You see the contradiction.
You’re essentially saying no bad ads, only good ads, without defunding the difference. (Anyone can afford a Google or Meta ad in the way they could a White Pages listing.)
1. No non-invited display of paid messaging, period. If you go to a directory and ask for a list of people who paid to be part of that directory, it can show it. If you play a game, watch a movie, take the bus, or search a non-paid directory of sites they simply cannot show you things they were paid to show you. I think I'd call this making attention-theft a crime.
2. No payment for priority placement in paid directories. A paid directory has to charge the same (small, nominal) fee to everyone involved.
How would you distinguish someone asking for the directory versus asking for something else with said directory (which are totally not ads, pinky promise) displayed alongside?
> I'd call this making attention-theft a crime
Someone standing up to make a political speech in a public square is now a criminal?
> A paid directory has to charge the same (small, nominal) fee to everyone involved
This is just ads with a uniform, "small, nominal" fee. Uniformity is objectively measurable. Smallness and nominalness is not. Presumably you mean these directories have to be published at cost?
You making sending the directory with something else unconditionally illegal, you either get the directory or the something else, not both at once. This is also necessary for the second part where you require everything in the directory paid the same amount.
> Someone standing up to make a political speech in a public square is now a criminal?
Only if they were paid to do so.
> This is just ads with a uniform, "small, nominal" fee. Uniformity is objectively measurable. Smallness and nominalness is not. Presumably you mean these directories have to be published at cost?
Personally I think uniform is more important than either small or nominal. It means that the person creating the directory can't be bribed to direct your attention to certain parts of the directory - i.e. steal it. Rather it's your choice to get the directory in the first place and pay attention to it, and everything inside it is at an equal playing level. I don't really care if it's at cost or if making directories is a profit making venture.
I'm not entirely sure what the original proposers intent was with the "small and nominal" part though. They might have wanted something more like "at cost".
The purpose being that because every item in any paid directory has paid the directory the same, the directory has no (monetary, at least) incentive to direct your attention towards sub-optimal listings. As an attempt at forcing the directory to sell itself as a useful directory of services, rather than as an object which sells its users attention to the highest bidder.
If I go buy a Google or Meta ad with the same negligible budget, I can get my product shown to 50 people and then the money runs out.
That's completely different from getting onto a phonebook-like list where everyone that visits can see my company's offer.
Rather than coverage being spend based, it’s a low, static price to be listed in the directory, with near zero extra differentiation other than what you choose to put in your little square/rectangle.
Paying for placement is what makes an ad. And that’s what would have to be prohibited.