[HN Gopher] You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?
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You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?
Author : bearbin
Score : 443 points
Date : 2021-12-26 10:39 UTC (12 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (bearbin.net)
| midjji wrote:
| I think thats going to be one of the early successes of AR
| glasses. Its trivially easy to make, and freemium versions will
| replace generic ads with ones tailored to you.
| sputr wrote:
| I wonder why society decided that advertising was so important,
| it was willing to let it completely dominate (and in my opinion
| destroy) our public spaces. People who need something will find
| it just fine without billboards. And people buying things they
| don't need is not exactly in the interest of society. So why
| should society pay for it?
|
| I've been working on a policy paper idea for my home country -
| Slovenia. Complete ban of all outdoor advertising except
| shopfronts and limit those.
|
| Now, since you can't just ban it outright, there's still need for
| advertising, a different solution should be offered:
|
| Every community needs to have a public billboard, setup and
| maintained by the local government, one per 500 residents, where
| 25% of the area is auctioned to commercial ads, 25% is awarded
| with a lottery system (to prevent money dominating too much), 25%
| for cultural events and 25% for nonprofits and charity. The
| advertising space should be place in a crowded area (like a
| square). It needs some extra rules for high density area, so that
| space can be grouped, but not too much.
|
| All other outdoor advertising is banned. Since a lot of companies
| would be effectively banned by this move, some sort of (small)
| compensation should be paid to them and time given, so they can
| pivot. Costs of removing the advertising should be subsidized for
| the same reason. Any advertising facades or roofs (i.e. different
| colored tiles used to make the roof) can stay, but the ad has to
| be removed when the roof/facade is replaced. Money coming in from
| the ad actions should more than cover this expense.
|
| Possibly add an exception to "shopping center", where such
| advertising is permitted, but with strict rules to what such a
| center is (i.e. has no residents).
|
| I know most Americans will balk at such "government overreach"
| but I think it could pass here if someone actually put some
| effort in.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Presumably selling ad space on things like buses and bus stops
| helps pay for those services. I'm much more sympathetic to
| physical ads. I can just ignore it instead of waiting to click
| a skip button.
| sputr wrote:
| (1) Ads on busses
|
| This is the obvious spin, that anyone trying to undermine
| such ideas would do. So I just checked the yearly (pre-
| pandemic) financial report for our bus service - the buses
| are COVERED in adverts. From what I can tell, those ads bring
| in less than 2% of all income.
|
| The ads on bus stop were given in exchange for running the
| bike rental service, but that service isn't free to use, so
| the income can't be that great.
|
| (2) Ignoring ads I have a feeling that "I can just ignore it"
| is the critical fallacy that will undermine ideas such as
| mine.
|
| To know just how much they are affecting you, you have to go
| to a place with no ads.
|
| Honestly, if you're using ad blocking on your computer - turn
| it off completely. The difference in physical ads is not as
| big (since action blocking popups are not a thing), but even
| discounting those, just the saturation of "things going on"
| is tiring. Ignoring things is an active action that requires
| energy and focus... why you are giving that away freely to
| someone trying to manipulate you ... I do not understand.
|
| The fact that you use "waiting to click a skip button" as a
| comparison shows how normalized ads have become. The
| alternative to "fewer ads" isn't "ads being forced down your
| throat" but "no ads, at all".
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Curious, I checked the revenue that bus ads bring in where
| I live. I can't find a specific line item, but it's
| definitely not one of the major income streams. I assume
| the return:reward ratio is good. They probably outsource
| the management of the ad space and get some millions
| trickle in for no effort.
|
| _To know just how much they are affecting you, you have to
| go to a place with no ads._
|
| Honestly the only ads I ever see in real life are bus and
| bus stop ads. Maybe it's terrible where you live, but here,
| I can barely remember the last one I saw. If anything I
| wish the local government would have more ads. They have a
| bunch of activities on sometimes that I don't hear about or
| forget because their advertising is so poor.
| andrepd wrote:
| That's amazing, I have pretty much exactly the same ideas.
| Advertising is a huge business predicated entirely on
| manipulating people to make purchases they otherwise wouldn't,
| surgically exploiting weaknesses in our psyche. It's immoral,
| and it's economically wasteful.
| yanderekko wrote:
| >I wonder why society decided that advertising was so
| important, it was willing to let it completely dominate (and in
| my opinion destroy) our public spaces.
|
| Because advertising is a form of speech, and society has
| decided that speech is important?
| sputr wrote:
| All freedoms are limited by the freedoms of others. You may
| speak what you wish, but when and how you speak it is
| limited.
|
| You can not scream about it in the middle of the night, since
| doing so bothers your neighbors.
|
| Letting anyone and everyone do what ever they want would lead
| to anarchy. So no society, USA included, does this.
