> Mullvad was rejected by Clearcast, the organization responsible for approving all TV ads in the UK and ensuring they comply with the rules set by the authorities
> “The overall concept lacks clarity.”
“It is unclear why certain examples are included, who the ‘speaker’ represents, and the role of individuals depicted in the car.”
> "Referencing topics such as: Paedophiles, Rapists, Murderers, Enemies of the state, Journalists, Refugees, Controversial opinions, People’s bedrooms, Police officers, Children’s headsets … is inappropriate and irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN."
Maybe it's just from an American perspective, but this is absolutely wild to me. Even just the concept of a government-mandated pre-approval body for advertisement seems like a completely pants-on-head concept [1].
I think the American First Amendment would obliterate this government body and probably the whole institution if it was ever tried.
[1] Yes the FCC has limited authority after-the-fact to impose fines for things like indecency.
In Germany, ads are not subject to prior government approval, as that would violate the constitution's prohibition of prior restraint. However, advertising is heavily regulated, especially in areas like medicine, gambling, and tobacco.
There is also industry self-regulation through bodies like the German Advertising Standards Council, which reviews complaints and can issue public reprimands.
So the system is not "you must get permission before speaking," but rather "you are free to publish, but you are accountable if you violate clear legal standards."
I’m also skeptical of pre-approval mechanisms in principle. I think the German mechanism works really well.
In the UK there is also no prior government approval. Clearcast is a private company owned by the networks, who pass advertising through checks to ensure it meets their commitments and guidelines.
In theory they could still broadcast it if they wanted to, but in general if it fails their checks, they won't.
Asa dual national the USs version of free speech protected under the first ammendment seems totally inadequate to me.
You can’t say free Palestine or refer to murder on much social media, yet companies are free to lie in advertising or sue to prevent criticism.
When I compare both countries both are lacking but neither seems more free than the other. Americans seem not to understand how little access to free speech they have.
Well, then, you'd better make sure that's what your bureaucrats are actually keeping off the air.
I'm sure the process allows for any citizen to review all of the rejected material in full, right? And you've done your part to do that, right? You take responsibility for the restrictions you want, right?
Why would I do that? I run an adblocker, I don't want to watch any adverts at all.
(there are perhaps valid questions about UK broadcasting restrictions, but since the internet this has become much, much less important. All the really absurd stuff like Gerry Adams lies in the 20th century)
In America there's definitely things you're not allowed to put on TV. Obviously you can't just put hardcore porn on, but you also aren't allowed to directly lie. Though I'm sure what the standards are for lying are different. There's laws against false advertising, libel, and so on.
But pre-approved is very different. And honestly, if you're making calls to get misleading ads taken off TV then is the pre-approved system even working? How do you know they're not just filtering out things they don't like? It's a pretty difficult type of restriction on speech.
As an example, are they preventing ads running talking about the UK's relationship to Epstein? Or calls to release their files? Every country has files, not just the US. Given the response to Mullvad I'd assume you couldn't place those types of ads on TV.
Censorship is not a solution. Instead, companies, whose messages are misleading, could pay a fine for their misleading message. Otherwise, you end up in 1984...sorry, I mistyped "UK in 2026".
You avoid having companies, who can swallow the bill, making whatever claims they like without having to much to worry about other than a slap on the wrist - Their claims are already out. J&J, P&G, Unilever et al - you may trust them to do the right thing, i don't.
Quoting Wikipedia[1] quoting the US Supreme Court,
The thread running through all these cases is that prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights. A criminal penalty or a judgment in a defamation case is subject to the whole panoply of protections afforded by deferring the impact of the judgment until all avenues of appellate review have been exhausted. Only after judgment has become final, correct or otherwise, does the law's sanction become fully operative.
A prior restraint, by contrast and by definition, has an immediate and irreversible sanction. If it can be said that a threat of criminal or civil sanctions after publication "chills" speech, prior restraint "freezes" it at least for the time.
> And can we agree that there are lies that companies tell on adverts that can cause damage?
Yes, and very often those companies get sued. I'll agree no often enough. But I'll also note that the outrage leading up to the lawsuit is far more visible than the results of that legal action. I'll also agree that that legal action is often too slow.
> Carlsbergs tag line is still "probably the best beer in the world" despite it probably being not.
The lie has to be believable and cause damage. Was the unclear from my comment?
Even if they remove "probably" they could still get away with it because it isn't going to be believable and I doubt you could show damage. Just in the same way so many cafes have "Best coffee in X" and how frequently you see mugs like "Best Dad in the world." No one is getting sued over those because they aren't believable. I agree they're deceptive and in bad taste, but I think if you take some time to sit down and think about it you'll realize that to make statements like those illegal you're going to have a lot of unintended consequences.
A fine doesn’t undo a lie that’s already made it around the world.
Although given Brexit I’d question how useful the ASA actually is. It seems Russian funded politicians were free to spew endless lies at the average citizen with no repercussions.
Advance censorship is typically forbidden, for good reason. It's one thing to go after someone for lying, another thing to sit there all the time and try to make sure no lies are ever heard.
when censored in advance, the governing body can prevent whatever they want and simply claim it was prevented because of lying. how are you going to know?
>My British perspective: I don’t want advertisers free to lie as much as they want.
Not exactly what happened here is it?
A private company which somehow gets to approve ads rejected an advert complaining about a dystopian lack of privacy under a government that is actively trying to kill off privacy.
The private company "somehow" gets to approve ads because it's owned by the TV networks that air the ads. Better than needing separate approval from each network.
This isn't a government body. It's owned by the TV networks, and makes it easier for companies to get ads pre-apporoved without needing to submit them individually to each network.
Do US TV networks have any rules about what can be shown in ads? Because I somewhat doubt that a company could submit whatever they want and the network has to air it.
It's not government mandated. It's a defacto requirement as all commercial broadcasters require it but that their commercial choice not government.
What's actually illegal in law to broadcast is very different from what you practically cant due to the theoretically voluntary codes. Even that guidance is broad but hard to argue with "Advertisements must contain nothing that could cause physical, mental, moral or social harm to persons under the age of 18." No reasonable person would argue you should be allowed to do that.
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.
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...
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!".
> 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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Conflating 'Advertising' with 'Speech' doesn't really work here i feel.
It is possible to restrict one without the other. The UK, can quite easily stop an advert from saying things like:
>> A paid-for Meta ad and a website listing for an online clothing company misleadingly claimed they were established and owned by armed forces veterans and that they donated a share of profits to PTSD support organisations.
And still allow The Guardian to run a campaign on shadowy organisations funding politics.
Conflating them is done, i feel by those who run companies... i dunno, like VPN's, for the purposes of viral marketing and generating outrage.
That's the thing: the idea that one must be allowed. No; you publish it, and the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so.
Note that I'm not defending the US system as perfect, or even necessarily good in all places and at all times. But it is a system that has benefits.
There are quite a few countries which consistently score higher than the US on democracy, overall freedom and press freedom indices, despite not having these absolutist freedom of speech provisions in their constitutions (if they even have constitutions). Because it's not about the piece of paper or what's written on it, is it? It's about the society and what it allows their government to get away with. If the US ever becomes an authoritarian dictatorship, it'll have the exact same constitution and reverence for Founding Fathers, plus a few extra Supreme Court decisions.
Like the RSF press freedom index, which ranks multiple countries in the top 10, where you can be jailed for expressing your earnest belief that something didn't happen?
I'm German. Punishing people for holocaust denial is exactly the right thing to do. There is no reason to deny that the holocaust has happened, because it has happened.
We don't see this as censorship, it's a safeguard against an ideology that destroyed democracy.
What about in the cases of satire? I make a joke about the holocaust not happening in a comedy club in Berlin, is that illegal? I think with it being such a slippery slope is why Americans take the stance they do.
