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.

Lies are not protected by the 1A.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Doubleplusgood, comrade, carry on the fine work.

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".

>My British perspective: I don’t want advertisers free to lie as much as they want.

Not exactly what happened here is it?

A private company which somehow gets to approve ads rejected an advert complaining about a dystopian lack of privacy under a government that is actively trying to kill off privacy.