Comment by crowcroft

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.