[skywhopper]

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.