Comment by bryanrasmussen
3 hours ago
If there was a GDPR type law for any company above a certain size (so as to only catch the big Ad networks) that allowed the propagation of "false" ads claiming security issues, monetary benefits or governmental services, then it could stop transmission of most of the really problematic ads, because any company the size of Google is also in the risk minimization business and they will set up a workflow to filter out "illegal" ads to at least a defensible level so they don't get fines that cost more than the ads pay.
Also can you set Windows not to allow Ads notifications through to the notification bar? If not that should also be a point of the law.
Now I bet somebody is going to come along and scold me for trying to solve social problems by suggesting laws be made.
Not scold (that is how we shape social behavior), but only note that Safe Harbor essentially grants the opposite of this (away from the potential default of "By transiting malware you are complicit and liable in the effect of the malware") so it'd have to be a finely-crafted law to have the desired effect without shutting down the ability to do both online advertising and online forums at all.
... which doesn't sound impossible. It's also entirely possible that the value of Section 230 has run its course and it should generally be remarkably curtailed (its intent was to make online forums and user-generated-content networks, of which ad networks are a kind, possible, but one could make the case that it has been demonstrated that operators of online forums have immense responsibility and need to be held accountable for more of the harms done via the online spaces they set up).