[Nursie]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearcast

They're a private company functioning as industry self-regulation, not a government department.

Broadcasters sign up to the code, Clearcast pre-clears ads against the code.

Ofcom is the regulator in this space, Clearcast appears to be an industry effort to pre-empt Ofcom by making sure things comply before they've gone out. Broadcasters want Clearcast's seal of approval before broadcast so they know they're OK to broadcast it.

Entirely private sector, I'm not sure there's a lot that's wild about it.

[Hizonner]

When the government threatens the private sector into doing something, the result is not entirely private sector.

[pjc50]

Ah, so like CBS.

[Hizonner]

If you're expecting me to say that the Trump administration isn't literally fascist, openly evil, and aggressively anti-free-speech, or that plenty of previous administrations in the US haven't done indefensible things (even while being qualitatively better than Trump II), you may have to wait a very long time...

[subscribed]

Well, but so is British administration for almost two decades now, it just has a more posh accent and doesn't routinely deport brown people yet.

The language of hate coming straight from the front bench or most important ministers, the harassment of the vulnerable and the utter evisceration of the right to assembly and free speech.

Maybe you heard of the Hyde Park - it has this place called Speaker's corner where free speech open-air public speaking, debate and discussions are allowed. It's dated to 1800's during the protests re: administration.

Sounds wild, right?

And you wouldn't be even half right.

A man holding an empty placard during the protest was threatened with arrest.

Several people were jailed for attending a zoom call (planning a nonviolent protest) for several years each. Almost 100 people were jailed for protesting the Genocide and the illegal proscribing of the protest group.

You read that right: if you were on the protest encouraging a genocide, you would be free to walk the street. If you were to protest killing entire families, targeting health workers and sniping children, you'd end up in prison.

Few years ago a man was detained for shouting "not my king!".

And this is far from all.

We're catching up

[Nursie]

> Almost 100 people were jailed for protesting the Genocide and the illegal proscribing of the protest group.

Several hundred people actually.

To be clear, you could protest the genocide as much as you wanted, what you couldn't do was support the specific group "Palestine Action" who had some members who had committed (IMHO) some property crimes against defence contractors which the government decided to classify as terrorism and proscribe the whole group. When thousands of people continued to support the group, the police continued to arrest them by the hundred. It's a clusterfuck

Thankfully the UK government has recently lost its court battle on the proscription of Palestine Action, though there are ongoing hearings as to what happens next with all the people who were arrested and who are now awaiting a court date on (presumably) terrorism charges.

So this -

> If you were to protest killing entire families, targeting health workers and sniping children, you'd end up in prison.

Is not quite right. Or quite wrong.

The curtailment of the right to protest is worrying in all sorts of places. This specific case is muddied by the direct-action wing of a specific organisation.

[nailer]

I think your genocide claim (if you mean the IDF action against Hamas) is provably false but I share your concerns.

[VWWHFSfQ]

Ofcom and Clearcast are tasked with enforcing the UK Broadcast Advertising Code (BCAP Code). Which came about from the Communications Act of 2003.

It is 100% government mandated censorship.

[Nursie]

Clearcast is a private body owned by the broadcasters. The BCAP code is issued by the Advertising Standards Authority which, despite the name, is an industry self-regulation body.

It appears to be established in law that Clearcast is an assistance service, and approval doesn't seem to be sufficient or necessary by law to ensure advertising is legal. It establishes risk, rather than making a legal finding.

If Mullvad's ad was 'banned' by Clearcast, what happened is that their ad didn't meet the standards that the industry has set for itself and the broadcasters didn't want to touch it.

(edit - does this make it 'better'? I don't know. It seems to me a bit like the situation in the US with HOAs, which heavily restrict what you can and can't do with your property, but aren't exactly government either. But I favour accuracy over emotion when talking about this stuff, which is why I wanted to point out the actual structure of the system here.)

[petcat]

Not sure how an HOA is relevant here? Communities vote to form an HOA for themselves, new owners buying into an HOA community know up-front what the restrictions are.

Not remotely the same as a cabal of media conglomerates getting together to agree on their own rules about how they are going to interpret and enforce government-mandated censorship in society.

[benj111]

It's relevant because everyone is saying this is government censorship. The parent is pointing out it's the government in the same way as a HOA is. Ie not.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

I guess it depends on how you perceive "censorship". I wouldn't think of banning a misleading ad as censorship. My country, Greece, was under a military dictatorship for a few years in the 1960's and 70's, and censorship involved e.g. pre-approving all music, including not just song lyrics but also the music scores. Works by the two major Greek composers, Theodorakis and Hatzidakis [1] were banned outright and could not be played anywhere under pain of pain [2]. Obviously everything anyone wanted to publish in the press had to be pre-approved by state censors and any criticism of the regime, either written or simply spoken out loud, was punishable... you get the gist.

Not allowing advertisers to lie to advertise their product is I think not a kind of "censorship" one really needs to be worried about. They're free to advertise their product otherwise, they're just not free to lie to do it.

I feel silly making this elementary point, but freedoms can't ever be absolute in a society of more than one humans. Even in the US I bet you're free to drive, but you're not free to drive drunk. You're free to have sexual relations, but not with a minor. You're free to walk anywhere you like but not in other peoples' property and not on the streets with the cars (which btw is perfectly fine in Europe and it's rules about jaywalking that are "pants on head" for us).

These are rules. Societies have rules. They should have them. There's no problem with that.

And now my 16-year old self is very disappointed that I've grown up to be a conservative, establishmentarian fossil.

___________

[1] Coincidence. We're not all called something-akis.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_whipping