It's not a slippery slope. It's a narrowly defined offense tied to a specific historical crime: the state-organized genocide carried out by Nazi Germany. It's a response to a specific historical responsibility.
The decisive factor is whether the joke attacks the ideology or reinforces it. So if a comedian in Berlin says "the Holocaust didn’t happen" as a punchline, and it comes across as actual denial or trivialization, that can be illegal.
Broadcasters themselves aren't subject to pre-clearance; obviously, live TV exists.
> the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so.
Yes - and, because of this, Clearcast exists with a sort of "TSA pre-clear" role. If Clearcast pass it, it's very unlikely to result in subsequent legal action.
TV stations are in principle free to broadcast unrestricted ads live and deal with the consequences. Obviously, they have no interest in doing that.
> No; you publish it, and the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so.
Soooo.... if I approach a US tv network with an ad that explicitly shows naked people doing cocaine, and carries the message that drugs are amazing, and ask for it to be scheduled during the kids tv peak slot, the networks are going to say "Hey, cool, yeah we'll do that"?
This seems very unlikely to me. It seems much more likely their internal compliance departments will look at it and say "Nope". So much for "you publish it".
Because that's basically what's happened here - the UK networks have outsourced checks on advertising to a third party they own, which itself gets its advertising code of conduct from an industry association the networks are part of. The third party makes decisions about whether an ad is OK. If it's not OK then the networks won't usually want to air it.
Advertising is clearly speech. But fraud and libel are widely recognized as exceptions to free speech, IF you can prove intent to defraud. If you squint, you could classify nearly anything as an advertisement, but not everything is classifiable as "true" or not in an objective, universal sense (or even a generally recognized sense). For example, an ad for a church may be an expression of free speech, but arguing that it is false advertisement is absurd.
The solution for that is to commit a Pentagon Papers worth of atrocities every single day, so that people get worn out from reading about it and just come to expect it as normal.
The down votes really reflect the groupthink here. American implementation of 1A is not perfect - tyrants still get around to suppressing speech they dislike.
On the contrary, the recent developments of America have made it very clear what the problem with "freedom to lie" and "freedom to smear" is. Especially when we're talking about adverts, which aren't exactly an important part of the discourse universe and are a potential vector for fraud.
(wait until the Americans understand what the rules for political TV broadcasts are in the UK, they will absolutely lose their minds. And the spending rules. And how little money is involved in UK elections.)
There's more serious concerns about UK libel law, and things like the proscription of Palestine Action, but generally I would say that if what you have to say is both true and important you can get your message across. Despite the newspapers and broadcasters.
If you've seen analytics from stuff hitting the front page here in the last few years you'd see why, by which I mean the US tech industry is much less of the audience on here than you might think.
Now that we've all gone through a Discord allergy phase I wonder where all that has really landed.
The downvotes might also represent people downvoting those who are uninformed - Clearcast is a private body owned and operated by the broadcasters, not a government body.
> I think the American First Amendment would obliterate this government body and probably the whole institution if it was ever tried.
This is not a government body, Ofcom is the relevant government body, like the US has the FCC, which you are aware of. The FCC has broadcasting rules. Your supreme court upheld their ability to issue sanctions for violations. This has lead to broad self-censorship by US broadcasters in much the same way the UK has Clearcast, to the point that censorship of stuff like swearwords is a recognizable trait of quite a few TV shows exported from the US. In the past year there have been multiple cases of censorship in response to threats from the FCC and other government bodies, much worse situations than banning an ad. The first amendment has done nothing to stop this.
I'm not here to defend the UK, they have some extremely scary laws on the books, but the US is really not notably different on this front.
> TfL owns the advertising spaces and maintains its own Advertising Policy, which sets stricter standards than general UK advertising rules (enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority, or ASA, and the Committees of Advertising Practice, CAP). All ads must comply with both the ASA/CAP codes and TfL's specific guidelines, which cover issues like offence, sexual content, violence, political advertising, health claims, and more (e.g., restrictions on high-fat/sugar/salt food ads since 2019).
Do broadcast standards and practices for TV networks in the USA not extend to advertising?
It would be very strange for them to e.g censor certain kinds of drug references in the programmes they produce and air, but then permit them in adverts, no?
There are rules. Networks have entire departments called Standards and Practices. But only because broadcasters don't pay for spectrum. Cable has laxer rules and almost none on anything streaming.
Across all of these, if any government or pseudo government body attempts to restrict advertising because of the content, they will get sued. Any advertiser making materially false claims will likewise also get sued.
> Maybe it's just from an American perspective, but this is absolutely wild to me. Even just the concept of a government-mandated pre-approval body for advertisement seems like a completely pants-on-head concept [1].
British perspective: the volume of your ads, the quickly spoken disclaimer, and the 'look at this cool prescription drug - ask your doctor!' are completely knickers-on-head.
Imagine a world where the “AI” peddlers would be forced to make realistic claims about their “product” instead of the American advertising style lies were being spammed with everywhere…
The US has other active vectors with similar objectives of expanding government mandated controls over online activity - see the discussion on California age verification law https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47181208. So maybe I'm seeing things in my pattern matching - but it seems like a broad push to attack online freedoms into centrist left and right legislatures coming from some internationally coordinated effort.
> So maybe I'm seeing things in my pattern matching - but it seems like a broad push to attack online freedoms into centrist left and right legislatures coming from some internationally coordinated effort.
I doubt there is any conspiracy or global cooperation, I think it's just monkey see monkey do.
Read up on the rules surrounding tobacco and alcohol advertising in the US. Make sure you're sitting down, because I fear this may come as a huge shock to you.
>I think the American First Amendment would obliterate this government body and probably the whole institution if it was ever tried.
I think this is exactly the kind of thing Trump is trying to slow walk us into while everyone is distracted by his war in Iran.
First consolidate the networks into the hands of a few loyal supporters (you don’t need a body to ban a commercial The networks refuse to air), then use the FCC to clean up the remaining opposition.
Mullvad says it is, they're more credible than Ofcom or Ofcom's fans. The trick of strong-arming all providers of a certain medium to "self"-censor in order to implement advance censorship is an old trick.
Free speech does not exist in the UK or EU. At most there are vague free opinion laws with many grey areas that boil down to "keep them to yourself" if you like to keep your door hinged.
I'm sorry to say but that's ignorant bullshit. Freedom, not only of speech, but of expression and information, is enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the major legal document of the EU; whence I quote:
Article 11 - Freedom of expression and information
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.
The link above clarifies that this article corresponds to article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (a legal document of the Council of Europe, a different body than the EU, whose members are a strict subset of the members of the CoE). Article 10 delimits restrictions to the right of expression, as follows:
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary."
And as the article points out, those restrictions apply to article 11 freedoms also, acting as an upper bound:
Pursuant to Article 52(3) of the Charter, the meaning and scope of this right are the same as those guaranteed by the ECHR. The limitations which may be imposed on it may therefore not exceed those provided for in Article 10(2) of the Convention, without prejudice to any restrictions which Community competition law may impose on Member States' right to introduce the licensing arrangements referred to in the third sentence of Article 10(1) of the ECHR.
In other words, yes, there is freedom of "speech", a.k.a expression, in the EU and it, and its limits, are enshrined in law.
I hate to make assumptions but there are a few public figures from the US that have argued that "Europe" has no freedom of speech like the brave US, like Paul Graham and Elon Musk, but they're talking out of their backsides.
Let's see how much those EU charter papers are worth when you get arrested for a tweet, which happens a lot.
Vague Hate speech laws alone can utterly remove any of those "human rights". In Germany and the UK people get charged for jokes or sarcastically criticizing politicians all the time. That is not free speech or even free expression regardless how much you want to cope to own musk or whoever the news told you to hate this week.
