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.
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.
> 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".
The point I was replying to used the existence of a Wikipedia article as proof that there is a problem in the UK regarding surveillance. By providing an example of similar articles about other locations I was showing that this alone is not particularly strong evidence. It certainly wasn't whataboutism, I don't even think the user I was replying to is from the US.
If only one country has an article about something you'd probably think it's an outlier. If every country has the article then you'd more likely think it's just part of life. I didn't make an assertion, I'm not providing evidence.
I don't even disagree with the post, I just don't like seeing shallow dismissals where someone could've actually put effort in to make a point. So I did the same.
[0]: https://cybernews.com/news/and-then-mullvads-anti-surveillan...