4 ms·

We should have a simple law in the US: Advertising may ever only be related to the surrounding content. It's the (traditional) TV model. Saturday morning carto

We should have a simple law in the US: Advertising may ever only be related to the surrounding content. It's the (traditional) TV model. Saturday morning cartoons shows you cereal commercials. For the web this would translate to seeing funeral ads if you're on a website for cancer. But if this follows you later, then we should simply get the death penalty involved for the company that follows you. From a simple sense, all AI and logic created to track people goes away - ad companies need to simply focus on determining the BEST ads to display on the web pages the ad is pinned to.

pessimizer 3y ago
That's not a simple law. To start, it violates the first amendment. Then, after you decide that somehow commerce overrules the first amendment in this situation, you are stuck with the job of setting up a government process that will judge, with legal force, whether an advertisement is sufficiently related to the surrounding content. This institution will have to grapple with, among many questions, "Is an ad for replacing your gutters ever related to its surrounding content?" or "What does it mean for an advertisement to be related to a work of fiction?" Also, do you think Saturday morning cartoons should somehow relate to breakfast cereals? The reason that there haven't been Saturday morning cartoons in a couple of decades is because of a law saying the opposite.
- throwitaway222 3y ago
  You are focusing too much on the content related part. If you want to display gravestone advertisements during saturday morning cartoons, you are free to do so. I'm just referring to the concept of trying to do well in your advertising efforts on that part, as LONG as it is done so without knowing who is witnessing this ad. Yes re-reading my post doesn't state this, I just thought that would be obvious given the story we're discussing.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > it violates the first amendment. Make the spying illegal, not the advertising that relies on it. Then there is zero first amendment issue.
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  > To start, it violates the first amendment. I would argue that corporations do not have rights, except inasmuch as the people within the corporation have rights. Rights are for people, and corporations are not people. So, there's no conflict with the first amendment here. Yes, I'm aware of corporate personhood in the U.S.--I'm saying that the Supreme Court was wrong when they interpreted the constitution that way. To flesh this idea out a bit: if a person decides to say of their own accord "people who eat Cheetos are cool", that's protected speech. However, if you're acting on behalf of the Cheetos corporation to say "people who eat Cheetos are cool", i.e. you are paid by the Cheetos corporation to say it, that's you acting on behalf of that corporation and the corporation can be punished. Note what I said here: the corporation can be punished, not the person: this sidesteps a lot of ambiguous situations where a person's right to free speech might be violated. > Then, after you decide that somehow commerce overrules the first amendment in this situation, you are stuck with the job of setting up a government process that will judge, with legal force, whether an advertisement is sufficiently related to the surrounding content. This institution will have to grapple with, among many questions, "Is an ad for replacing your gutters ever related to its surrounding content?" or "What does it mean for an advertisement to be related to a work of fiction?" This sort of handwringing amounts to a complaint that a Hacker News poster didn't post a fully-detailed piece of legislation. Okay, some details haven't been explained, but it isn't reasonable to expect that a user on an internet forum would draft a complete piece of legislation. These details aren't insurmountable or even difficult to iron out through normal legislative processes, and even when (not if) this is done imperfectly, it would likely be a massive improvement over the current free-for-all.
  - krapp 3y ago
    One assumes you also don't believe in rights for religious groups, political parties, unions or the press? The reason rights apply to corporations is that rights apply to people in aggregate, as well as individually and there is no way to deny rights to the group without denying rights to the individuals within that group (also because treating corporations as legal entities makes things like suing them as entities possible. Otherwise one would have to file individual lawsuits with individual people for any claim.) If rights only applied to individuals, then it would be trivial to suppress any political or cultural expression by making any collective gathering or expression illegal. There is no reason to consider corporations a special case in this regard.

pessimizer 3y ago

That's not a simple law. To start, it violates the first amendment. Then, after you decide that somehow commerce overrules the first amendment in this situation, you are stuck with the job of setting up a government process that will judge, with legal force, whether an advertisement is sufficiently related to the surrounding content. This institution will have to grapple with, among many questions, "Is an ad for replacing your gutters ever related to its surrounding content?" or "What does it mean for an advertisement to be related to a work of fiction?" Also, do you think Saturday morning cartoons should somehow relate to breakfast cereals? The reason that there haven't been Saturday morning cartoons in a couple of decades is because of a law saying the opposite.

throwitaway222 3y ago
You are focusing too much on the content related part. If you want to display gravestone advertisements during saturday morning cartoons, you are free to do so. I'm just referring to the concept of trying to do well in your advertising efforts on that part, as LONG as it is done so without knowing who is witnessing this ad. Yes re-reading my post doesn't state this, I just thought that would be obvious given the story we're discussing.
JohnFen 3y ago
> it violates the first amendment. Make the spying illegal, not the advertising that relies on it. Then there is zero first amendment issue.
kerkeslager 3y ago
> To start, it violates the first amendment. I would argue that corporations do not have rights, except inasmuch as the people within the corporation have rights. Rights are for people, and corporations are not people. So, there's no conflict with the first amendment here. Yes, I'm aware of corporate personhood in the U.S.--I'm saying that the Supreme Court was wrong when they interpreted the constitution that way. To flesh this idea out a bit: if a person decides to say of their own accord "people who eat Cheetos are cool", that's protected speech. However, if you're acting on behalf of the Cheetos corporation to say "people who eat Cheetos are cool", i.e. you are paid by the Cheetos corporation to say it, that's you acting on behalf of that corporation and the corporation can be punished. Note what I said here: the corporation can be punished, not the person: this sidesteps a lot of ambiguous situations where a person's right to free speech might be violated. > Then, after you decide that somehow commerce overrules the first amendment in this situation, you are stuck with the job of setting up a government process that will judge, with legal force, whether an advertisement is sufficiently related to the surrounding content. This institution will have to grapple with, among many questions, "Is an ad for replacing your gutters ever related to its surrounding content?" or "What does it mean for an advertisement to be related to a work of fiction?" This sort of handwringing amounts to a complaint that a Hacker News poster didn't post a fully-detailed piece of legislation. Okay, some details haven't been explained, but it isn't reasonable to expect that a user on an internet forum would draft a complete piece of legislation. These details aren't insurmountable or even difficult to iron out through normal legislative processes, and even when (not if) this is done imperfectly, it would likely be a massive improvement over the current free-for-all.
- krapp 3y ago
  One assumes you also don't believe in rights for religious groups, political parties, unions or the press? The reason rights apply to corporations is that rights apply to people in aggregate, as well as individually and there is no way to deny rights to the group without denying rights to the individuals within that group (also because treating corporations as legal entities makes things like suing them as entities possible. Otherwise one would have to file individual lawsuits with individual people for any claim.) If rights only applied to individuals, then it would be trivial to suppress any political or cultural expression by making any collective gathering or expression illegal. There is no reason to consider corporations a special case in this regard.