People get arrested for tweets like calling for the homes of asylum seekers to be set on fire. Something like this, clear and direct calls for violence and criminal acts, usually turn up when you research any of those cases brought as examples for censorship in the EU or UK.
There is a difference between the EU and the UK: the UK is no longer a signatory to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. On the other hand, it is still a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, but of course there has been a sustained, concerted effort to exit it, disparage it as "a villain's chapter" etc, at least since I've been in the country (2005).
The environment in the EU and the UK is also very different in terms of freedom of speech. In the UK for example I've kept tabs on people being put in jail for completely ludicrous reasons, like a kid who was accused of planning a Sandy Hook - like attack because he had a backpack with batteries, stones and ziplocks in it, and a young woman who was put in jail for writing poetry, with themes interpreted as terrorist sympathy. Unfortunately my bookmarks are on my other computer and I can't access them now and a search online only brings up more current cases that I don't know much about because I haven't looked into them yet, so I'll have to ask you to just have to believe me about that.
On the other hand you can find plenty of information about Drill music used as evidence in criminal trials, which is also a form of criminalisation of expression that should be banned under both the EU and CoE laws:
Then again there is the appalling treatment of climate activists and anti-war protesters in the UK, like for example the recent proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation and the arrest of hundreds of its supporters that followed. But I believe that protesting e.g. the carnage in Palestine is not treated much better in Germany or France.
The important thing to keep in mind however is that all of that is the result of authorities overstepping bounds and claiming for themselves powers that they don't have, which happens in such freedom of speech-loving countries like the US even more often. The fact of the matter is that the law of the land protects freedom of expression and we do not live in some dystopian dictatorship where you're bundled up if you so much as dare to make a squeak about the government, or the authorities.
Using a banned ad to claim otherwise is simply disingenuous.
It's too bad I can't block users who think offending their interlocutor is a form of debate on HN. I do not "cope" and I don't give a shit about Musk, he's the one who has faithful followers who parrot his ignorant bullshit on social media, which btw I do not follow. Don't sound like him and I won't wonder whether that's what you're doing.
It was Clearcast that rejected it you can see the reasoning here [0], seems to be mostly that it implies VPNs facilitate criminal activity and "irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN". Either way they gave a real gift to the marketing team in rejecting it. Every person in advertising dreams of having to write the phrase "our banned ad" even more perfect when the ad was about tracking/censorship.
you can see what mullvad, the company selling a product here, say what the reasoning was.
As i say, smacks of marketing campaign. Did clearcast give the marketing team a gift, or did the marketing team invent it? All we have is Mullvads word, but my word they have been running an extensive campaign in london for a while now.
Step 1:
cryptically warn people that their rights are under attack.
Step 2:
tell people that you have been banned from saying any more.
Step 3:
Conveniently make no mention of the fact that this highly controversial 'banned' ad is absolutely watchable, in the UK, on youtube, with links to it from traditional media adverts.
> Step 2: tell people that you have been banned from saying any more.
They said their ad is "banned from TV" because they offer a way to circumvent internet surveillance.
> Step 3: Conveniently make no mention of the fact that this highly controversial 'banned' ad is absolutely watchable, in the UK, on youtube, with links to it from traditional media adverts.
Because it is about TV... what does YouTube have to do with this? It says on the damn Ad "Banned on TV".
The point I was replying to used the existence of a Wikipedia article as proof that there is a problem in the UK regarding surveillance. By providing an example of similar articles about other locations I was showing that this alone is not particularly strong evidence. It certainly wasn't whataboutism, I don't even think the user I was replying to is from the US.
Hah, yes I switched over as soon as they started showing the scenes behind the scenes behind the scenes.
I worked on the set of an electric shaver commercial once. I’m wouldn’t say out loud that the production team were up themselves, but in addition to the regular crew there was a second director on set making a “making of” documentary about the production process. For a shaver commercial.
Sadly, it's Mullvad VPN itself which may be banned in the UK. VPNs will require identify verification. Not a problem for companies which require credit cards for payment, but Mullvad famously allows anonymous cash payments through the post.
Mass surveillance and living in a police state is an ingrained part of British culture.
It is no wonder to me that police procedurals are the most popular genre of TV shows in UK by quite a margin. They really are high-quality, but it does really feel like thinly-veiled propaganda (often commissioned by the BBC) portraying the State and police as the good guys in their endless quest against the baddies. Thank god there are CCTVs at every corner keeping the peace!
Not GP but I was born in the UK, and from 'CCTV on every corner' even as an exaggeration I'd question if you stepped outside London in those 15 years, not counting 'London' airports.
I didn't use the word "totalitarian", which the UK still isn't for the time being. A surveillance state doesn't necessary have to be totalitarian (the CCTVs were in good conscience put there to protect us from the baddies). But it certainly is a precondition to become that over time.
I live in central London and there are protests pretty much daily about all sorts of things. The problem is more no one paying attention to them rather than their being illegal.
Honestly both Labour and Conservatives are bound to take a beating next elections. I have no idea how will Greens and/or Reform government look like, we shall see.
At 2'58'' you can see a frame of them projecting on Senate House, London.
During WW2 that was used by the Ministry of Information, and it inspired Orwell's description for the building of the Ministry of Truth. His wife Eileen worked in the building for the Censorship Department.
Personally I find the advert a bit confusing, even with an understanding of what they are trying to achieve and their business. Was expecting something along the lines of Led By Donkeys...
I'm also weirded out by how much ad spend they have. Billboards? Ads on buses? Why? I want my VPN provider to be like the domain registrar Gandi, not super well known, consistent, and no-nonsense.
I am a Proton user now, mostly because I finally realized VPN came with the email service I was already paying for. No complaints.
I can't use Mullvad for several banks in the UK with IPv4 - if I switch to IPv6 in the app settings I sometimes can, but often I have to just disable it completely...
I can't use Youtube anonymously (i.e. without logging in) within the last month or so either, as Youtube very often won't play content due to my IP as well...
I saw the ads saying "and then?" and still didnt get it.
I like the product but i think their ad campaigns suck. If they want exposure and controversy i think they should run adverts to kill new proposed laws, target privacy hating politicians, etc.
Me too, but I don't think one's supposed to 'get it', the hope is that people wonder what it's all about and search 'mullvad ad "and then"' or whatever. Which as pre-existing customers we're probably already less likely to do.
I saw the ads on the tube and was very confused. I knew about Mullvad, but it never crossed my mind they were trying to get me to search for "and then".
Mullvad's focus on privacy has been fantastic so far. But this ad made me reconsider: I want a VPN service that silently does its job in the background, not one that screams "look at me" with silly stunts and attempts at becoming viral.
FYI link is below, for the off-chance someone is curious.
(not sure what are the unwritten rules of self-promotion here, but hopefully providing a link in a sub-comment instead of the comment itself makes it okay-ish?)
The whole ad is vague slop tbh, I can see why it wasn't allowed to air, also I don't know why people fixate on CCTV when the vast majority of it is used by private companies and the government doesn't have access to it without a request, there isn't any mass surveillance in this case just business owners managing risk and monitoring for crimes on their property
Place a giant video ad in tourist places in London to sell adblock?
And how much "surveillance" does a VPN prevent anyway? This is a regulatory & legislative problem and I don't see how any public VPN is part of the solution.
> And how much "surveillance" does a VPN prevent anyway?
Changing your acc number every other month and paying anonymously is much easier on Mullvad than on the ISP level. You can also get multiple people on the number very easily. And Mullvad is likely an entity outside of your home country, hence more difficult to coerce than your ISP.
In my eyes ISPs are compromised by default so the aim is to guard against them, if Mullvad is also as compromised it's more difficult for them to track me across account numbers and, even if they do, my data is then in another country, which worries me less than it being local since I'm not important enough to warrant international action.