|
| But some actors in societies have convinced the western
| population, especially Americans, into the fantasy of
| "freedom without limitation", which, just so happens to only
| apply to the rich and powerful, while everyone else has to
| contend with limitations on their freedoms.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I think you mean chaos rather than anarchy. Anarchy
| involves maximizing freedom for everyone, not just one's
| self, among other things. The strong doing whatever they
| want is the exact opposite of anarchy.
| sputr wrote:
| Yeah, chaos would have been a better word to use.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Some cities do block ads in my country:
| https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > When you're reading in the hypothetical yellow pages, that's
| advertising.
|
| > Or when you're walking down the high street, looking in shop
| windows; advertising again.
|
| The important fact here is in this case we asked for it. I opened
| the online store app. Go ahead and show me the products. That's
| what I came for. I wouldn't even call that advertising, to me
| it's just information.
|
| Totally different from shoving those products in my face every
| time I try to do _anything_. Now I don 't care about products, I
| don't want to see them or hear about them. But these advertisers
| _insist_ on subjecting me to their ads.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Ads should simply be illegal anywhere, anywhen.
|
| Perhaps if we did that for, say, 80 years, then after the last
| advertiser has dropped dead of advanced age, we could cautiously
| re-enable the legality of purely informational, manipulation-free
| adverts.
| [deleted]
| ciphol wrote:
| Who's going to pay for your Google search, maps, and Gmail if
| there are no ads?
| xdennis wrote:
| The same person who pays for my movie tickets or refills my
| tank.
| paxys wrote:
| Paid online services have been a thing long before internet
| advertising took over. People used to have search, email, GPS
| navigation, business directories, news, weather and lots more
| before Google was even an idea. Why do people suddenly think
| giving up your privacy to look at obnoxious ads all day is
| the only way technology will progress further?
| shukantpal wrote:
| They don't wanna pay. If you don't like ads, stay in your
| home or in sandboxed areas you control or approve. You
| don't get to control other peoples' property.
| aembleton wrote:
| How will anyone know about search, email or GPS navigation?
| If its word of mouth, isn't this a form of advertising? How
| will they pay for them without a credit card; which will be
| issued by a bank that can't advertise them. Does that also
| rely upon word of mouth? How can a new entrant arrive in
| the banking industry without being able to advertise its
| services?
|
| Without advertising new companies can't develop new
| services because only the existing ones will have
| customers.
| wackro wrote:
| A public information service would solve all of these
| issues. The UK has the Citizen's Advice Bureau. Also
| public libraries can contain informational bits.
|
| In both of the above cases you as the consumer have to
| actively seek them out. But I'd be OK with public
| services being 'advertised' on TV, billboards etc as
| there would be no profit motive.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| The same who pays for other subscription based software,
| music, and groceries.
| tormeh wrote:
| Yeah, good luck defining what an ad is. And adverts will always
| try to manipulate their audience. It would take 3 seconds for
| them to start doing that again.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| That neener-neener attitude is a great example of why
| advertisers need to be told "just no, for the entire rest of
| your lives, without exception".
|
| What fraction of your lifespan spent behind bars do you care
| to wager that you can wiggle and sleaze around the rules?
| Especially ones that are applied by judges with common sense,
| rather than algorithms?
| 323 wrote:
| So it should be illegal for me to wear a t-shirt with Adidas
| written on it? Or shoes with the Nike swoosh on it?
| _dain_ wrote:
| yes
| EvRev wrote:
| Yes. Find another avenue for virtue signaling that
| contributes on a local level. Paying for the right to be a
| roaming advert is what has been advertised to you, hence you
| are repeating the cycle.
|
| I do wear these brands, but try to subdue any labeling. i.e.
| black sharpie on the nike logo.
| midasuni wrote:
| How about my christmas jumper with a character on it saying
| "make it snow"?
|
| How about a picture of Scrooge saying "bah humbug"?
| nlitened wrote:
| If you've made software that is very useful for some
| people, should it be illegal to tell anybody about that,
| unless you've been specifically asked?
| frogpelt wrote:
| Get rid of capitalism. Problem solved.
| timbit42 wrote:
| That would solve a lot of the world's largest problems. Let's
| have worker cooperatives and housing cooperatives instead.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| Advertising as it is done presently has at least three faults,
| which is just as much a fault with the ethics of society for
| allowing this to go on:
|
| - adverts seeks to hijack your attention away from whatever you
| were doing, which is a mental burden resulting diminished
| performance (in the case of a work environment), is downright
| dangerous in the case of traffic environments and lessens the
| enjoyment in the case of leisure activities.
|
| - there is little to no ethical restriction on content; the
| advert that gets displayed is likely not that of the best
| product: it is the one whose owner paid the most money, and the
| ad that gets the most traction is the one that tells the best
| story, so perfused with lies by omission and other forms of
| deceit that we don't even notice any more.
