My British perspective: I don’t want advertisers free to lie as much as they want. I’ve had ads taken off the TV for being clearly misleading (anyone can raise a complaint to the ASA - the Advertising Standards Agency).
Censorship is not a solution. Instead, companies, whose messages are misleading, could pay a fine for their misleading message. Otherwise, you end up in 1984...sorry, I mistyped "UK in 2026".
That's literally censorship though. If you get fined for saying a thing, you are being censored.
Ofcom and Clearcast are tasked with enforcing the UK Broadcast Advertising Code (BCAP Code). Which came about from the Communications Act of 2003. It is 100% government mandated censorship.
Clearcast is a private body owned by the broadcasters. The BCAP code is issued by the Advertising Standards Authority which, despite the name, is an industry self-regulation body. It appears to be established in law that Clearcast is an assistance service, and approval doesn't seem to be sufficient or necessary by law to ensure advertising is legal. It establishes risk, rather than making a legal finding. If Mullvad'…
Not sure how an HOA is relevant here? Communities vote to form an HOA for themselves, new owners buying into an HOA community know up-front what the restrictions are.
Not remotely the same as a cabal of media conglomerates getting together to agree on their own rules about how they are going to interpret and enforce government-mandated censorship in society.
Sadly, it's Mullvad VPN itself which may be banned in the UK. VPNs will require identify verification. Not a problem for companies which require credit cards for payment, but Mullvad famously allows anonymous cash payments through the post.
When will the UK citizens stand up against the regime?
When they don't like it. You disagree with the regime, but the vast majority of UKranians do not.
... that's the tension, right? The US, for good or ill, does not "do" pre-approval for speech. It's also nigh-impossible for a libel suit to succeed. And the government can't stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers. You can make strong arguments either way, but at the very least you have to acknowledge that it's not all downsides.
Conflating 'Advertising' with 'Speech' doesn't really work here i feel. It is possible to restrict one without the other. The UK, can quite easily stop an advert from saying things like: >> A paid-for Meta ad and a website listing for an online clothing company misleadingly claimed they were established and owned by armed forces veterans and that they donated a share of profits to PTSD support organisations. And stil…
Advertising is clearly speech. But fraud and libel are widely recognized as exceptions to free speech, IF you can prove intent to defraud. If you squint, you could classify nearly anything as an advertisement, but not everything is classifiable as "true" or not in an objective, universal sense (or even a generally recognized sense). For example, an ad for a church may be an expression of free speech, but arguing that it is false advertisement is absurd.
I'm just surprised to see it being so passionately defended amongst this technical audience. That's all
Can i ask: Why do you think its been banned?
Mullvad says it is, they're more credible than Ofcom or Ofcom's fans. The trick of strong-arming all providers of a certain medium to "self"-censor in order to implement advance censorship is an old trick.
It was Clearcast that rejected it you can see the reasoning here [0], seems to be mostly that it implies VPNs facilitate criminal activity and "irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN". Either way they gave a real gift to the marketing team in rejecting it. Every person in advertising dreams of having to write the phrase "our banned ad" even more perfect when the ad was about tracking/censorship. […
In what world does rejection mean a ban? > way they gave a real gift to the marketing team A gift to us in how dishonest marketing can be, yeah. > "irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN" Clearcast doesn't like snake oil, it'd seem.
The word ban has taken on the meaning of “not allowed in certain places”
My British perspective: I don’t want advertisers free to lie as much as they want. I’ve had ads taken off the TV for being clearly misleading (anyone can raise a complaint to the ASA - the Advertising Standards Agency).
Advance censorship is typically forbidden, for good reason. It's one thing to go after someone for lying, another thing to sit there all the time and try to make sure no lies are ever heard.
What's the difference? Efficacy in preventing lies from being aired?
Censorship is not a solution. Instead, companies, whose messages are misleading, could pay a fine for their misleading message. Otherwise, you end up in 1984...sorry, I mistyped "UK in 2026".
I'd be cool fining Meta 1% of global revenue for every fraudulent ad on their platform.
Ditto for Alphabet with scammy and malicious Youtube ads.
Conflating 'Advertising' with 'Speech' doesn't really work here i feel. It is possible to restrict one without the other. The UK, can quite easily stop an advert from saying things like: >> A paid-for Meta ad and a website listing for an online clothing company misleadingly claimed they were established and owned by armed forces veterans and that they donated a share of profits to PTSD support organisations. And stil…
> still allow That's the thing: the idea that one must be allowed . No; you publish it, and the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so. Note that I'm not defending the US system as perfect, or even necessarily good in all places and at all times. But it is a system that has benefits.
There are quite a few countries which consistently score higher than the US on democracy, overall freedom and press freedom indices, despite not having these absolutist freedom of speech provisions in their constitutions (if they even have constitutions). Because it's not about the piece of paper or what's written on it, is it? It's about the society and what it allows their government to get away with. If the US ever becomes an authoritarian dictatorship, it'll have the exact same constitution and reverence for Founding Fathers, plus a few extra Supreme Court decisions.
> Mullvad was rejected by Clearcast, the organization responsible for approving all TV ads in the UK and ensuring they comply with the rules set by the authorities > “The overall concept lacks clarity.” “It is unclear why certain examples are included, who the ‘speaker’ represents, and the role of individuals depicted in the car.” > "Referencing topics such as: Paedophiles, Rapists, Murderers, Enemies of the state, J…
The down votes really reflect the groupthink here. American implementation of 1A is not perfect - tyrants still get around to suppressing speech they dislike. But it's so much better than these alternatives.
If you've seen analytics from stuff hitting the front page here in the last few years you'd see why, by which I mean the US tech industry is much less of the audience on here than you might think.
Now that we've all gone through a Discord allergy phase I wonder where all that has really landed.