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by swingingFlyFish 821 days ago
I think the government for the most part, needs to get out of social media and treat them like TV of old.

The idea is that TV is just a medium. You can post any commercial or information you want on there and it should be up to the viewer to discern what they want to watch and believe.

Look for example at some of the drug commercials, or if you want to get nitty gritty, look at fast food commercials that have carcinogenic ingredients. This is a slippery slope and I sincerely believe it should be the responsibility of the parent, guardian or mature individual to decide what and when and where to watch content.
2 comments
skywhopper 821 days ago
You really have a very distorted view of this topic. Old school broadcast TV was and is heavily regulated. Certain percentage of ad time had to be allocated to public service announcements. Certain types of "adult" programming couldn't air before a certain time of day. Ownership of broadcast stations was highly limited and competition was enforced. The content of commercials is regulated, and many types of claims are entirely illegal to make. Political advertising was incredibly heavily regulated. Important government messages are required to be broadcast at the whim of the executive branch. Social media is the wild west compared to TV.

You call out the drug ads. They are annoying and questionably ethical, I agree. In fact, they didn't used to be allowed at all! The fact that things have gotten worse in that regard doesn't mean we should just give up on regulating ads on social media, which are far far worse, and do much more harm than an ad for a diabetes medication that spends 25 of its 30 seconds citing every potential side effect.

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krapp 821 days ago
>The idea is that TV is just a medium. You can post any commercial or information you want on there and it should be up to the viewer to discern what they want to watch and believe.

That isn't the way TV has ever worked, at least in the US, it's highly regulated by the FCC and commercial claims by the FDA. Arguably, the government is far more hands off WRT social media than it is broadcast media.

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