|
| - the ubiquity of ads causes an perpetual escalation of the
| struggle for attention, to the extent that we might credibly
| expect to get ads implanted in our brains eventually if we don't
| say enough is enough.
|
| The solution seems simple enough to me: we need to establish a
| code of conduct for advertisers which at the core means that they
| may no longer shove ads down our throats at every junction;
| instead adverts should be freely displayed in separate spaces
| (like a dedicated page on each website) where people voluntarily
| could look for products and services that they need (or just to
| browse), much like the ad pages in newspapers of days now long
| gone by.
|
| All we need is a mechanism that promotes this behavior, and
| sanctions breaches.
| snarfy wrote:
| If my attention has value, then hijacking it is a form of
| theft.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Awesome. I never thought about it that way. Perfect counter
| argument to people who act like we're stealing from them when
| we block their mind hacking attempts.
| dionidium wrote:
| This is actually a nice little reductio argument against the
| notion that your attention has value (at least in the sense
| you imply). If the proposition "my attention has value" leads
| to an absurd conclusion ("hijacking my attention is a form of
| theft"), then the premise must be false.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Why is the conclusion absurd? Sounds perfectly reasonable
| to me. Comparing it to theft is actually a very generous
| interpretation. To me advertising is more like mind rape
| for profit. Someone pays money to violate your mind and
| insert into it whatever noise they want whether you consent
| to it or not.
| dionidium wrote:
| How is that different from what you are doing to me right
| now?
| ganzuul wrote:
| Yeah dude. That is your life being stolen in a very real way.
| Imagine if you had your life flash by your eyes in an NDE and
| 5% was advertisements.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| If my attention has value, then not being paid for it is
| theft
| indigochill wrote:
| Someone is being paid for it - the content
| provider/location you've given your attention to. They're
| just selling it off to third parties without your consent.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I think people would be more likely to consent if they
| were paid for it. Brave browser does something like that
| mixedCase wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate given my beliefs on ads, but value
| does not imply property rights.
| blackboxlogic wrote:
| If my attention has value, then the exchange should be taxed.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| This is true if it is a barter exchange (under U.S. tax law
| at least). However I have a hard time seeing this as a
| barter - what are you getting in exchange for your
| attention that has a positive fair market value?
| blackboxlogic wrote:
| "You can view this content if you also stare at these
| ads. If you don't want to see the ads then don't visit
| this webpage." Sounds like an exchange to me.
|
| Edit: aren't "donations" received by a for-profit also
| taxable?
|
| Edit2: items of value acquired by theft are taxable.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > You can view this content if you also stare at these
| ads. If you don't want to see the ads then don't visit
| this webpage.
|
| How can I even decide to agree or not before I visit the
| page? Bet they also fingerprint you before the consent
| pop ups even make it to the screen.
|
| How about they stop serving web pages for free instead?
| Just return 402 Payment Required. If they send me ads, I
| will delete them.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| Yes, you are correct. I was still thinking of the content
| being "free", but it's not if you provide something to
| get it.
|
| Of course to actually impose income tax on these
| transactions would be nearly impossible. For the
| business, they would at least have expenses to deduct
| against the barter income, but for the private individual
| it would hobby income, with no deductions available.
| Also, how would FMV be established? The attention of a
| high-wealth person inclined to spend money is obviously
| worth more than that of someone of more modest means who
| spends very frugally, yet they both receive the same
| content in exchange. And if the FMV ends up being on the
| order of a dollar or two, it's not worth anyone's time to
| track it and report it.
| blackboxlogic wrote:
| Re: business expense deductions, I think businesses
| already handle those.
|
| Re: taxing private individuals' micro attention "income",
| could be handled like "use" tax. I think my state allows
| me to list purchases I made online and shipped into my
| state so I can pay sales tax for them, or to take the "I
| don't know, just charge me the average amount" option.
| Maybe YouTube needs to send me a W2 each March which
| itemizes all the "work" I've done for them?
|
| Re: fair market value, doesn't seem hard when there is an
| option to pay dollars for a service instead of watching
| ads, you just found out how much your attention is worth.
| Attention FMV could be standardized by the IRS like
| milage reimbursement (58.5 cents/mile in 2022) regardless
| of the exact cost of /your/ miles.
|
| Edit: I'm not suggesting this would be good or easy but
| it would acknowledge that an entire industry is dodging
| taxes and degrading our quality of life. Also, were I
| king, this tax would be quite high (to reflect the harm
| to society) and would be the responsibility of the
| advertiser.
| botev wrote:
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| In the Bay Area, from the peninsula, take 280 to SF instead of
| 101 - that'll demonstrate the difference instantly.
| cs702 wrote:
| Like almost everyone else on HN, I believe everyone should have
| the right to block ads in any city, and it should be possible
| with VR technology in the not-too-distant future.
