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Comment by orbifold | Hacker News Reader

In Germany every political party gets a fixed number of slots for TV-Spots basically free of charge ahead of an election. There is no other political advertisement allowed (only the parties themselves are allowed to advertise). Unfortunately neither newspapers nor internet advertisement is as strictly regulated, but I feel like it should be eventually as well.

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In America, the usual argument is that such an approach would impair free speech, especially in telling third parties that they are not allowed to express views about an upcoming election.

Similar in the UK - set up that way to stop money being able to buy elections.

Overall, election spending has been very strictly controlled.

One of the problems is recently people have being getting around this with hard to trace online campaigns - using "national funding" and effectively locally targeted online campaigns.

I'd like to see people being properly sanctioned for breaking the rules. In my view there are few things more serious than trying to subvert democracy. It shouldn't be normalized like it is in the US.

I agree, basically it should either not be allowed or strictly controlled how to advertise politics online. Targeted political advertisement should be banned completely. Then there is twitter, which also basically serves as a direct marketing channel for political parties. In Germany this is a huge problem especially with the AFD, they can publish lots of nonsense there, more or less unchallenged by facts or reason.

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