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petcat
wrboyce
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).
kuerbel
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.
Nursie
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.
MrSkelter
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.
Hizonner
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?
pjc50
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)
nailer
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.
godelski
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.
orf
> 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?
Mystery-Machine
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".
youngNed
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.
pjc50
I'd be cool fining Meta 1% of global revenue for every fraudulent ad on their platform.
tw04
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.
direwolf20
That's literally censorship though. If you get fined for saying a thing, you are being censored.
vintermann
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.
pjc50
See my https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47233675 on pre-clearance.
kspacewalk2
What's the difference? Efficacy in preventing lies from being aired?
cbdevidal
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.
observationist
Doubleplusgood, comrade, carry on the fine work.
ascorbic
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.
Nursie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearcast
They're a private company functioning as industry self-regulation, not a government department.
Broadcasters sign up to the code, Clearcast pre-clears ads against the code.
Ofcom is the regulator in this space, Clearcast appears to be an industry effort to pre-empt Ofcom by making sure things comply before they've gone out. Broadcasters want Clearcast's seal of approval before broadcast so they know they're OK to broadcast it.
Entirely private sector, I'm not sure there's a lot that's wild about it.
Hizonner
When the government threatens the private sector into doing something, the result is not entirely private sector.
pjc50
Ah, so like CBS.
VWWHFSfQ
Ofcom and Clearcast are tasked with enforcing the UK Broadcast Advertising Code (BCAP Code). Which came about from the Communications Act of 2003.
It is 100% government mandated censorship.
Nursie
Clearcast is a private body owned by the broadcasters. The BCAP code is issued by the Advertising Standards Authority which, despite the name, is an industry self-regulation body.
It appears to be established in law that Clearcast is an assistance service, and approval doesn't seem to be sufficient or necessary by law to ensure advertising is legal. It establishes risk, rather than making a legal finding.
If Mullvad's ad was 'banned' by Clearcast, what happened is that their ad didn't meet the standards that the industry has set for itself and the broadcasters didn't want to touch it.
(edit - does this make it 'better'? I don't know. It seems to me a bit like the situation in the US with HOAs, which heavily restrict what you can and can't do with your property, but aren't exactly government either. But I favour accuracy over emotion when talking about this stuff, which is why I wanted to point out the actual structure of the system here.)
YeGoblynQueenne
I guess it depends on how you perceive "censorship". I wouldn't think of banning a misleading ad as censorship. My country, Greece, was under a military dictatorship for a few years in the 1960's and 70's, and censorship involved e.g. pre-approving all music, including not just song lyrics but also the music scores. Works by the two major Greek composers, Theodorakis and Hatzidakis [1] were banned outright and could not be played anywhere under pain of pain [2]. Obviously everything anyone wanted to publish in the press had to be pre-approved by state censors and any criticism of the regime, either written or simply spoken out loud, was punishable... you get the gist.
Not allowing advertisers to lie to advertise their product is I think not a kind of "censorship" one really needs to be worried about. They're free to advertise their product otherwise, they're just not free to lie to do it.
I feel silly making this elementary point, but freedoms can't ever be absolute in a society of more than one humans. Even in the US I bet you're free to drive, but you're not free to drive drunk. You're free to have sexual relations, but not with a minor. You're free to walk anywhere you like but not in other peoples' property and not on the streets with the cars (which btw is perfectly fine in Europe and it's rules about jaywalking that are "pants on head" for us).
These are rules. Societies have rules. They should have them. There's no problem with that.
And now my 16-year old self is very disappointed that I've grown up to be a conservative, establishmentarian fossil.
___________
[1] Coincidence. We're not all called something-akis.
ollybee
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.
Hizonner
No reasonable person could argue that the system you describe should be allowed to decide that.
youngNed
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?
devilbunny
... 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.
youngNed
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.
macintux
> 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.)
prasadjoglekar
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.
pjc50
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.
Nursie
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.
fidotron
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.
jorams
> 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.
4ndrewl
Clearcast is a private company, nothing to do with the government, so you might need to rethink that.
nailer
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).
youngNed
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.
whywhywhywhy
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...
youngNed
> 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.
MrCzar
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".
Hnrobert42
It's smacks of a marketing campaign because...it is a marketing campaign.
undefined
whywhywhywhy
You didn't read the link and it shows.
ignoramous
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.
akimbostrawman
In what way is a VPN a snakeoil? not to mention that Mullvad does a lot more than just that.
edgyquant
The word ban has taken on the meaning of “not allowed in certain places”
whywhywhywhy
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.
gorgoiler
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.
vanyauhalin
The ad itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPzvUW8qaWY (4min)
rsolva
Great ad. Long, but great.
dizzy9
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.
sunaookami
When will the UK citizens stand up against the regime?
sph
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!
walthamstow
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.
remus
Have you lived in the UK? I have, and it doesn't feel like a police state.
tim333
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...)
direwolf20
When they don't like it. You disagree with the regime, but the vast majority of UKranians do not.
aPoCoMiLogin
not gonna happen, the issue is very deeply rooted already, you can't change that without force
gib444
It’s illegal to protest in a way that has any real effect now
tim333
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.
karel-3d
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.
ndsipa_pomu
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
ndr
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.
level87
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...
Kreutzer
Awareness, I suppose.
>Mass Surveillance is a slippery slope. It does not belong in Free and Open Societies.
jeffwass
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)".
jeffwass
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?)
MitPitt
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.
0_____0
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.
pixelesque
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...
Animats
Strange ad for a VPN. Without the controversy, would people get it?
pydry
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.
OJFord
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.
NicuCalcea
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".
blendo
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.
Coeur
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.
hashstring
What if they can’t protect your privacy, if they do not create a successful and sustainable business?
tupac_speedrap
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
ignoramous
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.
lan321
> 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.
ignoramous
> 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.
lan321
> 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.
pickleglitch
They aren't selling adblock. That's not the purpose of a vpn.
ignoramous
For the universal right to choose whether or not to block ads and trackers,
Mullvad VPN
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/how-set-ad-blocking-our-app / https://archive.vn/cfyPe
mhitza
That's an extra service. I have it enabled but I don't recall it blocking much, an in-browser adblock is still required.
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> 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.