|
| That said, I would always want to live in a city in which
| advertisers are constantly fighting each other to get everyone's
| attention with ads, in every possible way, _to the extent
| permitted by reasonable zone /cosmetic regulations_[a], because
| the alternative is often symptomatic of economic stagnation or
| even disaster.
|
| Anecdotally, a city without ads is a city without economic
| growth. Compare:
|
| * Cities in the former Soviet Union:
| https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=soviet%20union%20ci...
|
| * Cities in North Korea:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=north+korea+city+streets&tbm...
|
| * Cities in East Germany before reunification:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=east+germany+city+streets+be...
|
| to, say,
|
| * Peking streets:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=peking+streets&tbm=isch
|
| * Tokyo streets:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=tokyo+streets&tbm=isch
|
| * Times Square:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=times+square+nyc&tbm=isch
|
| --
|
| [a] For example, in the US it is virtually impossible to display
| ads on residential streets, because doing so requires getting
| explicit permission from local government bodies like a
| neighborhood commission.
| zephyrthenoble wrote:
| This is an example of correlation without causation, even if
| your assertion that these cities are "dead cities without
| growth".
| surajs wrote:
| whalesalad wrote:
| I am hoping for a membership service (think Clear vs TSA PRE)
| that allows you to avoid ads on all (digital) platforms. YouTube
| and Twitter are becoming so terrible with advertisements these
| days. I don't want to complain about it though - I want to just
| pay some $$$ to not see them anymore.
|
| We went all-in on this advertising based economy and no one
| really wants it but the advertisers.
| paxys wrote:
| You can do exactly that on YouTube (with Premium). It is one of
| the highest value memberships I can think of, considering how
| much time I (and the rest of the world) spend on YouTube every
| day.
|
| Ultimately though, all such solutions turn into yet another
| money grab. Cable TV was supposed to be this premium ad-free
| experience, but media conglomerates realized hey, why not get
| money out of both subscriptions _and_ ads?
| whalesalad wrote:
| I just wish there was a one-size-fits-all approach.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > media conglomerates realized hey, why not get money out of
| both subscriptions and ads?
|
| This is exactly the reason why I advocate against YT Premium.
| You're still providing data to Google (and you need to
| provide real data otherwise the payment may fail) who has
| proven their bad faith several times with dark patterns and
| their non-GDPR-compliant "consent" flow.
| [deleted]
| timzaman wrote:
| Google Fi prides itself on blocking spam calls. Yet its business
| depends on the same cause: ads and marketing
| golemiprague wrote:
| Nasreddin_Hodja wrote:
| I don't block ads especially, I'm OK with them. I block requests
| to 3rd party hosts, this also blocks ads too
| Miner49er wrote:
| Reminds me of this Banksy quote: People are
| taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life,
| take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you
| from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant
| comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that
| all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making
| your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most
| sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully
| you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at
| you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them.
| Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean
| advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total
| impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space
| that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's
| yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you
| like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock
| someone just threw at your head. You owe the
| companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe
| them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world
| to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your
| permission, don't even start asking for theirs. -
| Banksy
| blackhaz wrote:
| Fuck that indeed. Very strong message here, and I love it. I
| wish I could take all those ads and shove them into their
| asses. But what is being suggested here? What's mine to take?
| If I see an ad, can I reuse the artwork? No. If I see a car, I
| can't just copy it's design. Can I just paint over it, or rip
| it apart? No, that would be vandalism. As much as I hate ads,
| THEY have re-arranged the world by paying for it in a free
| market, and we must respect that. Soviet Union had very little
| ads. So, yes, we must ask permission until we figure out a
| better way.
| ouid wrote:
| Banksy is talking about moral right, not legal right. This is
| obvious unless you're being intentionally dense. He is saying
| that you have cosmic permission to perform acts of vandalism
| to advertisements. As long as you don't get caught, you're
| alright with your chosen deity or whatever.
|
| It's a pretty strong philosophical argument in that
| direction, in my opinion.
|
| If you're disagreeing with _that_ point, you should be
| explicit. You 're arguing that these companies are paying for
| the advertising, but they aren't paying you to throw the
| rocks at your head, they're paying the building from which
| they obtain their vantage point. I don't think that actually
| qualifies as "paying for it", morally.
| [deleted]
| boneitis wrote:
| > moral right, not legal right
|
| Thank you, this pretty neatly covers what I would have
| liked to add but couldn't find words for.
|
| I find it pleasing to approach his approach as works and
| displays of art. Are they explicit calls to aggressive,
| rebellious arms? Maybe. Is he selling out from
| commercializing on his art? Perhaps. I don't really care to
| respond directly to either of those questions here.
