Comment by grandempire
2 months ago
One reason why the definition is more important when it comes to outlawing behavior is that when you get it wrong you are actually preventing people from doing something that is important and valuable to them.
Ironically this is something lawyers and judges would pick up on immediately. You need an underlying principle of harm that can be applied consistently.
> you are actually preventing people from doing something that is important and valuable to them.
There are many things individuals will consider "important and valuable to them" that are harmful to others. We prevent individuals from harming others for their own self-gain because that's what societies do.
This is an argument against people having rights at all. "Oh, you think you're entitled to X? Well, in certain scenarios, X might cause harm. You might use free speech to advocate for something bad, or leverage your immunity to unjust search & seizure to conceal evidence of a crime."
Consider that the author considers propaganda to be a form of advertising, and suggests we ban propaganda. Well, Fox News is is probably one of the most influential sources of propaganda in our era, and they're just publishing news with a strong political slant. This anti-propaganda law effectively would have to make it illegal to publish political opinion pieces. That would be absurdly draconian.
For the record, I'm strongly anti-advertising, but a complete ban on advertisement would be impossible to construct because you can't draw a sharp line between ads and free expression.
> Well, Fox News is is probably one of the most influential sources of propaganda in our era, and they're just publishing news with a strong political slant.
Actually (and hilariously) Fox News according to their own court filings do not publish news, they are an entertainment product.
And I say ironically because that's exactly the mechanism people are clamoring for in this discussion: it's the courts. Lawyers argue and courts eventually decide definitions all the time, because it's highly impractical to belabor and endlessly debate passing new laws because we don't have ironclad definitions in them beforehand.
If you want my humble opinion, in a legal/ban sense, I would define advertising as:
> Communicative material that is placed strategically by publishers or media for a price/by way of other agreement to drive awareness of products or services with the intent to generate attention and sales of said products or services.
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Advertisement is when the ad carrier receive money, goods, services, preference or other monetary equivalent. With this definition we may give a break to free expression of views.
> Well, Fox News is is probably one of the most influential sources of propaganda in our era, and they're just publishing news with a strong political slant.
That's not advertising by any standard, unless they're being paid by someone to do it (whether they currently are or not is irrelevant). Just because someone can benefit doesn't make it advertising/propaganda, it's about the whether the funding comes from someone who benefits from the particular content.
As another example, Good Mythical Morning and other YouTube shows frequently do product comparisons / tests. That clearly isn't advertising, unless the companies who make those product are sponsoring them.
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This is just benevolent authoritarianism (the most common form of government worldwide and historically).
This law is no different than any other prohibition. It's not like we have to go back to the legal lab to figure out precisely what advertising is because, unlike things with clear definitions everyone knows like fraud, discrimination, or defamation, advertising is particularly nebulous.
Did you see which comment this is in reply to? It’s about your general description of people in tech to be hesitant and skeptical when it comes to banning things.
I'm confused by your comment, the posts are both mine? Even if I take what I think is the most charitable version of your "argument", which I think is "tech thinks things should by default exist and be permissible unless they pass an extremely stringent test", no pro-advertising person here is trying to find the outlines of what that test might be. They're all running right to "there's no way to separate advertising from other speech without collapsing civilization", which is absurd.
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