> And Mullvad is likely an entity outside of your home country, hence more difficult to coerce than your ISP
This is not true in the EU or for the signatories of the Lugano Convention (the EU, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway). Mullvad is very explicit that they'll abide by all EU laws. For instance, see the e-Evidence Regulation specifically written for "network-based services" like "proxy services": https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
> Mullvad is also as compromised it's more difficult for them to track me across account numbers
That's your assumption, not an assertion Mullvad makes?
> even if they do, my data is then in another country, which worries me less than it being local
There exists international treaties on intel sharing (including for "cyber") at every level: The UN, The European Council, the EU, the NATO states, and so on.
> I'm not important enough to warrant international action
Your government can demand action of other governments and businesses via various treaties it may have in place. Mullvad, since it says it'll abide by all EU / Swedish laws, is not a hurdle for your local LEA you think it might be.
> is not a hurdle for your local LEA you think it might be
Everything is possible, of course, but in no world is it <= difficult to get information out of an entity outside your borders. A police officer can go to my local ISP's office and ask to see my logs. If he gets lucky, he gets them, otherwise his escalation path is smaller. If he wants to do that to Mullvad he has to start some process that goes through multiple people and takes a lot more time. Additionally, by the time he reaches Mullvad he probably has my ISP logs.
> That's your assumption, not an assertion Mullvad makes?
IDK what they have to say about it, but the ISP has a hardware line to my home, my name on a contract and recurring card payments. Mullvad has some money with no clear source and an ID with 3-4 people on it that jump ID every other month. I can't change my ISP every other month so one has a single big ass log for my home in a folder with my name on it and my payments while the other has multiple logs they have to bring together and no name on the payments.
They can absolutely parse things and follow me across IDs to put me in a big log and maybe do some data magic to tie it to my person but:
1- It's extra work for them to get to the ISP starting point
2- That starting point is actually still worse since possible mistakes in that process can be argued in court.
Maybe it's just me, but there's something extra dystopian about surveillance and privacy invasion, when presented with the London skyline in the background.
What I have wanted for a very long time for America:
1. The government cannot ban any speech in advance of publication (eg verbally making the statement; or airing; or publishing etc).
2. If proven in Court that the statement maker: (a) knew the statement was false; (b) made the statement for the purpose of influencing public opinion regarding a law or government policy or election; or for the purpose of marketing a product for sale to the public; then the penalty upon conviction is...:
here is the secret sauce: super severe penalty such as: imprisonment without chance of parole or pardon for 10 years unless you are an elected official or candidate for office, in which event life in prison; or loss of 50% of your assets; or something similar
In other words, keep freedom of speech but if you are intentionally lying to the public for the purpose of impacting government affairs or the sale of a product - then you are going to suffer an incredibly punitive penalty.
> Mullvad was rejected by Clearcast, the organization responsible for approving all TV ads in the UK and ensuring they comply with the rules set by the authorities
> “The overall concept lacks clarity.” “It is unclear why certain examples are included, who the ‘speaker’ represents, and the role of individuals depicted in the car.”
> "Referencing topics such as: Paedophiles, Rapists, Murderers, Enemies of the state, Journalists, Refugees, Controversial opinions, People’s bedrooms, Police officers, Children’s headsets … is inappropriate and irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN."
Maybe it's just from an American perspective, but this is absolutely wild to me. Even just the concept of a government-mandated pre-approval body for advertisement seems like a completely pants-on-head concept [1].
I think the American First Amendment would obliterate this government body and probably the whole institution if it was ever tried.
[1] Yes the FCC has limited authority after-the-fact to impose fines for things like indecency.
My British perspective: I don’t want advertisers free to lie as much as they want.
I’ve had ads taken off the TV for being clearly misleading (anyone can raise a complaint to the ASA - the Advertising Standards Agency).
In Germany, ads are not subject to prior government approval, as that would violate the constitution's prohibition of prior restraint. However, advertising is heavily regulated, especially in areas like medicine, gambling, and tobacco.
There is also industry self-regulation through bodies like the German Advertising Standards Council, which reviews complaints and can issue public reprimands.
So the system is not "you must get permission before speaking," but rather "you are free to publish, but you are accountable if you violate clear legal standards."
I’m also skeptical of pre-approval mechanisms in principle. I think the German mechanism works really well.
In the UK there is also no prior government approval. Clearcast is a private company owned by the networks, who pass advertising through checks to ensure it meets their commitments and guidelines.
In theory they could still broadcast it if they wanted to, but in general if it fails their checks, they won't.
It's not so much permission as risk evaluation.
Asa dual national the USs version of free speech protected under the first ammendment seems totally inadequate to me.
You can’t say free Palestine or refer to murder on much social media, yet companies are free to lie in advertising or sue to prevent criticism.
When I compare both countries both are lacking but neither seems more free than the other. Americans seem not to understand how little access to free speech they have.
Well, then, you'd better make sure that's what your bureaucrats are actually keeping off the air.
I'm sure the process allows for any citizen to review all of the rejected material in full, right? And you've done your part to do that, right? You take responsibility for the restrictions you want, right?
Why would I do that? I run an adblocker, I don't want to watch any adverts at all.
(there are perhaps valid questions about UK broadcasting restrictions, but since the internet this has become much, much less important. All the really absurd stuff like Gerry Adams lies in the 20th century)
For those unfamiliar with the idiotic BBC ban from the late 80's, the New Yorker recently put out a great short about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EG-4qhre8k
But that has nothing to do with pre-approved.
In America there's definitely things you're not allowed to put on TV. Obviously you can't just put hardcore porn on, but you also aren't allowed to directly lie. Though I'm sure what the standards are for lying are different. There's laws against false advertising, libel, and so on.
But pre-approved is very different. And honestly, if you're making calls to get misleading ads taken off TV then is the pre-approved system even working? How do you know they're not just filtering out things they don't like? It's a pretty difficult type of restriction on speech.
As an example, are they preventing ads running talking about the UK's relationship to Epstein? Or calls to release their files? Every country has files, not just the US. Given the response to Mullvad I'd assume you couldn't place those types of ads on TV.
> Obviously you can't just put hardcore porn on
Isn’t the thing that actually stops you from doing this just an ad-hoc, informally specified and bug-ridden implementation of Clearcast?
Censorship is not a solution. Instead, companies, whose messages are misleading, could pay a fine for their misleading message. Otherwise, you end up in 1984...sorry, I mistyped "UK in 2026".
No.
You avoid having companies, who can swallow the bill, making whatever claims they like without having to much to worry about other than a slap on the wrist - Their claims are already out. J&J, P&G, Unilever et al - you may trust them to do the right thing, i don't.
That’s a solved problem, though? Just adjust the fine based on the company’s revenue
It's only "solved" if the solution is actually happening.
> J&J, P&G, Unilever et al - you may trust them to do the right thing, i don't.
Would the UK government actually stop any of these advertisers? It seems more likely they would stop people critcising the UK government.
I'd be cool fining Meta 1% of global revenue for every fraudulent ad on their platform.
Ditto for Alphabet with scammy and malicious Youtube ads.
That's literally censorship though. If you get fined for saying a thing, you are being censored.
Quoting Wikipedia[1] quoting the US Supreme Court,
The thread running through all these cases is that prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights. A criminal penalty or a judgment in a defamation case is subject to the whole panoply of protections afforded by deferring the impact of the judgment until all avenues of appellate review have been exhausted. Only after judgment has become final, correct or otherwise, does the law's sanction become fully operative.
A prior restraint, by contrast and by definition, has an immediate and irreversible sanction. If it can be said that a threat of criminal or civil sanctions after publication "chills" speech, prior restraint "freezes" it at least for the time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_restraint#Judicial_view
Go to a theatre and start shouting "fire"
Free speech isn't about saying whatever you want without consequence.
And this is a bloody ad on the TV.
You can shout fire in a theater all you want.