|
| Mainly want to give a shoutout to his Barcode stencil,
| which made a really big impression on me so far (I haven't
| finished the Banksy book that I found it in) and that I
| think is pretty fitting here. Looking around on the web, it
| seems there are variants, but the one with the leopard is
| great.
| losteric wrote:
| Breaking laws comes with punishments but we are still free to
| break laws. In some situations, there may even be an ethical
| imperative to break the law.
| DarylZero wrote:
| > Can I just paint over it, or rip it apart?
|
| That's what Banksy does and says "yes" to.
|
| > No, that would be vandalism.
|
| So what? That's just a word.
|
| > As much as I hate ads, THEY have re-arranged the world by
| paying for it in a free market, and we must respect that.
|
| LOL, but why "must we"? You have no reasoning, no
| justification.
| blackhaz wrote:
| It's not just a word, it's a law, from UK's Criminal Damage
| Act 1971: "A person who without lawful excuse destroys or
| damages any property belonging to another intending to
| destroy or damage any such property or being reckless as to
| whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged
| shall be guilty of an offence."
|
| But whether we should change that law is probably an off-
| topic here. All I am saying is that we must respect the
| law. If we don't agree with the law, we must try to change
| it, and not just go about destroying each other's property.
| [deleted]
| itisit wrote:
| > If we don't agree with the law, we must try to change
| it, and not just go about destroying each other's
| property.
|
| But in the case of vandalizing advertisements, breaking
| the law is a risk some of us are gleefully willing to
| take.
| _dain_ wrote:
| nobody goes to jail for scribbling over an ad
| squarefoot wrote:
| Or painting flowers, which could indeed be treated as
| vandalism, but that way would also attract too much
| public attention to the cause, which is something the
| higher powers would avoid as much as possible.
| DarylZero wrote:
| What does it mean to say "we must respect the law"?
| Banksy demonstrates that this is not true. You only need
| to avoid law enforcement.
|
| It seems to me, of course I have no way of knowing, but
| it SEEMS to me that you are NOT EVEN AWARE that you're
| not making arguments.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Most cities in my country have multiple street cameras on
| every corner. Good luck "avoiding the law" here.
| hermes8329 wrote:
| How do those camera work at night with a peep wearing a
| ski mask? Or even an IR hat
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| They manage just fine. About 8-9 months ago they were
| used to find a couple of vandals who were destroying bus
| stops at night. The cops traced them from camera to
| camera and sent a patrol car as a welcoming party.
| runarberg wrote:
| There are still ways around that. A small act of sabotage
| is not worth the enforcement for most police agencies,
| unless you live in a very fascist country. So a small
| precaution might be enough to avoid it.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Most cities have mask requirements and many cities like
| SF won't even followup on these types of crimes. The more
| cameras exist on street corners the less likely the
| police will get involved.
| vaylian wrote:
| Which is the next problem. Again, a highly asymmetric
| relationship between the surveillants and the surveilled
| people.
| shukantpal wrote:
| We don't have to treat each other as humans, either, by
| that logic.
| Timwi wrote:
| Correct. I don't treat people as humans out of logic. I
| do it out of compassion and empathy.
|
| I do not have compassion or empathy for ads.
| emteycz wrote:
| Who said you should extend that logic from advertising to
| personal relationships?
| shukantpal wrote:
| I don't have a personal relationship with you.
| emteycz wrote:
| People-to-people relationships, sorry for my English, I'm
| not a native speaker.
| hammock wrote:
| That is so true! And just as there are people who
| dehumanize, there are laws which do the same.
| DarylZero wrote:
| There's no "logic" at all here. All I did was point out
| how the other person didn't even make an argument.
|
| Nor did you. You just appeal to some popular notion that
| everyone already agrees with ("treat humans like
| humans"). Then you suggest this is the same as the other
| thing, again giving no reason.
|
| Maybe you really can give reason to someone, who abuses
| people, not to do it. To treat humans as humans. But you
| would have to delude yourself to think you already did it
| here.
| shukantpal wrote:
| You are making an argument here, that the other person
| didn't make an argument; that means you were applying
| logic.
|
| Your logic is that there's nothing stopping you from
| breaking societal norms and doing whatever you have the
| physical capability to do. Therefore, you can destroy
| property you don't like (advertisements). You can extend
| that logic to say that you "can" abuse humans.
|
| But your logic totally misses societal context. When
| someone says "can", they aren't talking about pure
| physical capability. That's why no one in their right
| mind will say "I can stab you".
| DarylZero wrote:
| Sorry to say, you have failed to comprehend the thread.
|
| > Your logic is that there's nothing stopping you from
| breaking societal norms and doing whatever you have the
| physical capability to do. Therefore, you can destroy
| property you don't like (advertisements).
|
| Who said anything about "societal norms"?
