Comment by numpad0
5 days ago
By defining the $thing, banning the $thing per definition by law, and then tasking FBI-like organization enforce the law? It won't completely go away but it will subside, like how gambling on Internet is divided binary and confined into lootbox games without cashing features and straight up scam underground casinos.
Personally I think we should start from separating good old ads(that existed before I was 15) and Internet "ads". The old ads were still somewhat heavily targeted, but less than it is now. There probably would be an agreeable line up to which level advertisement efforts can be perverted.
I mean the comparison of ‘old’ ads vs new ads is interesting in itself, old ads already abide by far more regulation and are far more auditable. Simply bringing digital ads in line would be a big step forward.
Some examples:
In most countries it’s illegal to ‘target minors’ and there’s restrictions on what ads can run on after school hours. Meta has always allowed age targeting down to 13 and has no time of day restrictions.
In parts of New Zealand you can’t advertise alcohol between 10PM and 9AM… unless you do it on Meta or Google.
Most countries have regulation about promoting casinos (or the inability to) unless they’re digital casinos being promoted in digital ads.
Or just look at the deepfake finance and crypto ads that run on Meta and X. Meta requires 24 strikes against an advertiser before they pull them down, if a TV network ran just one ad like that it would be a scandal.
Audit-ability is the biggest issue imo. If a TV ad runs we can all see it at the same time and know it ran. That is simply impossible with digital ads, and even when Meta releases some tools for auditing the caveat is that you still have to trust what they’re releasing. Similarly with data protection there’s no way to truly audit what they’re doing unless you install government agencies in the companies to provide oversight, and I don’t see how you could really make that work.
It would be nice if they also couldn't target us with more information than what we consent to give them. Like, fine, if you want to target facebook ads at people using details they've filled in, I can see that being acceptable, but trying to scrape every single byte of data about us and using that to throw targeted ads at us feels icky.
Better moderation of crappy AI-generated image ads that are just scamming you would be nice as well.
Yes - although I disagree on one point.
All we need to do is define the $thing and mandate that lawsuits can be effective.
No agency enforces that potato chips need to fill up 92% of the bag or whatever, or that McDonalds cannot show pictures of apple fritters with more apples than they actually come with (this happened).
You just incentivize a cottage industry of legal that can squeeze a profit out of suing peanut butter companies for labelling incorrectly, or advertising dishonestly and it sort of takes care of itself.