What you can't do is shout it in a way that makes people believe there is legitimate danger AND your actions cause subsequent panic.
The crime isn't so much about the speech as it is about the damage that that speech causes.
It's a subtle distinction, but an important one.
And can we agree that there are lies that companies tell on adverts that can cause damage?
Carlsbergs tag line is still "probably the best beer in the world" despite it probably being not.
So the comparison works.
Even if they remove "probably" they could still get away with it because it isn't going to be believable and I doubt you could show damage. Just in the same way so many cafes have "Best coffee in X" and how frequently you see mugs like "Best Dad in the world." No one is getting sued over those because they aren't believable. I agree they're deceptive and in bad taste, but I think if you take some time to sit down and think about it you'll realize that to make statements like those illegal you're going to have a lot of unintended consequences.
I said you can't say whatever you want without consequence. Giving the example of shouting fire.
You responded pointing out it has to be believable, ie real harm done.
I brought it back full circle showing that adverts can 'lie' if it isn't believable.
I am pointing out you are reinforcing my original point, not detracting from it.
Oh okay that's the misunderstanding. I thought you were trying to rebut my comment. My bad.
A fine doesn’t undo a lie that’s already made it around the world.
Although given Brexit I’d question how useful the ASA actually is. It seems Russian funded politicians were free to spew endless lies at the average citizen with no repercussions.
Then, make them pay for an ad apology where they retract their previous one, and which runs for at least the same time.
Advance censorship is typically forbidden, for good reason. It's one thing to go after someone for lying, another thing to sit there all the time and try to make sure no lies are ever heard.
See my https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47233675 on pre-clearance.
What's the difference? Efficacy in preventing lies from being aired?
when censored in advance, the governing body can prevent whatever they want and simply claim it was prevented because of lying. how are you going to know?
What troubles me about using the word “lie” is it becomes up to a body of bureaucrats to determine what is true.
Instead, fight misinformation with superior information.
>it becomes up to a body of bureaucrats to determine what is true.
I think we have a ministry for that.
I always forget, what year was that created in? 1984?
the ministry of silly walks? ;-)
Doubleplusgood, comrade, carry on the fine work.
That sounds like a Chinese perspective - having an authority determine what is true or not true.
- Ricky Gervais' "Welcome to London, I hope you bought your stab vest"
- An athletic girl advertising protein powder.
We're also rejected because someone determind that poking fun at London crime and conventionally attractive women were offensive.
Lying is only ok if it is done by the BBC and funded by tax money.
>My British perspective: I don’t want advertisers free to lie as much as they want.
Not exactly what happened here is it?
A private company which somehow gets to approve ads rejected an advert complaining about a dystopian lack of privacy under a government that is actively trying to kill off privacy.
The private company "somehow" gets to approve ads because it's owned by the TV networks that air the ads. Better than needing separate approval from each network.
And yet still far worse than a publicly owned body that is accountable to voters rather than shareholders.
You might as well argue that it's better for visa to regulate the financial sector "because you wouldnt want the banks doing it individually".
Or that you should be happy with a punch in the face because a kick in the teeth is worse.
Not any private company, but Sky and Warner Bros Discovery.
Lies are not protected by the 1A.
Yes they are. There is case law about this.
You may be thinking of defamation or fraud, both of which require more than lying.
This isn't a government body. It's owned by the TV networks, and makes it easier for companies to get ads pre-apporoved without needing to submit them individually to each network.
Do US TV networks have any rules about what can be shown in ads? Because I somewhat doubt that a company could submit whatever they want and the network has to air it.
It's not government mandated. It's a defacto requirement as all commercial broadcasters require it but that their commercial choice not government.
What's actually illegal in law to broadcast is very different from what you practically cant due to the theoretically voluntary codes. Even that guidance is broad but hard to argue with "Advertisements must contain nothing that could cause physical, mental, moral or social harm to persons under the age of 18." No reasonable person would argue you should be allowed to do that.
No reasonable person could argue that the system you describe should be allowed to decide that.
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.
When the government threatens the private sector into doing something, the result is not entirely private sector.
Ah, so like CBS.
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...
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
> 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.
I think your genocide claim (if you mean the IDF action against Hamas) is provably false but I share your concerns.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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
it is absolutely wild to me that you would allow companies to air adverts without pre-approval.
Then when you add in the ability to advertise prescription drugs?
Well, what could go wrong?
... that's the tension, right? The US, for good or ill, does not "do" pre-approval for speech.
It's also nigh-impossible for a libel suit to succeed. And the government can't stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers.
You can make strong arguments either way, but at the very least you have to acknowledge that it's not all downsides.
Conflating 'Advertising' with 'Speech' doesn't really work here i feel.
It is possible to restrict one without the other. The UK, can quite easily stop an advert from saying things like:
>> A paid-for Meta ad and a website listing for an online clothing company misleadingly claimed they were established and owned by armed forces veterans and that they donated a share of profits to PTSD support organisations.
And still allow The Guardian to run a campaign on shadowy organisations funding politics.
Conflating them is done, i feel by those who run companies... i dunno, like VPN's, for the purposes of viral marketing and generating outrage.
> still allow
That's the thing: the idea that one must be allowed. No; you publish it, and the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so.
Note that I'm not defending the US system as perfect, or even necessarily good in all places and at all times. But it is a system that has benefits.
There are quite a few countries which consistently score higher than the US on democracy, overall freedom and press freedom indices, despite not having these absolutist freedom of speech provisions in their constitutions (if they even have constitutions). Because it's not about the piece of paper or what's written on it, is it? It's about the society and what it allows their government to get away with. If the US ever becomes an authoritarian dictatorship, it'll have the exact same constitution and reverence for Founding Fathers, plus a few extra Supreme Court decisions.
Like the RSF press freedom index, which ranks multiple countries in the top 10, where you can be jailed for expressing your earnest belief that something didn't happen?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial
I'm German. Punishing people for holocaust denial is exactly the right thing to do. There is no reason to deny that the holocaust has happened, because it has happened.
We don't see this as censorship, it's a safeguard against an ideology that destroyed democracy.
This is censorship by definition. Just say you’re pro censorship
I can say that the moon is made of cheese, and if you punish me for doing so, you’re engaging in censorship, despite my claim being untrue.
What about in the cases of satire? I make a joke about the holocaust not happening in a comedy club in Berlin, is that illegal? I think with it being such a slippery slope is why Americans take the stance they do.
It's not a slippery slope. It's a narrowly defined offense tied to a specific historical crime: the state-organized genocide carried out by Nazi Germany. It's a response to a specific historical responsibility.
The decisive factor is whether the joke attacks the ideology or reinforces it. So if a comedian in Berlin says "the Holocaust didn’t happen" as a punchline, and it comes across as actual denial or trivialization, that can be illegal.
Interesting. Thanks for clarifying further.
Broadcasters themselves aren't subject to pre-clearance; obviously, live TV exists.
> the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so.
Yes - and, because of this, Clearcast exists with a sort of "TSA pre-clear" role. If Clearcast pass it, it's very unlikely to result in subsequent legal action.
TV stations are in principle free to broadcast unrestricted ads live and deal with the consequences. Obviously, they have no interest in doing that.
> No; you publish it, and the most the government can do is stop you from repeating it and punish you for having done so.
Soooo.... if I approach a US tv network with an ad that explicitly shows naked people doing cocaine, and carries the message that drugs are amazing, and ask for it to be scheduled during the kids tv peak slot, the networks are going to say "Hey, cool, yeah we'll do that"?
This seems very unlikely to me. It seems much more likely their internal compliance departments will look at it and say "Nope". So much for "you publish it".
Because that's basically what's happened here - the UK networks have outsourced checks on advertising to a third party they own, which itself gets its advertising code of conduct from an industry association the networks are part of. The third party makes decisions about whether an ad is OK. If it's not OK then the networks won't usually want to air it.