|
| You are just inventing things. You invent an appeal to
| social norms, then you invent a reply to it.
|
| In fact, all I did was point out how no justification was
| even given for a claim.
|
| I didn't make any logical response to the non-argument
| (which wouldn't make sense to even try), instead I made a
| meta-response ABOUT the fact of non-argument.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Social norms can be accepting of such activities if you
| surround yourself with a like minded group.
|
| Living within whatever social norms exist is common but
| progressives and activists try to break the social norm.
| Taboos are real and get broken everyday.. cousins date,
| 70 year old women and getting together with 20 year olds,
| there are mothers who hate their kids.
|
| Each social rule broken can have punishments.. wearing
| white after labor day can get you not invited to a social
| event. But that doesn't mean you should imprison yourself
| trying to live within other people's rules. Drawing a
| funny face on an ad has a low punishment rate, low chance
| of being cast out of society vs stabbing someone
| randomly. You can reject some rules and follow others. It
| has always been your choice.
| shukantpal wrote:
| Thanks for stating the obvious.
| b3morales wrote:
| Are you saying that the only reason to treat other humans
| well is because the law says you must?
|
| I would say that is precisely backwards: one _should_
| treat other humans well, for a variety of reasons. We
| write that down in law as a shared agreement. But the law
| is not _itself_ the reason -- it springs from the
| reasons.
| cataphract wrote:
| If you're saying that everyone should/must follow the law
| in all circumstances, that's an extreme position few
| people would agree with. This would mean inform on Jews
| to the Nazis or returning slaves to their owners under
| the Fugitives Slaves Act, to take an example from a
| democracy. That's even without considering that many laws
| are somewhat indeterminate, internally inconsistent or at
| odds with other laws.
|
| If you're saying that there is an a priori moral
| presumption that laws should be followed, maybe because
| they represent (possibly) some sort of societal
| consensus, than that is a closer question, but it doesn't
| resolve the question of whether the legal rights of the
| advertisers ought to, in a moral sense, be respected.
|
| Note though that even the US judiciary doesn't make much
| of a legal mandate with no penalties attached (see the
| last Obamacare case to reach SCOTUS).
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Legal laws are also just words. It's not like you can
| reproduce punishment for vandalism in a laboratory with a
| bunch of stones.
| berkes wrote:
| You shouldn't do it publicly and with your name and face with
| it. You aren't legally allowed to.
|
| But that is far away from "can't". Hardly anyone is going to
| stop you from drawing a moustache on a poster or from
| stickering a snarky remark over an ad or from spray painting
| your opinion about some advertised product on said ad.
| [deleted]
| Hizonner wrote:
| Why, exactly, would anybody "respect that"?
| sideshowb wrote:
| Well maybe don't take legal advice from a graffiti artist?
| _shrug_
| [deleted]
| duxup wrote:
| > Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether
| you see it or not is yours
|
| Welcome to public spaces?
|
| Life involves maybe seeing things, idea, people you don't like.
| That's not inherently bad.
| berkes wrote:
| Then why is Coca Cola allowed to promote their proven harmful
| sugar juices in that space, but am I not allowed to oppose
| that promotion in the same space?
|
| What is allowed and tolerated in that public space is skewed,
| an unfair. Certainly not balanced.
| duxup wrote:
| It sounds like you just substitute what you don't like for
| what want to see?
|
| I don't think that had anything to do with what I said.
|
| Although I'm curious What would a not "skewed" public space
| looks like, and how do you manage that?
| rolph wrote:
| the whole point is you dont manage a public space, we do.
| the public space is a construct of what we allow it to be
| marklubi wrote:
| > Then why is Coca Cola allowed to promote their proven
| harmful sugar juices in that space, but am I not allowed to
| oppose that promotion in the same space?
|
| You are certainly allowed to. Pony up for the ad space if
| you want to promote the opposite, or advertise something
| else entirely.
| standardUser wrote:
| Selling harmful things is profitable. Opposing harmful
| things is expensive. Because of this asymmetric warfare,
| and because we are human beings more concerned about
| other human beings than concepts like brand awareness, it
| seems like regulating the messaging in pubic spaces makes
| sense.
| DarylZero wrote:
| This is war, ain't no rules. No such thing as "allowed."
| drorco wrote:
| I think there's never an end to it.
|
| A paleo fan will think the same about a vegan/carbs ad, and
| so would an anti-vaxxer about a conventional health poster.
|
| Harmful ideas can, and will reach those who are susceptible
| to it. I think the right way to oppose harmful ideas, is by
| gaining the education that would allow you, and others in
| society to judge such ideas.
|
| The alternative of forbidding ads in public, is essentially
| censorship and making society even weaker as one way or
| another, harmful ideas will reach each and every one of us,
| and when they do, the less susceptible we are, the better.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Because whoever owns the space where they're placing the
| billboard lets them?
|
| What if coca cola decided that they didn't like the color
| of your house, should they be allowed to change it because
| it can be seen from the public space?
