Social media companies pull ADHD ads by mental health startup Cerebral. The latest ad ban by Instagram and TikTok highlights the slippery slope of "misinformation" purges as well as the warped way some folks have come to view food and healthy eating in 2022.
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But tech companies' ever-increasing pool of things that can't be said isn't just the result of their executives' own beliefs or a simple response to market pressure. It's come as government officials increasingly demand that they have a say over what can and can't be found online.
This government pressure and support for it are often pushed as a way to protect people from "misinformation" or to keep teens from doing dangerous things. Arguably, these are neither roles for government nor for tech executives, but let's put their general desirability or wisdom aside for a moment. The Cerebral ad ban shows the practical problem with such pushes: They inevitably creep far beyond their purported scope.
Supporters of misinformation bans imagine they'll only snag obvious lies and grifters, like people pushing miracle cures for COVID-19 or ranting that vaccines contain microchips from Bill Gates. But now we've got companies pulling content for…lacking context? Not providing as complete a picture as an academic meta-analysis?
reason.com
[clip]
But tech companies' ever-increasing pool of things that can't be said isn't just the result of their executives' own beliefs or a simple response to market pressure. It's come as government officials increasingly demand that they have a say over what can and can't be found online.
This government pressure and support for it are often pushed as a way to protect people from "misinformation" or to keep teens from doing dangerous things. Arguably, these are neither roles for government nor for tech executives, but let's put their general desirability or wisdom aside for a moment. The Cerebral ad ban shows the practical problem with such pushes: They inevitably creep far beyond their purported scope.
Supporters of misinformation bans imagine they'll only snag obvious lies and grifters, like people pushing miracle cures for COVID-19 or ranting that vaccines contain microchips from Bill Gates. But now we've got companies pulling content for…lacking context? Not providing as complete a picture as an academic meta-analysis?
Instagram Bans Healthy Eating Ads for Promoting 'Negative Self-Perception'
Social media companies pull ADHD ads by mental health startup Cerebral. The latest ad ban by Instagram and TikTok highlights the slippery slope of
reason.com