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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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But if you make any mistake in your 'safe zone' that's still effectively a loophole. How do you let Coca Cola link you to their shop with a bunch of products and merchandise on their own website (which I expect you intend since it's "opt in") but not allow Amazon to link you to their shop and products during a Twitch stream on their own website? (which I expect you don't intend, because even though you've opted into a Twitch stream you didn't intend to opt into the Amazon store)

Keeping in mind that you can't just take the state of the world as it exists right now this very instant, you have to draw the categories in a way that fundamentally cannot be worked around? If the law says "you can only advertise your own products on your own website" then the Lawyers don't need to do anything, they've already won because you forgot the websites are owned by the same company (and they could just as easily have made them the same website). There's no infraction of the law for the government to enforce because they're not breaking the law, it's just badly written.

How do you make it stronger without accidentally crushing normal people just trying to honestly sell things?

even though you've opted into a Twitch stream you didn't intend to opt into the Amazon store

That's how. Like, Amazon and Twitch are separate brands and people use them for separate things, and everybody with eyes can see that. It's not a grand political dilemma like the Minneapolis car incident.

The 'safe zone' is 'you make cola and you advertise your own cola'. The bad zone is 'you run an advertising agency'. 'you make cola but you advertise life insurance from your life insurance subsidiary' is well within 'here be dragons' and you're risking serious issues. It's like when you threaten massive fines for disinformation and everyone bans anything that could even possibly look like something government might consider disinfo. You don't actually have to tolerate autistic winkling out of loopholes.

How do you make it stronger without accidentally crushing normal people just trying to honestly sell things?

Could you give some examples? My model of the world is broadly 'if people want what you are trying to sell, they will go looking for it'. If people buy something and they like it, they tell their friends or they write reviews (I am okay with free samples to review sites etc.). But the idea that 'no, you don't know you want this yet' is IMO a lie that advertisers and salesmen tell themselves and deserves very short thrift.

That's how. Like, Amazon and Twitch are separate brands and people use them for separate things, and everybody with eyes can see that. It's not a grand political dilemma like the Minneapolis car incident.

https://www.twitch.amazon.com

Whose brand does such a website fall under? Does it change if we switch the word order?

The convention is that it's www.subnet.host.com. So you might have maps.google.com or auth.google.com or search.alphabet.com. If Amazon is acting as a large supercorp providing many services, and Twitch is a provider of streaming, then people on twitch.amazon.com or amazon.twitch.com are on that site for streaming. If they were there to be sold things they would be on shopping.amazon.com or the reverse.

(In today's internet you pay for the xxx.com domain name, but you can subdivide that domain into as many yyy.xxx.com subnets as you want. Doing it the other way round would be incredibly expensive.)

If Twitch and Amazon are both big messy things full of subsidiaries and you are advertising everything everywhere then you are in the realm of 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes' and you should fix your org chart.