren't considered speech with first ammendment protections in the USA, it is (although it has LESS protections than some other speech, and can be regulated, probably including in this way)...

But on top of all of that... what is an "ad"? Is it an "influencer" who is getting paid to promote a product but doesn't actually disclose that? Which already violates FTC regulations, and we aren't even managing to enforce the regulations we've already got, cause this is pervasive.

There's too thin of a line between ads and algorithmic feeds.