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Street musicians. Draaiorgels (youtube it but keep your
| finger close to mute). Protestors. Homeless. Tourists.
| English tourists. Pigeons.
|
| Why do we live in a city again?
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Sao Paulo made all billboards and ads illegal. It's a thing.
| People can do it if they want. I'm pretty sure they don't
| allow billboards in some states in the US.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Seems Brazil still has its priorities straight.
| drorco wrote:
| It brings up an interesting question.
|
| I live in Israel where there are constant conflicts about
| what is OK to be shown in public, especially between the
| religious and non-religious. In Jerusalem for example, some
| ultra-orthodox often vandalize any kind of poster that shows
| a woman in it. They just tear-out/spray over the women on the
| poster. Some are ridiculous cases where they defaced a poster
| of an old woman who survived the holocaust:
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/female-holocaust-survivors-
| por...
|
| Even other groups could be pissed by posters that include
| things about women's hygiene or show models in swimsuits. In
| their eyes these are things they make a lot of effort to
| block from the eyes of their families, and having it in
| public breaches the culture and education they try to
| maintain. This is by itself interesting as public adverts can
| penetrate the most strict censorship that religious groups
| and cults maintain.
|
| Seculars on the other hand can also be pissed about anti-
| abortion adverts, religious propaganda, scientology, etc. and
| ask for them to be banned.
|
| As someone who's trying to be a "free-thinker" and tries to
| promote it, I think there's no point in hiding in a bubble,
| blocking yourself from seeing other ideas, even if they're
| crappy advertisements. All of this as long as the
| adverts/ideas fit within the aesthetics of the city they're
| in.
|
| The risk of doing so is essentially losing free-thinking and
| some sort of communication with isolated social groups.
| b3morales wrote:
| Can we make a distinction between postings for different
| purposes, though? For example, commercial, political, and
| public education. Do a Coca-cola billboard, a sign
| advocating a piece of legislation, and a poster about the
| local library all get the exact same level of deference?
| drorco wrote:
| Yes. There are laws in some countries for example that
| make the advertising of Tobacco illegal. That's a form of
| censorship people can say is reasonable, but it can also
| be a slippery slope towards harsher censorship around
| other things people might find harmful - the female body,
| sugar, gambling, abortion, meat, etc.
|
| The question is if you want to give the government such a
| broad spectrum to censor, in which they'd start judging
| whether or not a product might be deemed potentially
| harmful.
| jtdev wrote:
| user3939382 wrote:
| Without getting into the politics of the personhood (or lack
| thereof) of corporations, we can say at least that it's not
| quite that simple since there have been places (is Sao Paulo
| one?) that have banned outdoor advertising. That means the
| representatives of the people there came to a consensus that
| corporate marketing is not on equal footing with the
| expression of other ideas.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| Seems like perfectly curated marketing. But I do admit I am
| outraged when a row of stupid fucking scooters blocks my entire
| running path, when it's clearly a location no one would ever
| rent a scooter, rather they are there to deliberately block the
| path for no other purpose than obnoxious exposure of their
| brand.
|
| I'd love for there to be DAOs to combat those scooter
| companies, say for example by blocking the executives' front
| doors, cars, garages, offices with giant billboards or vending
| machines.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Aggressively move the scooters out of the way:
| https://youtu.be/ab9TYsIItyM
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I think most of those scooters were destroyed in quick order
| in my town. I'm sure a bunch ended up in the river.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Copenhagen residents became sufficiently outraged that hire
| scooters were banned from the city centre.
|
| https://1www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-
| back...
| ipaddr wrote:
| Not really. This 3 year pilothas many restrictions like you
| can only be parked in one of 240 designated areas. You
| can't rent in the city core.
|
| This is about balancing normal scooter uses advertising
| [deleted]
| jventura wrote:
| Fixed url: https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-
| allowed-back-...
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _I'd love for there to be DAOs to combat those scooter
| companies, say for example by blocking the executives' front
| doors, cars, garages, offices with giant billboards or
| vending machines._
|
| Interesting. I don't think one can legitimise just about
| anything with DAOs. But DAOs do represent a form of group
| think, an in-group, a collective, so that's there too.
|
| I wonder if GreenPeace / Amnesty / XR / Anti-FA et al have
| experimented with DAOs.
| rideontime wrote:
| You wonder if GreenPeace is getting involved in crypto?
| throwawaycities wrote:
| Well crowdfunding makes sense, but as a DAO members could
| use the token to apply their own adverts on the billboards
| attached to the scooter executives' houses, cars and
| offices. Not sure what type of utility those non-profits
| could build into a token.
|
| Still I'm not opposed to it being a traditional non-profit,
| it might be possible to obtain 501(c)(3) tax exemption as a
| charity under the purpose of "combating community
| deterioration."
