[swarnie_]

This seems like a bit of an over reach no?

I've looked up wire fraud in the US and it seems to come with some properly serious penalties:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.[4]

[tptacek]

No? The use of deception to obtain something of value that would not otherwise be given to you is the literal, legal definition of fraud?

[Mirioron]

So, where does that leave advertising? The entire purpose of advertising is to get somebody to spend money on a product they otherwise wouldn't have.

[Retric]

Advertising has specific legal limits on what is deceptive. You can say ‘worlds best’ because that’s considered a subjective and meaningless statement, but lying about objective facts gets you into hot water. For example, peanut butter is legally required to have been made from peanuts.

[ficklepickle]

It is called "puffery"[0], for anyone who is interested.

The wikipedia page says a "puff piece" is journalistic puffery. Neat, I hadn't made that connection.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery

[IAmEveryone]

You going to work also serves the purpose "to get somebody to [give you] money they otherwise wouldn't have". So that definition is obviously too broad, and different from the definition of fraud mentioned above.

Advertisement tends to deal in opinions, not facts. And where specific factual claims are made against better knowledge it does constitute fraud, and is occasionally prosecuted. See Volkswagen's emissions claims, for example. Or, just this week, some hand sanitiser got hit by the FDA for claiming protection against Ebola and Coronavirus.

[tptacek]

To be more precise, the elements of fraud include a false statement, made knowingly, upon which someone else reasonably relies, to their detriment. To prosecute, this pattern must not be merely plausibly true but persuasively true in the face of a motivated, skilled defense. That set of circumstances is only rarely true in advertising. It is clearly true here.

[empath75]

People get sued for false advertising al the time. I feel like people on hacker news are continuously surprised to discover that laws exist and are enforced.

[paulie_a]

And when they are enforced they seem to think that laws can be hacked with cutesy little games to a judge.

[skywhopper]

“The use of deception” is key, and it’s true that advertising often crosses the line, and should be prosecuted more often.

[catalogia]

The advertising industry is hated by many people for exactly the parallels you've perceived.

[skywhopper]

“Not more than”. For most crimes the sentencing guidelines are broad so the context of the case may be taken into account by the judge and/or jury.

[pjc50]

Those are maximums.

[swarnie_]

I understand insane maximums, offence stacking and plea deals are part of your culture, maybe we should explore that further?