We police ourselves better than the Advertising Standards Agency ever could

The uk's advertising standards authority wants to apply the same rules to brand-run Twitter accounts and Facebook pages as it does to TV ads and billboards: (via The Guardian) http://bit.ly/darbhb

On the face of it the drive to enforce legality, honesty and truthfulness seems wise.

They (the Advertising Association) even say they are advocating this primarily to protect children; Always a good tactic to deploy to deflect those who would oppose.

You have to ask how they expect the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to police this?

And more importantly, why they think they are better placed to police this than those they seek to protect?

It's another example of the advertising world attempting to place a broadcast, centre-out solution on a peer-to-peer space. You ain't in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.

They make the assumption that the act of setting up a page or account and filling it with dishonesty is equal to broadcasting that dishonesty to unsuspecting audiences. Which is to fundamentally misunderstand how distribution happens in social media.

We ONLY pass on that which we think is useful to those we think will also find it useful.

If we get that wrong our followers stop being our followers, our friends stop being our friends. It is in our interest only to share what we judge to be the honest and truthful (we make our own judgements about the legal - file sharing etc).

We are best placed to make these judgements in the context of OUR communities of purpose (yes, and kids too - by the power of the wisdom of their crowds).
We make those judgements fast, and, since the crowd offers self-correcting mechanics, we make them accurate and relevant.

We at the edge, not them at the centre - and certainly not the ASA.

Sorry but your rules - quite literally - do not apply here.

Safety Last: The network means common sense will eventually prevail

Try to do something too corporately, too completey, too centrally-controlled and you often end up creating the opposite effect. Perhaps this is because you are running contrary to common sense - the networked intelligence of us all.

Two examples occurred to me recently.

1) My daughter had been over-sucking her thumb. It ended up red raw and as she picked at it in the car on the way to nursery, it started bleeding, just a little. I asked at nursery if they'd put a plaster on for her. "Can't do that," I'm told. "In case of allergies". Health & (f**king) Safety madness. "Should I take her home instead then?"

Result: Open wounds, open to infection? Is this risk smaller than the allergy one?

2) Bonfire parties. November 5 is coming soon so that means fireworks in the UK. Years ago I recall almost everyone in the small town where I grew up trudging up to the 'Sand Hills' where the scouts would organise a firework display and bonfire. Roundtables, scouts, local rugby clubs etc etc organised events for years. But they seem to be dieing out. The reason - cost of meeting all the increasingly ludicrous health and safety rules - and the challenge of getting insurance. Result: a BOOM in home (completely unregulated, inexpert) displays. Every supermarket has racks of explosives pushed at customers as they come through the door.
All the rules were about reducing risk - but the result has been to wildly increase the risk.

Trust. We trust our nurseries to care for our children, with common sense. Externally applied rules prevent this.
We trust our community organisations to put on a good firework show, consider our safety, and provide a communal event. With common sense. Externally applied (centrally-derived) rules prevent this.

The network wants more and can deliver more. Common sense was once allowed to prevail. It is the natural state of humans. Now rules from the centre seek to over rule it.

The network will disrupt this. Common sense will re-establish itself as the edge-in model of distributed intelligence it always was. The centralised rule makers have to become part of the network or they will simply be replaced.

Legislators would do well to pay attention.