[dangerface]

> How can society change for the better if you can't communicate and try to convince people of your ideas in the public space?

There is a difference between marketing and advertising thats not being recognised.

Marketing is the process of promoting an idea or group, not advertising.

Advertising is one of the channels used in marketing, it's the most expensive and reaches the most people, it's the ideal channel for propaganda.

If you banned political marketing then yes you would effectively ban promoting political ideals all together.

However if you ban political advertising you can effectively limit propaganda with little to no negative side effects to grass roots political movements. This is because grass roots politics use other marketing channels and don't have the budget to be able to compete with the propaganda budget of a foreign government.

Even if grass roots did have the money to advertise other channels like social and word of mouth are more effective for them, banning political advertising would still work in their favour.

[Nasrudith]

The thing is such a ban ammounts to a subcontractor ban - those who own them may still advertise. It is less fungible but still a propaganda channel and made more exclusive as parties need to buy the whole hog instead of the ribs metaphorically.

Foreign governments funding grassroots and "grassroots" is an old trick to the Cold War as well from both sides.