Advertising is clearly speech. But fraud and libel are widely recognized as exceptions to free speech, IF you can prove intent to defraud. If you squint, you could classify nearly anything as an advertisement, but not everything is classifiable as "true" or not in an objective, universal sense (or even a generally recognized sense). For example, an ad for a church may be an expression of free speech, but arguing that it is false advertisement is absurd.
> And the government can't stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers.
Yet. Give this administration a little time and they’ll solve that problem too.
(They’ve already addressed it to some degree by intimidating the press.)
The solution for that is to commit a Pentagon Papers worth of atrocities every single day, so that people get worn out from reading about it and just come to expect it as normal.
Flood the zone.
The down votes really reflect the groupthink here. American implementation of 1A is not perfect - tyrants still get around to suppressing speech they dislike.
But it's so much better than these alternatives.
On the contrary, the recent developments of America have made it very clear what the problem with "freedom to lie" and "freedom to smear" is. Especially when we're talking about adverts, which aren't exactly an important part of the discourse universe and are a potential vector for fraud.
(wait until the Americans understand what the rules for political TV broadcasts are in the UK, they will absolutely lose their minds. And the spending rules. And how little money is involved in UK elections.)
There's more serious concerns about UK libel law, and things like the proscription of Palestine Action, but generally I would say that if what you have to say is both true and important you can get your message across. Despite the newspapers and broadcasters.
If you've seen analytics from stuff hitting the front page here in the last few years you'd see why, by which I mean the US tech industry is much less of the audience on here than you might think.
Now that we've all gone through a Discord allergy phase I wonder where all that has really landed.
The downvotes might also represent people downvoting those who are uninformed - Clearcast is a private body owned and operated by the broadcasters, not a government body.
> I think the American First Amendment would obliterate this government body and probably the whole institution if it was ever tried.
This is not a government body, Ofcom is the relevant government body, like the US has the FCC, which you are aware of. The FCC has broadcasting rules. Your supreme court upheld their ability to issue sanctions for violations. This has lead to broad self-censorship by US broadcasters in much the same way the UK has Clearcast, to the point that censorship of stuff like swearwords is a recognizable trait of quite a few TV shows exported from the US. In the past year there have been multiple cases of censorship in response to threats from the FCC and other government bodies, much worse situations than banning an ad. The first amendment has done nothing to stop this.
I'm not here to defend the UK, they have some extremely scary laws on the books, but the US is really not notably different on this front.
Clearcast is a private company, nothing to do with the government, so you might need to rethink that.
Regarding the tube:
> TfL owns the advertising spaces and maintains its own Advertising Policy, which sets stricter standards than general UK advertising rules (enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority, or ASA, and the Committees of Advertising Practice, CAP). All ads must comply with both the ASA/CAP codes and TfL's specific guidelines, which cover issues like offence, sexual content, violence, political advertising, health claims, and more (e.g., restrictions on high-fat/sugar/salt food ads since 2019).
Do broadcast standards and practices for TV networks in the USA not extend to advertising?
It would be very strange for them to e.g censor certain kinds of drug references in the programmes they produce and air, but then permit them in adverts, no?
There are rules. Networks have entire departments called Standards and Practices. But only because broadcasters don't pay for spectrum. Cable has laxer rules and almost none on anything streaming.
Across all of these, if any government or pseudo government body attempts to restrict advertising because of the content, they will get sued. Any advertiser making materially false claims will likewise also get sued.
> Maybe it's just from an American perspective, but this is absolutely wild to me. Even just the concept of a government-mandated pre-approval body for advertisement seems like a completely pants-on-head concept [1].
British perspective: the volume of your ads, the quickly spoken disclaimer, and the 'look at this cool prescription drug - ask your doctor!' are completely knickers-on-head.
> Maybe it's just from an American perspective
Imagine a world where the “AI” peddlers would be forced to make realistic claims about their “product” instead of the American advertising style lies were being spammed with everywhere…
The US has other active vectors with similar objectives of expanding government mandated controls over online activity - see the discussion on California age verification law https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47181208. So maybe I'm seeing things in my pattern matching - but it seems like a broad push to attack online freedoms into centrist left and right legislatures coming from some internationally coordinated effort.
> So maybe I'm seeing things in my pattern matching - but it seems like a broad push to attack online freedoms into centrist left and right legislatures coming from some internationally coordinated effort.
I doubt there is any conspiracy or global cooperation, I think it's just monkey see monkey do.
I don't think its a close knit conspiracy either but its more like billionaire monkey see billionaire monkey do
Read up on the rules surrounding tobacco and alcohol advertising in the US. Make sure you're sitting down, because I fear this may come as a huge shock to you.
Another US special: https://www.britannica.com/story/a-brief-history-of-food-lib...
(slightly ambiguous conclusion that none of them have prevailed in court, but the laws can still be used to intimidate food critics)
>I think the American First Amendment would obliterate this government body and probably the whole institution if it was ever tried.
I think this is exactly the kind of thing Trump is trying to slow walk us into while everyone is distracted by his war in Iran.
First consolidate the networks into the hands of a few loyal supporters (you don’t need a body to ban a commercial The networks refuse to air), then use the FCC to clean up the remaining opposition.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/trump-fccs-equal...
Broad censorship has largely become normalized in the UK and EU. It's happening fast and it's terrifying.
Approval for advertisments has been in place since 1961.
I had no idea it was this blatant though. We can even see it being justified in replies to this very thread.
what very thread would you rather we justified it in?
I'm just surprised to see it being so passionately defended amongst this technical audience. That's all
Can i ask: Why do you think its been banned?
Mullvad says it is, they're more credible than Ofcom or Ofcom's fans. The trick of strong-arming all providers of a certain medium to "self"-censor in order to implement advance censorship is an old trick.
Not unlike the US with... nudity, curse words, owning a social media account and being BigBrothered in the airport, the Epstein files themselves...
Are you kidding me? In the US, you are not even allowed to say the word fuck or display female top nudity.
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Free speech does not exist in the UK or EU. At most there are vague free opinion laws with many grey areas that boil down to "keep them to yourself" if you like to keep your door hinged.
I'm sorry to say but that's ignorant bullshit. Freedom, not only of speech, but of expression and information, is enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the major legal document of the EU; whence I quote:
Article 11 - Freedom of expression and information
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.
https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/11-freedom-expre...
The link above clarifies that this article corresponds to article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (a legal document of the Council of Europe, a different body than the EU, whose members are a strict subset of the members of the CoE). Article 10 delimits restrictions to the right of expression, as follows:
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary."
And as the article points out, those restrictions apply to article 11 freedoms also, acting as an upper bound:
Pursuant to Article 52(3) of the Charter, the meaning and scope of this right are the same as those guaranteed by the ECHR. The limitations which may be imposed on it may therefore not exceed those provided for in Article 10(2) of the Convention, without prejudice to any restrictions which Community competition law may impose on Member States' right to introduce the licensing arrangements referred to in the third sentence of Article 10(1) of the ECHR.
In other words, yes, there is freedom of "speech", a.k.a expression, in the EU and it, and its limits, are enshrined in law.
I hate to make assumptions but there are a few public figures from the US that have argued that "Europe" has no freedom of speech like the brave US, like Paul Graham and Elon Musk, but they're talking out of their backsides.
Let's see how much those EU charter papers are worth when you get arrested for a tweet, which happens a lot.
Vague Hate speech laws alone can utterly remove any of those "human rights". In Germany and the UK people get charged for jokes or sarcastically criticizing politicians all the time. That is not free speech or even free expression regardless how much you want to cope to own musk or whoever the news told you to hate this week.
