Switzerland Proposes Banning Profiling-Based Ads to Minors Under New Communication Platforms Law

Switzerland's Federal Council has instructed the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) to draft a dispatch by the end of 2027 for a new law on communication platforms and search engines, and has directed that the preliminary draft be amended with additional measures to protect children — including, according to reporting cited by Hacker News commenters, restrictions on serving profiling-based advertising to minors.

What the Federal Council decided

The Federal Council took note of the results of the consultation process on the new law on communication platforms and search engines at its meeting on 14 October 2026, and instructed DETEC to draw up a dispatch by the end of 2027. Two changes to the preliminary draft were announced:

1. The preliminary draft is to be amended with measures to protect children.
2. The reporting procedure is to be extended to include all content suspected of being unlawful.

The press release was published in German, French and Italian; the English page is a summary notice pointing readers to the full text in those three languages.

What the proposal actually changes

The headline change is a youth-protection amendment to a draft law that already covers communication platforms and search engines. The Federal Council's own press release describes the amendment generically as "measures to protect children" and does not itself spell out a profiling-ad ban.

The specific mechanism — that social media platforms and search providers must assess whether their service increases risks for minors and act on that assessment, and that "big platforms" should not be allowed to serve personalized ads to children — is described in Swiss media coverage (SRF) cited by Hacker News commenters rather than in the Federal Council notice itself. Readers looking for the exact statutory wording should consult the consultation documents and the eventual dispatch.

Timeline: consultation closed, dispatch due by end of 2027

The consultation process opened with a press release dated 29 October 2025 and has now concluded. The next formal step is a dispatch from DETEC, due by the end of 2027, which would accompany the draft law through the Swiss parliamentary process. The consultation documents and responses are published on fedlex.data.admin.ch, and the Federal Office of Communications (BAKOM) maintains a background page on digital intermediaries and communication platforms.

The dominant criticism: why only minors?

The most repeated objection in the Hacker News discussion is that the protections are scoped to minors when the underlying harms are not age-specific.

"I really don't get why all these improvements are only geared towards minors. What is the reasoning here to not extend this to every citizen?" — TomJansen

"What benefit does this have for minors that wouldn't also apply to adults?" — Buttons840

"Why only for minors? It's not good for adults either. If implemented as the title implies, data about minors would still be collected (though they'd get generic ads until 18), and now age verification becomes a hard requirement for anything that uses advertising. Banning targeted advertising completely is a much better move and reduces the incentive to track people online." — Altern4tiveAcc

Other commenters framed the same point more bluntly: "Great start, now do it for all ages" (chinathrow) and "Why not just ban all ads?" (throwawayy6767).

The age-verification problem

A second cluster of comments argues that a minors-only rule creates an enforcement paradox: platforms must determine who is a minor, which pushes them toward identity checks or age estimation.

"how will the age of the browsing person be evaluated without checking for IDs? or do kids still get profiled, but if they get profiled and determined to be a kid you can't serve them ads?" — 4ggr0

"The platform should first determine whether the current user is a minor; if a minor is using an account registered to an adult, how can this be detected?" — lvyafei

One commenter offered the counter-argument that the burden should not fall on users at all: "For anyone who's concerned about the whole 'oh we need to check the age of the user' Here's a simple solution: the ad industry is welcome to not profile its users" (cloudie78). Another suggested that the simpler regulatory lever is banning ad-blocker circumvention rather than policing age: "I wonder if it would be simpler for the digital advertisement to ban companies to block adblockers solutions" (esel2k).

A commenter who identifies as working in adtech in Switzerland and whose company does not track users argued for a narrower, more enforceable rule: platforms that have a login, or that know or calculate the age of the user, should be disallowed from showing ads to users below a given age (yawniek).

Critics argue profiling — not advertising — is the real target

Several commenters argue that regulating ad delivery downstream leaves the data collection business intact.

"It is not enough banning ads; it is necessary to outlaw the profiling to take place in the first place. In fact, today's profiling remains a viable business regardless of any ads placed downstream, because bulk data gets routinely purchased for surveillance purposes." — adg001

One commenter grounded the objection in international human rights law, quoting Article 12 of the UN human rights framework: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." The commenter's conclusion: "Ad tech Data fusion violates that right" (acd).

Switzerland's broader advertising crackdown

Commenters placed the proposal in the context of a wider Swiss push against public advertising:

"There's been a lot of recent swiss efforts to curtail advertising. Off the top of my head: Zurich's parliament voted 58–57 last year to place limits on outdoor advertising (have 2027 to come up with implementation); Bern fully instituted the ban but reversed course over revenue concerns; Vernier & Lancy have banned billboards." — icyfox

The same commenter noted that industry pushback has succeeded in at least one case (Bern's reversal), but predicted the profiling measure would survive because "hard to make a revenue loss argument."

The Swedish precedent

One commenter pointed to Sweden, where advertising directed at children is already illegal, and described the enforcement gap that follows:

"Here in Sweden it's illegal to make ads directed at children. Consequently the TV channels that do so transmit from abroad. This would of course have been easy to ban anyway — it's not like we can't have rules on foreign internet firms, for example, but historically the politicians were unwilling to make a useful law. I think the Swiss could take one step further and add a general ban on ads targeting young children in addition to this; and then we Swedes should imitate the package." — impossiblefork

Due process concerns about "suspected" unlawful content

The second element of the Federal Council's decision — extending the reporting procedure to all content suspected of being unlawful — drew a separate objection focused on the word "suspected": "Operating keyword here: 'suspected'. What happened to due process?" (cloudie78).

A transparency alternative: "explain why I'm seeing this"

One commenter proposed a disclosure-based regulation instead of, or alongside, a targeting ban:

"Common topic amongst friends on online advertising: feels like it would be reasonable for platforms like Meta, TikTok, etc to explain why they've served you the ad you're seeing. Imagine an 'explain why I'm seeing this' button. The adtech of today feels very opaque to me; I often have no clue why I see what I do. If platforms had to disclose why you're seeing what you are, you could plug the holes in your privacy." — archildress

Where the line on advertising should be drawn

One commenter offered a twelve-step escalation ladder for judging when advertising becomes illegitimate, from a sign above a storefront (1) through broadcast interruptions (6) and pop-ups (8) to "content that activates involuntary addictive pathways in your brain, presented to you alongside an advertisement" (12). The commenter's framing: advertising that bypasses a person's volition and consumes a significant share of their daily attention quota should be illegal (hliyan).

Another commenter argued the political dynamics make this an unusually clean test case: "This kind of ballot issue is a great filter. It's so obviously correct, the reason of any normal person will be 'why was it legal at all?', so anyone arguing against the ban is quite probably paid to do so and should be ignored" (walthamstow). A further commenter noted the speed of the shift: "Such a common sense law. It's crazy to me that we have so many youth protections in place but only in the last year or two governments have started to pay attention to this" (port3000).

What to watch next

The concrete next milestone is DETEC's dispatch, due by the end of 2027. Until that text is published, the precise scope of the child-protection measures — whether they prohibit profiling-based advertising to minors outright, impose risk-assessment duties on large platforms, or both — remains to be specified in the draft law. The consultation responses already published on fedlex.data.admin.ch show the range of positions submitted during the comment period.