https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-the-support-for-forward...
It's quite bad not having a port forward when filesharing though.
> “The overall concept lacks clarity.” “It is unclear why certain examples are included, who the ‘speaker’ represents, and the role of individuals depicted in the car.”
> "Referencing topics such as: Paedophiles, Rapists, Murderers, Enemies of the state, Journalists, Refugees, Controversial opinions, People’s bedrooms, Police officers, Children’s headsets … is inappropriate and irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN."
Maybe it's just from an American perspective, but this is absolutely wild to me. Even just the concept of a government-mandated pre-approval body for advertisement seems like a completely pants-on-head concept [1].
I think the American First Amendment would obliterate this government body and probably the whole institution if it was ever tried.
[1] Yes the FCC has limited authority after-the-fact to impose fines for things like indecency.
I’ve had ads taken off the TV for being clearly misleading (anyone can raise a complaint to the ASA - the Advertising Standards Agency).
Although given Brexit I’d question how useful the ASA actually is. It seems Russian funded politicians were free to spew endless lies at the average citizen with no repercussions.
You avoid having companies, who can swallow the bill, making whatever claims they like without having to much to worry about other than a slap on the wrist - Their claims are already out. J&J, P&G, Unilever et al - you may trust them to do the right thing, i don't.
Not exactly what happened here is it?
Then when you add in the ability to advertise prescription drugs?
Well, what could go wrong?
It's also nigh-impossible for a libel suit to succeed. And the government can't stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers.
You can make strong arguments either way, but at the very least you have to acknowledge that it's not all downsides.
It is possible to restrict one without the other. The UK, can quite easily stop an advert from saying things like:
>> A paid-for Meta ad and a website listing for an online clothing company misleadingly claimed they were established and owned by armed forces veterans and that they donated a share of profits to PTSD support organisations.
And still allow The Guardian to run a campaign on shadowy organisations funding politics.
Conflating them is done, i feel by those who run companies... i dunno, like VPN's, for the purposes of viral marketing and generating outrage.
Yet. Give this administration a little time and they’ll solve that problem too.
(They’ve already addressed it to some degree by intimidating the press.)
I think this is exactly the kind of thing Trump is trying to slow walk us into while everyone is distracted by his war in Iran.
First consolidate the networks into the hands of a few loyal supporters (you don’t need a body to ban a commercial The networks refuse to air), then use the FCC to clean up the remaining opposition.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/trump-fccs-equal...
They're a private company functioning as industry self-regulation, not a government department.
Broadcasters sign up to the code, Clearcast pre-clears ads against the code.
Ofcom is the regulator in this space, Clearcast appears to be an industry effort to pre-empt Ofcom by making sure things comply before they've gone out. Broadcasters want Clearcast's seal of approval before broadcast so they know they're OK to broadcast it.
Entirely private sector, I'm not sure there's a lot that's wild about it.
It is 100% government mandated censorship.
It appears to be established in law that Clearcast is an assistance service, and approval doesn't seem to be sufficient or necessary by law to ensure advertising is legal. It establishes risk, rather than making a legal finding.
If Mullvad's ad was 'banned' by Clearcast, what happened is that their ad didn't meet the standards that the industry has set for itself and the broadcasters didn't want to touch it.
(edit - does this make it 'better'? I don't know. It seems to me a bit like the situation in the US with HOAs, which heavily restrict what you can and can't do with your property, but aren't exactly government either. But I favour accuracy over emotion when talking about this stuff, which is why I wanted to point out the actual structure of the system here.)
But it's so much better than these alternatives.
(wait until the Americans understand what the rules for political TV broadcasts are in the UK, they will absolutely lose their minds. And the spending rules. And how little money is involved in UK elections.)
There's more serious concerns about UK libel law, and things like the proscription of Palestine Action, but generally I would say that if what you have to say is both true and important you can get your message across. Despite the newspapers and broadcasters.
Imagine a world where the “AI” peddlers would be forced to make realistic claims about their “product” instead of the American advertising style lies were being spammed with everywhere…
(slightly ambiguous conclusion that none of them have prevailed in court, but the laws can still be used to intimidate food critics)
What's actually illegal in law to broadcast is very different from what you practically cant due to the theoretically voluntary codes. Even that guidance is broad but hard to argue with "Advertisements must contain nothing that could cause physical, mental, moral or social harm to persons under the age of 18." No reasonable person would argue you should be allowed to do that.
I saw the ads saying "and then?" and still didnt get it.
I like the product but i think their ad campaigns suck. If they want exposure and controversy i think they should run adverts to kill new laws, etc.
https://www.asa.org.uk/codes-and-rulings/rulings.html?q=mull...
This smacks of viral campaign to me.
[0]: https://cybernews.com/news/and-then-mullvads-anti-surveillan...
> way they gave a real gift to the marketing team
A gift to us in how dishonest marketing can be, yeah.
> "irrelevant to the average consumer’s experience with a VPN"
Clearcast doesn't like snake oil, it'd seem.
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 1: cryptically warn people that their rights are under attack.
They are, UK is heavy surveillance, there is an article on Wikipedia dedicated just to this subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
> 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".
I worked on the set of an electric shaver commercial once. I’m wouldn’t say out loud that the production team were up themselves, but in addition to the regular crew there was a second director on set making a “making of” documentary about the production process. For a shaver commercial.
I can't use Mullvad for several banks in the UK with IPv4 - if I switch to IPv6 in the app settings I sometimes can, but often I have to just disable it completely...
I can't use Youtube anonymously (i.e. without logging in) within the last month or so either, as Youtube very often won't play content due to my IP as well...
And now much "surveillance" does a VPN prevent anyway? This is a regulatory & legislative problem and I don't see how any public VPN is part of the solution.
vanyauhalin•1h ago
rsolva•1h ago