UK Ad Standards Group Says Publishers Are Still Responsible For Auto Generated Ads

from the uk-needs-section-230 dept

It continues to amaze me how important a law like section 230 of the CDA is to keep ridiculous situations from occurring. Fundamentally, we shouldn't even need a section 230 -- which notes that online service providers aren't responsible for the actions of users -- since it should be common sense. The person liable for violating a law should be the person who actually violated the law, and not the tool they used to violate the law. Yet, as we see time and time again in other countries that have no Section 230 equivalent, such common sense doesn't always play out.

Take, for example, a ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK, that says that any online publishers are responsible for the text of any ads they display -- even if those ads are automatically generated, such as by a system like Google's AdSense. That puts publishers in a really tricky position. The whole benefit of using something like AdSense is the fact that it easily fills in mostly relevant remnant ad inventory, without requiring the publisher to carefully review and sell the ad space. Making those publishers liable for the content of those ads is only going to drive them away from using such ads altogether, which doesn't benefit anyone. Yes, you can understand that the ASA doesn't want questionable ads out there, but then the liability should fall on those actually responsible: the advertiser who created the questionable ad. Not the publisher who had no control over it.

Filed Under: ads, automated ads, liability, platforms, section 230, uk