People get arrested for tweets like calling for the homes of asylum seekers to be set on fire. Something like this, clear and direct calls for violence and criminal acts, usually turn up when you research any of those cases brought as examples for censorship in the EU or UK.
There is a difference between the EU and the UK: the UK is no longer a signatory to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. On the other hand, it is still a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, but of course there has been a sustained, concerted effort to exit it, disparage it as "a villain's chapter" etc, at least since I've been in the country (2005).
The environment in the EU and the UK is also very different in terms of freedom of speech. In the UK for example I've kept tabs on people being put in jail for completely ludicrous reasons, like a kid who was accused of planning a Sandy Hook - like attack because he had a backpack with batteries, stones and ziplocks in it, and a young woman who was put in jail for writing poetry, with themes interpreted as terrorist sympathy. Unfortunately my bookmarks are on my other computer and I can't access them now and a search online only brings up more current cases that I don't know much about because I haven't looked into them yet, so I'll have to ask you to just have to believe me about that.
On the other hand you can find plenty of information about Drill music used as evidence in criminal trials, which is also a form of criminalisation of expression that should be banned under both the EU and CoE laws:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-600703...
Then again there is the appalling treatment of climate activists and anti-war protesters in the UK, like for example the recent proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation and the arrest of hundreds of its supporters that followed. But I believe that protesting e.g. the carnage in Palestine is not treated much better in Germany or France.
The important thing to keep in mind however is that all of that is the result of authorities overstepping bounds and claiming for themselves powers that they don't have, which happens in such freedom of speech-loving countries like the US even more often. The fact of the matter is that the law of the land protects freedom of expression and we do not live in some dystopian dictatorship where you're bundled up if you so much as dare to make a squeak about the government, or the authorities.
Using a banned ad to claim otherwise is simply disingenuous.
>People get arrested for tweets like calling for the homes of asylum seekers to be set on fire.
No but nice strawman straight out out of the eu oligarch handbook. Threats and calls to violence are already a crime even in the US and rightfully so.
10 seconds of research would show you criticism and jokes will get you prosecuted and raided:
https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/11/german-police-raid-mans-ho...
https://www.mainzer-medieninstitut.de/erfolglose-verfassungs...
Looking forward to your on topic justification.
It's too bad I can't block users who think offending their interlocutor is a form of debate on HN. I do not "cope" and I don't give a shit about Musk, he's the one who has faithful followers who parrot his ignorant bullshit on social media, which btw I do not follow. Don't sound like him and I won't wonder whether that's what you're doing.
Oh, and also Paul Graham.
What great counter to all my points and not deflection and tone policing instead of engaging in the actual discussion.
FWIW - I don't think this ad has been banned. But i stand to be corrected
https://www.asa.org.uk/codes-and-rulings/rulings.html?q=mull...
This smacks of viral campaign to me.
It was Clearcast that rejected it you can see the reasoning here [0], seems to be mostly that it implies VPNs facilitate criminal activity and "irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN". Either way they gave a real gift to the marketing team in rejecting it. Every person in advertising dreams of having to write the phrase "our banned ad" even more perfect when the ad was about tracking/censorship.
[0]: https://cybernews.com/news/and-then-mullvads-anti-surveillan...
> you can see the reasoning here
you can see what mullvad, the company selling a product here, say what the reasoning was.
As i say, smacks of marketing campaign. Did clearcast give the marketing team a gift, or did the marketing team invent it? All we have is Mullvads word, but my word they have been running an extensive campaign in london for a while now.
Step 1: cryptically warn people that their rights are under attack.
Step 2: tell people that you have been banned from saying any more.
Step 3: Conveniently make no mention of the fact that this highly controversial 'banned' ad is absolutely watchable, in the UK, on youtube, with links to it from traditional media adverts.
You are being pedantic.
> Step 1: cryptically warn people that their rights are under attack.
They are, UK is heavy surveillance, there is an article on Wikipedia dedicated just to this subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
> Step 2: tell people that you have been banned from saying any more.
They said their ad is "banned from TV" because they offer a way to circumvent internet surveillance.
> Step 3: Conveniently make no mention of the fact that this highly controversial 'banned' ad is absolutely watchable, in the UK, on youtube, with links to it from traditional media adverts.
Because it is about TV... what does YouTube have to do with this? It says on the damn Ad "Banned on TV".
Here's a wikipedia article about mass surveillance in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite.... It's longer.
what does the surveillance in the US have to do with a Swedish company and UK tv ads?
This is whataboutism. It doesn't address any of the points made above.
The point I was replying to used the existence of a Wikipedia article as proof that there is a problem in the UK regarding surveillance. By providing an example of similar articles about other locations I was showing that this alone is not particularly strong evidence. It certainly wasn't whataboutism, I don't even think the user I was replying to is from the US.
> By providing an example of similar articles about other locations I was showing that this alone is not particularly strong evidence.
How does linking similar articles help demonstrate that? That doesn't seem like very strong (counter?)evidence.
With people like grandparent you can never be right.
It's smacks of a marketing campaign because...it is a marketing campaign.
You didn't read the link and it shows.
In what world does rejection mean a ban?
> way they gave a real gift to the marketing team
A gift to us in how dishonest marketing can be, yeah.
> "irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN"
Clearcast doesn't like snake oil, it'd seem.
In what way is a VPN a snakeoil? not to mention that Mullvad does a lot more than just that.
The word ban has taken on the meaning of “not allowed in certain places”
It doesn't but it's a gift to marketing because they can claim it was a ban, which was my point.
Yeah turns out marketing people lie and stretch the truth.
Hah, yes I switched over as soon as they started showing the scenes behind the scenes behind the scenes.
I worked on the set of an electric shaver commercial once. I’m wouldn’t say out loud that the production team were up themselves, but in addition to the regular crew there was a second director on set making a “making of” documentary about the production process. For a shaver commercial.
The ad itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPzvUW8qaWY (4min)
Original idea https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CkdyU_eUm1U&pp=0gcJCY4Bo7VqN5t...
Great ad. Long, but great.
Sadly, it's Mullvad VPN itself which may be banned in the UK. VPNs will require identify verification. Not a problem for companies which require credit cards for payment, but Mullvad famously allows anonymous cash payments through the post.
When will the UK citizens stand up against the regime?
Mass surveillance and living in a police state is an ingrained part of British culture.
It is no wonder to me that police procedurals are the most popular genre of TV shows in UK by quite a margin. They really are high-quality, but it does really feel like thinly-veiled propaganda (often commissioned by the BBC) portraying the State and police as the good guys in their endless quest against the baddies. Thank god there are CCTVs at every corner keeping the peace!
Weird extrapolation. They're popular in lots of places - Law & Order has been running 30 years.
None of this is unique to the UK. I'm old enough to remember 24, the show that whitewashed torture while people were getting renditioned by the CIA.
I'd be more surprised if there was a country where this kind of thing didn't happen.
Have you lived in the UK? I have, and it doesn't feel like a police state.
Almost 15 years, yes. Were you born in the UK, or do you have outside perspective?
Not GP but I was born in the UK, and from 'CCTV on every corner' even as an exaggeration I'd question if you stepped outside London in those 15 years, not counting 'London' airports.
Indeed "totalitarian state controlled by a political police force" is not the thing - Brit here. Iran maybe.
I didn't use the word "totalitarian", which the UK still isn't for the time being. A surveillance state doesn't necessary have to be totalitarian (the CCTVs were in good conscience put there to protect us from the baddies). But it certainly is a precondition to become that over time.
The age rules are broadly popular - 69% in favour, 22% against. It's a democracy - they'll probably be voted out some time. (survey https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/52693-how-have-britons-rea...)
not gonna happen, the issue is very deeply rooted already, you can't change that without force
When they don't like it. You disagree with the regime, but the vast majority of UKranians do not.
