Can Advertising Save America?
- Tim Love
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
For more than a century, the U.S. has drawn a clear line between free speech and commercial speech. Content created to monitor behavior, target interests, or provoke emotional reactions for advertising profit has always been treated as commercial speech—and therefore subject to legal standards of accuracy, truthfulness, and consumer protection. These guardrails allowed America’s prior media to flourish while shielding the public from manipulation and fraud.
The Internet Is the Exception — by Accident
Today’s internet operates under a radically different regime. Advertising-driven online content is largely exempt from legal responsibility. It isn’t required to ensure accuracy, safety, or even human authorship. This includes material generated by bots, foreign governments, and criminal networks.
This extraordinary carve-out originates from America’s antiquated communication policy, which includes a Section 230 exemption shielding internet platforms from liability for distributing email and social media content. When the policy was created in 1995–96, lawmakers assumed the internet would function like a subscription utility, not an advertising-supported media ecosystem. They granted online platforms sweeping immunity from rules applied to every other ad-funded media. But instead of subscriptions, internet technologies rapidly grew through data mining and advertising.
America Has Always Recognized Limits
The U.S. has long accepted that certain speech carries consequences; one cannot legally yell “fire” in a crowded theater without cause. Likewise, advertising-supported media have historically been accountable for the content it distributes—with protections meant to prevent fraud, manipulation, and foreign interference.
Yet policymakers in the mid-1990s, eager to lead the emerging World Wide Web, avoided regulations they feared might slow innovation. Now, 30 years later, this policy leaves the internet threatening children’s safety, public health, and national security—a concern echoed in current debates over artificial intelligence.
The Lesson of the Fairness Doctrine
From 1949 to 1987, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to air opposing views on issues of public importance. Enacted when three networks held immense influence— amid Cold War fears of propaganda—it helped establish a trusted news environment. Walter Cronkite became “the most trusted man in America” under the requirement to present both sides.
Repeal of the doctrine, justified by claims that cable expanded viewpoint diversity, opened the door to today’s highly partisan media landscape; for example, from MSNBC on the left to Fox News on the right to highly partisan independent commentators.
Why the New Policy Is Urgent
America needs internet communication reform that restores accountability, as long applied to earlier media. Maintaining our antiquated policy puts children, public health, and democratic institutions at risk. AI now makes it feasible for platforms to detect harmful content and gives consumers potential avenues for recourse.
The Technopoly of the “Magnificent Seven” tech companies, now holds unprecedented economic and informational power. Section 230 absolves platforms from the obligation to monitor foreign disinformation or prevent inflated bot-driven ad metrics, leaving the ecosystem dangerously exposed. They have pervasive influence and control over communication, our economy, and government representatives.
With such power must come responsibility. Advertisers—large and small—must demand safe, trustworthy media environments or risk legal exposure and the stability of American self-government itself.
Tim Love is a former Vice-Chairman of Omnicom Group, the leading marketing services and advertising holding company. He is a podcast creator and author of Discovering Truth: How to Navigate Between Fact & Fiction in an Overwhelming Social Media World (2023) and recently launched The Medium is the Mirror: The Reformation of Truth Reshaping Our Relationships, Politics and Sacred Beliefs (2025). Now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble Online.
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