Political advertising should be banned entirely in my opinion.<p>As a side note, I wish there was less exposure to political opinion in general. I think there's a problem in how a single celeb, or a close friend talking about their political views can be so influential. Not because they've made a particularly good argument, but because that person is trusted or looked up to.<p>I often wonder how we would vote if we were blind to the opinions of the media, celebs and friends. I find it fascinating how political memes exist and evolve for almost no reason. How one generation can be almost universally opposed to something like gay marriage, then suddenly in just a generation the majority of the population is in almost religious support of it.<p>Would this happen if we were forced to think about politics for ourselves instead of relying on the main stream opinion for what's right and wrong? As someone on the spectrum I find frustratingly difficult to find anyone with their own takes on the popular political topics of the day.
As much as I fear the China with regard to censorship, I think this could be a wise move for all social media platforms.<p>There are two reason why I think this:<p>a) Political advertising on social media is very hard to police as you can create huge amount of versions of each ad and target very different audiences.<p>b) Political advertising at volume favors the richest campaigns with the largest amount of knowledge about their targets.<p>By blanket removing political advertising from these platforms more focus would have to be made for more traditional forms of political work (door to door etc) and thus a slower more deliberate political climate.<p>It is by no means panacea but a good start.<p>Norway has always forbiden political TV-advertising, something that I think has helped the debate stay a bit less polarized, though that has changed with the advent of Facebook and it's ilk.
Why not ban <i>all</i> advertising? Isn't that the discussion we should be having?<p>If we're going to accept that advertising is an ever-existing industry in our lives, then shouldn't the conversation be not about what kinds of advertising we should ban, but media awareness in general?<p>Bans should be reserved for the most egregious, such as products that kill (tobacco) or explicit incitements to violence, for example.
An effective razor for what I presume will be a lively discussion here:<p>Your first amendment rights don’t compel a private sector company to host your speech, or require them to accept your ad dollars for your message
Censoring information about Hong Kong protests may be taken as a bad thing. But it seems obvious to me, that banning pro LGBT content in app for kids is very desirable.