It’s illegal to protest in a way that has any real effect now
I live in central London and there are protests pretty much daily about all sorts of things. The problem is more no one paying attention to them rather than their being illegal.
"that has any real effect". All the words I wrote were to be read
How do you want to be able to protest (for 'real effect') that is currently illegal?
Honestly both Labour and Conservatives are bound to take a beating next elections. I have no idea how will Greens and/or Reform government look like, we shall see.
I've used Mullvad VPN in the past without any issue in the UK. Currently using NordVPN as I found Mullvad wasn't very quick for downloading Linux ISOs
At 2'58'' you can see a frame of them projecting on Senate House, London.
During WW2 that was used by the Ministry of Information, and it inspired Orwell's description for the building of the Ministry of Truth. His wife Eileen worked in the building for the Censorship Department.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_House,_London
Personally I find the advert a bit confusing, even with an understanding of what they are trying to achieve and their business. Was expecting something along the lines of Led By Donkeys...
Awareness, I suppose.
>Mass Surveillance is a slippery slope. It does not belong in Free and Open Societies.
Mullvad becoming popular with huge ad campaigns is very sus. Either way I don't use it anymore because its ip ranges are banned on most websites.
I'm also weirded out by how much ad spend they have. Billboards? Ads on buses? Why? I want my VPN provider to be like the domain registrar Gandi, not super well known, consistent, and no-nonsense.
I am a Proton user now, mostly because I finally realized VPN came with the email service I was already paying for. No complaints.
Gandi is sadly not a great example anymore for this, as they raised prices quite a lot over recent years, especially for their email service.
Come to think of it, that's why I'm on Proton now.
Yeah...
I can't use Mullvad for several banks in the UK with IPv4 - if I switch to IPv6 in the app settings I sometimes can, but often I have to just disable it completely...
I can't use Youtube anonymously (i.e. without logging in) within the last month or so either, as Youtube very often won't play content due to my IP as well...
Strange ad for a VPN. Without the controversy, would people get it?
I was a customer before they started advertising.
I saw the ads saying "and then?" and still didnt get it.
I like the product but i think their ad campaigns suck. If they want exposure and controversy i think they should run adverts to kill new proposed laws, target privacy hating politicians, etc.
Me too, but I don't think one's supposed to 'get it', the hope is that people wonder what it's all about and search 'mullvad ad "and then"' or whatever. Which as pre-existing customers we're probably already less likely to do.
I saw the ads on the tube and was very confused. I knew about Mullvad, but it never crossed my mind they were trying to get me to search for "and then".
I'm in SF where they advertise a lot, and the ads are incredibly niche and nerdy.
But a general sense of paranoia comes through quite strongly.
Mullvad's focus on privacy has been fantastic so far. But this ad made me reconsider: I want a VPN service that silently does its job in the background, not one that screams "look at me" with silly stunts and attempts at becoming viral.
What if they can’t protect your privacy, if they do not create a successful and sustainable business?
Lol, my band (London-based) has a song and YouTube music video called "Streets Of London".
I had a minor panic/WTF moment when I saw the submission saying : "Streets of London [video] (youtube.com)".
FYI link is below, for the off-chance someone is curious.
(not sure what are the unwritten rules of self-promotion here, but hopefully providing a link in a sub-comment instead of the comment itself makes it okay-ish?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI3xj9cM0jk
The whole ad is vague slop tbh, I can see why it wasn't allowed to air, also I don't know why people fixate on CCTV when the vast majority of it is used by private companies and the government doesn't have access to it without a request, there isn't any mass surveillance in this case just business owners managing risk and monitoring for crimes on their property
Place a giant video ad in tourist places in London to sell adblock?
And how much "surveillance" does a VPN prevent anyway? This is a regulatory & legislative problem and I don't see how any public VPN is part of the solution.
> And how much "surveillance" does a VPN prevent anyway?
Changing your acc number every other month and paying anonymously is much easier on Mullvad than on the ISP level. You can also get multiple people on the number very easily. And Mullvad is likely an entity outside of your home country, hence more difficult to coerce than your ISP.
In my eyes ISPs are compromised by default so the aim is to guard against them, if Mullvad is also as compromised it's more difficult for them to track me across account numbers and, even if they do, my data is then in another country, which worries me less than it being local since I'm not important enough to warrant international action.
> And Mullvad is likely an entity outside of your home country, hence more difficult to coerce than your ISP
This is not true in the EU or for the signatories of the Lugano Convention (the EU, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway). Mullvad is very explicit that they'll abide by all EU laws. For instance, see the e-Evidence Regulation specifically written for "network-based services" like "proxy services": https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
> Mullvad is also as compromised it's more difficult for them to track me across account numbers
That's your assumption, not an assertion Mullvad makes?
> even if they do, my data is then in another country, which worries me less than it being local
There exists international treaties on intel sharing (including for "cyber") at every level: The UN, The European Council, the EU, the NATO states, and so on.
> I'm not important enough to warrant international action
Your government can demand action of other governments and businesses via various treaties it may have in place. Mullvad, since it says it'll abide by all EU / Swedish laws, is not a hurdle for your local LEA you think it might be.
> is not a hurdle for your local LEA you think it might be
Everything is possible, of course, but in no world is it <= difficult to get information out of an entity outside your borders. A police officer can go to my local ISP's office and ask to see my logs. If he gets lucky, he gets them, otherwise his escalation path is smaller. If he wants to do that to Mullvad he has to start some process that goes through multiple people and takes a lot more time. Additionally, by the time he reaches Mullvad he probably has my ISP logs.
> That's your assumption, not an assertion Mullvad makes?
IDK what they have to say about it, but the ISP has a hardware line to my home, my name on a contract and recurring card payments. Mullvad has some money with no clear source and an ID with 3-4 people on it that jump ID every other month. I can't change my ISP every other month so one has a single big ass log for my home in a folder with my name on it and my payments while the other has multiple logs they have to bring together and no name on the payments.
They can absolutely parse things and follow me across IDs to put me in a big log and maybe do some data magic to tie it to my person but:
1- It's extra work for them to get to the ISP starting point
2- That starting point is actually still worse since possible mistakes in that process can be argued in court.
> They can absolutely parse things and follow me across IDs to put me in a big log
So, VPNs do not protect against surveillance. Both of us agree.
> some data magic
The EU e-Evidence Regulation requires this of EU & EFTA based providers. Make what you will.
According to Mullvad they do not keep logs, so whatever data they can be compelled to give up should include very little.
They aren't selling adblock. That's not the purpose of a vpn.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/how-set-ad-blocking-our-app / https://archive.vn/cfyPe
That's an extra service. I have it enabled but I don't recall it blocking much, an in-browser adblock is still required.
If we're going to ban ads, just ban them all.
Please bring back port forwarding
I have a use for them too, but unlikely to happen. Too powerful to abuse.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-the-support-for-forward...
People where using it to run webservers behind a Mullvad VPN?
It's quite bad not having a port forward when filesharing though.
It's more what's on the webserver than the webserver itself
Maybe it's just me, but there's something extra dystopian about surveillance and privacy invasion, when presented with the London skyline in the background.
Why would I trust Mullvad VPN?
What I have wanted for a very long time for America:
1. The government cannot ban any speech in advance of publication (eg verbally making the statement; or airing; or publishing etc).
2. If proven in Court that the statement maker: (a) knew the statement was false; (b) made the statement for the purpose of influencing public opinion regarding a law or government policy or election; or for the purpose of marketing a product for sale to the public; then the penalty upon conviction is...:
here is the secret sauce: super severe penalty such as: imprisonment without chance of parole or pardon for 10 years unless you are an elected official or candidate for office, in which event life in prison; or loss of 50% of your assets; or something similar
In other words, keep freedom of speech but if you are intentionally lying to the public for the purpose of impacting government affairs or the sale of a product - then you are going to suffer an incredibly punitive penalty.