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Ads are speech. Replace all mention of "ads" in your post with "speech I don't like" and see how it reads.
by a2dam 9mo ago
Ads are speech. Replace all mention of "ads" in your post with "speech I don't like" and see how it reads.
- TexanFeller 9mo ago> Ads are speech. Companies should have more limited speech than individuals. Nerfing the concept of “corporate personhood” will be a key part of fixing our problems IMHO.
- PartiallyTyped 9mo agoAds are speech until they are intrusive, until they track you across websites, until they violate your privacy. It's one thing to have a block of HTML dedicated to ads, and another to have YOUR shit running on my machine WITHOUT my consent.
- tt24 9mo agoIt is with your consent. You continue to visit these websites. If you don’t want their code running on your machine, simply don’t send a GET request.
- maest 9mo agoI assume you forgot the /s. Otherwise this is a very weak argument. Using the Internet is approximately mandatory in our current society. "Don't use the Internet" is not useful advice.
- tt24 9mo agoSounds like the risk of seeing an advertisement is probably worth the benefit of using the internet then.
- ericjmorey 9mo agoIf I buy a book, I'm not required to read any part of it. I'm allowed to control what I read.
- tt24 9mo agoYou’re allowed to use an adblocker.
- autoexec 9mo agoYou might be safe as long as the ad is on a website but stupid laws that shouldn't exist like the DMCA can make it illegal to block ads when you have to circumvent a technological measure in order to block those ads. Blocking ads and the steps needed to block them might also violate some product's EULA which could result in civil judgements against you.
- tt24 9mo ago> DMCA can make it illegal to block ads when you have to circumvent a technological measure in order to block those ads. Blocking ads and the steps needed to block them might also violate some product's EULA which could result in civil judgements against you. Your issue there is with the government. No disagreement from me in this regard :)
- autoexec 9mo agoThe problem of course isn't the fact that government and laws exist. Most of us are happy that we have government and laws. The alternative is very ugly and doesn't lend itself to progress or prosperity. The problem is that our government was allowed to be bribed/corrupted by corporate interests to pass bad laws designed to protect their profits and enforce control by taking freedom from consumers. The true villain here isn't government, government was just the tool they leveraged against us. It's supposed to be our job to insist that our government work for the interests of "we the people" and we failed. The solution now is to get rid of corrupt politicians and the bad laws they passed and replace them with good ones that preserve our freedoms and don't put corporate interest ahead of the people's. Sadly, our entire political system has been carefully refined over centuries to make it harder and harder to keep our government accountable to the people but hopefully it's not too late to change that situation within the democratic framework we've created.
- PartiallyTyped 9mo agoThat is a very weak argument. I don't have any way to decline seeing the ads before I do. I can't disable tracking by disabling js because, like a parasite, tracking software has uses what is necessary technology for websites to function.
- tt24 9mo agoSounds like to you the use of the internet is worth the risk of being tracked.
- nautikos1 9mo agoThere needs to be a distinction between "free speech" and "bought speech".
- takeda 9mo agoThe term free speech is misleading. It is really freedom of speech. I.e. someone who says something doesn't have to be afraid of prosecution because of what they said. It isn't the speech that is being protected it is the person who says it. Using the term "free speech" creates those weird scenarios where now we have someone argue that the US Constitution mandates ads to be everywhere.
- psychoslave 9mo agoAlso porn is related to free speech. There is no need to be a puritan against any form of pornography to expect consensus against having most addictive/eye-catching porn ostensibly displayed everywhere in the public sphere. And it’s perfectly clear that it’s actually possible to be simultaneously fine with people watching all the porn they want in their private sphere if they are warned willing adults.
- delecti 9mo agoTime, place, and manner restrictions already exist on speech. I'm not an anti-ad absolutist, but it would be perfectly fine by me, and most people not financially incentivized otherwise, to place time, place, and manner restrictions on ads. I'd love a blanket ban on billboards, for example.
- Der_Einzige 9mo agoAds are not speech. Money is not speech. The map is not the territory.
- sumalamana 9mo agoNot all speech should be allowed. > But who decides what is legal then? Laws and judges.
- CamperBob2 9mo ago... written and appointed, respectively, by the worst politicians you can imagine.
- a2dam 9mo agoThat's the case currently! What I said is why those laws and judges don't ban advertising!
- dwb 9mo agoIf you change words in a text then the meaning changes. Even if all ads are speech (I don't think they are, but I don't need to argue that), not all speech is advertisement. You can say your piece in one of many other forms that doesn't hijack my attention.
- a2dam 9mo agoI didn't say that all speech is ads, I said that ads are speech.
- dwb 9mo ago?? I know you didn’t. I don’t think my post is hard to understand. The point of freedom of speech is the free expression of ideas and opinions. You can do that in many ways. You could write a book. You could email the editor of a news website. You could write a song. In my ideal society, though, you would not be allowed to put it on a massive billboard that everyone has to look at all the time. I don’t think this curtails anyone’s freedom of speech.
- kakacik 9mo agoNope. Something only a person benefiting from such cancer that ad business is would say that (and there are tons of those here on HN lets be honest, better half of faangs has ad-paid ultra high salaries and bonuses). Ultimately its just another manipulation to part you with your money in other ways than you intended, nothing more and nothing less.
- beowulfey 9mo agoAh yes, a great point. We must protect the freedom to heap shit on other humans
- Taek 9mo agoNo, ads are not the same thing as free speech at all. "Free speech" is the right to say anything to anyone *who is willing to listen*. You don't have a right to come into my home and tell me your ideas about immigration policy - though you do have a right to talk about immigration policy in other places! The government has to guarantee that there are places for people to say things. But the government does not have to guarantee that there are places for people to say things *in my own home*. And similarly, I think most public spaces should be free from ads and other 'attention pollution'. If a company wants to write about their own product, that's fine, but they must do so in a place where other people are free to seek them out, as opposed to doing so in a way that forces the writing upon others without consent.
- yesitcan 9mo agoUnderaged porn is speech. Replace all mention of “underaged porn” in your post with “speech I don’t like” and see how it reads.
- a2dam 9mo agoCertainly you can see the difference between that and advertising.
- BigTTYGothGF 9mo agoDov Charney couldn't.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- efreak 9mo agoSo the US government can't punish you for speaking, and they can't punish someone else for speaking on your behalf. They can, however, punish you for speaking in exchange for money, speaking words you don't believe (advertising, lying). They can punish you for trying to brainwash people (the difference between advertising and propaganda is who is speaking and what they get from it, and why). They can punish you for forcing others to listen to your words (my neighbor playing music at night). They can punish you for making unfair deals. Most of this is not usually applied to private speech, but the right to free speech does not prevent it. You cannot be punished for attempting to speak in general, however there are absolutely limits.