Comment by WhyNotHugo

I'm not against this idea, but I feel like it can be really hard to execute in practice. Especially considering that many of the parties involved don't mind being maliciously compliant.

The really tough part is classifying "what counts as an ad". Of course the ones shown by Facebook and Google are ads, but let's look at some not-so-straightforward examples:

1. The community centre in my neighbourhood has a wall with lots of ads from local groups. Language practice groups (which are free), language lessons (paid), narcotics anonymous, painting classes, and a lot of other services provided by individuals or small groups. Some of them non-profit, some of them are the main source of income for those providing the service. I deliberately approached this wall looking for those ads, and we need them for this kind of groups to survive.

2. A supermarket places a large banner near the entrance with this week's offers. The products on offer are expiring soon. There's an interest in selling the goods so they are consumed and don't go bad. The interest isn't only on the supermarket's behalf: as a society, we want to minimise the amount of food that goes to waste.

3. How do we buy and sell houses if there are no ads for "houses on sale". I am aware that there are economic models where individuals don't need to buy and sell houses, but switching to such a model seems way beyond the scope of the proposal. Is an ad stuck to the window still allowed?

4. iOS shows "suggestions" in the order of "sign up for cloud storage to store my data because your phone is full". I consider this an ad. Can we write legislation which would catalogue this as an ad without false positives?