[scotty79]

> Fundamentally, I do not see this situation getting any better because of how society is wired right now.

It think tight regulation of advertisement industry could help. They really have all the incentive to make people feel worse. It directly translates to their income.

There should be pre-publishing check on every advert. Like a focus group paid for by advertiser, but organized by government body. If it makes people feel worse after watching it it shouldn't be allowed to publish.

Advertisement is not a free speech.

[krapp]

>Advertisement is not a free speech.

Yes it obviously is. Even advertisements that make people feel bad are free speech.

[scotty79]

It shouldn't be and whoever decided it is should have that reversed.

"The Supreme Court extended First Amendment free speech protection to commercial speech in Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc. (1976). The court held that commercial speech is protected by the First Amendment because it serves the public interest by providing information about products and services."

And since it became apparent that it's not the only thing it does, but also hurts people and leads to destruction of social and natural environment that decision should get reversed after 46 years. Especially since technology enabled us to have a single all encompassing catalog of products and services which customers can draw such information from whenever they request it instead of advertisements being shoved into their faces from all sources causing them psychological harm at no small cost to the economy.

[ben_w]

Libre if you have money and by extension the opposite of gratis; and even then, in the US there are limits on what can be legally said in an advert.

https://truthinadvertising.org/resource/federal-laws-governi...

(Although, IANAL, so I can't tell if that page is an accurate summary or if it's the legal equivalent of someone ranting about why the CEO of Facebook can't stop naughty pictures showing up in Google search results…)