I say, fuck that. “Everyone knows it is an exaggeration” means that it is a lie. Lying about the product you are selling is fraud. Fraud should get you in prison. But… only a stupid people would believe that literally, right? Yes, but stupid people exist, you told them something, some of them believed it, and they bought your product. How specifically is this not a fraud?
I understand this attitude, but I think once you try to operationalize this into policy, it runs afoul of the same problem of trying to censor misinformation. E.g. see section IV of this ACX essay:
Okay, that’s my nitpicky point. Who cares? Obviously all of this kind of stuff is more than deceptive enough to in fact leave a bunch of people misinformed. So why do I care if it misinforms them by lying, or by misinterpreting things and taking them out of context?
I care because there’s a lazy argument for censorship which goes: don’t worry, we’re not going to censor honest disagreement. We just want to do you a favor by getting rid of misinformation, liars saying completely false things. Once everybody has been given the true facts—which we can do in a totally objective, unbiased way—then we can freely debate how to interpret those facts.
But people—including the very worst perpetrators of misinformation—very rarely say false facts. Instead, they say true things without enough context. But nobody will ever agree what context is necessary and which context is redundant.
Ads may be less honest than news, but it’s still hard to operationalize no-lies rules in such a way that they aren’t used asymmetrically against those who aren’t in power.
I cannot fully evaluate how I feel about this now, but something sounds suspicious. For example, using the same logic, slander/libel should be legal, because people in power will always be able to say or at least insinuate negative things about their opponents, so if we make it illegal, the situation becomes asymmetrical. Perhaps theft should be legal too, given that the government and police can take things/money from you if they really want to.
I understand the ACX essay as an argument in the opposite direction. It is too easy to mislead people while only saying things that are technically true. But advertising fails to comply even with this standard.
From what I understand, libel laws have very high standards of evidence precisely because of the worries I mention. Also see this NYT article (note that the article is behind a soft paywall), which both mentions the even stronger requirements for a public official to sue for libel; and also mentions the differences between the US (harder to sue for libel) and the UK (easier to sue), and the effects of this.
Again, I have no problem with accusing ads of dishonesty or calling them lies; I’m just skeptical that there’s a way to codify this into law that doesn’t just make things much worse.
I understand this attitude, but I think once you try to operationalize this into policy, it runs afoul of the same problem of trying to censor misinformation. E.g. see section IV of this ACX essay:
Ads may be less honest than news, but it’s still hard to operationalize no-lies rules in such a way that they aren’t used asymmetrically against those who aren’t in power.
I cannot fully evaluate how I feel about this now, but something sounds suspicious. For example, using the same logic, slander/libel should be legal, because people in power will always be able to say or at least insinuate negative things about their opponents, so if we make it illegal, the situation becomes asymmetrical. Perhaps theft should be legal too, given that the government and police can take things/money from you if they really want to.
I understand the ACX essay as an argument in the opposite direction. It is too easy to mislead people while only saying things that are technically true. But advertising fails to comply even with this standard.
From what I understand, libel laws have very high standards of evidence precisely because of the worries I mention. Also see this NYT article (note that the article is behind a soft paywall), which both mentions the even stronger requirements for a public official to sue for libel; and also mentions the differences between the US (harder to sue for libel) and the UK (easier to sue), and the effects of this.
Again, I have no problem with accusing ads of dishonesty or calling them lies; I’m just skeptical that there’s a way to codify this into law that doesn’t just make things much worse.