* Total fantasy to think you wouldn't fall afoul of free speech, both legally (in the US) and morally.
In fact, the author touts as a benefit that you'd stop populists being able to talk to their audience. This is destroying the village of liberal democracy in order to save it!
* Absolutely zero thought has been given to how to police the boundaries. Giving a paid speech? Free gifts for influencers? Rewards for signing up a friend?
* Products need marketing. You don't just magically know what to buy. Advertising fulfils an important social role. Yes, I know it can be annoying/intrusive/creepy. "In our information-saturated world, ads manipulate, but they don't inform" is an evidence-free assertion.
* Banning billboards or other public advertising? Fine. Not new. Done all over the place for commonsensical reasons.
* Any article that talks about "blurry, “out-of-focus fascism”—that sense of discomfort that you feel but can't quite point out" is itself blurry and out-of focus, not to say absurd and hyperbolic. Calling a mild sense of psychological discomfort "fascism" is just embarrassing.
Start by banning target advertisements - now ad platforms can’t use information about the user to decide which ad to show.
Next, ban forced advertisement - people cannot be forced to watch 10 seconds of an ad, or to have the ad be persistent on a page. All ads can be easily dismissed.
Then, force ad platforms to respect a user setting that says they don’t want to see ads. Just a new browser standard that communicates the user preference, or a toggle that can be changed in apps.
That alone should get rid of most problematic ads, but we’d still have sponsors and affiliate links. For those, we can start by increasing the requirements for disclaimers or identification. e.g. sponsored content has to be strictly separated from non-sponsored content. Get rid of “segways” and affiliate links close to the actual content.
If advertisers find loopholes or ways around these measures, we just close the holes with new regulation.