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _...as a DAO, members could use the token to apply
| their own adverts on the billboards_
|
| Ah, gotcha. That's an interesting take. A DAO to govern
| "retail" activist investors / lobby-groups / think-tank,
| if you will.
| dionidium wrote:
| Scooters are great. No scooter every meaningfully impacted my
| life in a city. Cars, on the other hand. Boy, if you hate
| scooters laying around just wait until you hear about these
| things clogging up every road. Drivers leave them on the
| street over night! Their personal property and they
| just...leave them parked all over the city. And they're way
| bigger than scooters. They block the roads. They're loud.
| They pollute. And they actually kill people! It's crazy! Tens
| of thousands of people every year!
|
| The only reason you're commenting here about how much you
| hate scooters and not how much you hate cars is that cars
| were here when you were born, so they look to you like a
| natural feature of the universe, while scooters are new, so
| there's a lively debate about them. But there's really no
| comparison. Cars are the much bigger problem.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| > if you hate scooters laying around just wait until you
| hear about these things clogging up every road.
|
| I love whataboutism.
|
| I'm very fascinated to know how you live in such a fashion
| that you purchase food and other products that sustain your
| life that in no way utilize roadways. Or are you just
| virtue signaling and personally contribute to this road
| traffic you hate so much and is the real "problem" by
| purchasing things from the supply chain?
|
| Roads are made for cars, so it's expected cars use them for
| legal purposes like driving. What wouldn't be expected is
| if companies began littering roads with their shit products
| and marketing which blocked the roadways and put drivers at
| risk of accidents. If I saw companies creating traffic
| through illegal littering and marketing that obstructs the
| roadway, that would bother me.
|
| Side walks, running/bike paths are also made for specific
| purposes, those lawful purposes don't include companies
| littering them with their commercial products and
| marketing.
| midasuni wrote:
| The road outside my house was there on the oldest deeds I
| have, from 1830. Was that built for cars? What about the
| roads in town that were mentioned in writings in the
| 1400s?
| throwawaycities wrote:
| > Was that built for cars?
|
| You tell me are cars and traffic a big problem on that
| road? Would it be a problem if companies started dumping
| their products/marketing on that road to obstruct it?
| dionidium wrote:
| As a meta point "whataboutism" is a very stupid concept.
| We obviously evaluate things by comparison to other
| things and by their relationship to other related issues.
| Cars and scooters compete for public space and are
| directly comparable. If you're locked in a room with a
| kitten and a lion and I hear you complaining about the
| kitten, then it's not "whataboutism" to explain to you
| that you've got bigger problems.
|
| Second, roads predate cars by thousands of years, so, no,
| they weren't "made for cars." Some actual roads existing
| today predate the cars on them by hundreds of years.
|
| Third, the supply chain argument is very lazy and easily
| refuted. Most of the problematic car usage in my
| neighborhood has nothing to do with the supply chain. We
| can get your products delivered without building cities
| primarily for individual automobile traffic.
|
| The most important detail in this discussion is that cars
| existed when you were born and you were raised in a
| society where they were normalized. Therefore, you regard
| them as a natural, unchangeable feature of the universe.
| Scooters are new, so you expect a lively debate about
| their use. This is the detail that informs everything
| about our disagreement.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| > Cars and scooters compete for public space and are
| directly comparable.
|
| You seem to have a very difficult time understanding
| nuance.
|
| I didn't complain about scooters, I complained about
| companies dumping their commercial scooters on pedestrian
| paths specifically for obnoxious marketing purposes.
|
| A scooter is fine if you want to own one and you don't
| use it to obstruct pedestrian paths for
| commercial/marketing purposes. But to start dropping your
| commercial products and commercial marketing in the
| middle of paths (or roads for that matter) is the
| problem.
|
| You brought up roads and cars and traffic as the "bigger
| problem". Now you're suggesting the roads you are talking
| about were not built for cars. Are the roads you brought
| up with all those cars and traffic not made for for
| vehicles? Or you are taking about vehicles clogging up
| ancient Roman roads?
|
| I'd like to engage you but you seem like a troll. Good
| luck with that.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _I complained about companies dumping their commercial
| scooters on pedestrian paths specifically for obnoxious
| marketing purposes._
|
| When I think of obnoxious transportation marketing I
| think first of stuff like this:
|
| https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2021/08/16/opinion-muscle-
| car-ma...
|
| In one Dodge Charger ad they literally show a sign that
| reads "share the road" impaling a tree as their car blows
| past at a speed that's not legal on any road in the
| country you'd find that sign on.
|
| The fact that their automobiles kill and maim pedestrians
| and cyclists at a regular clip is a feature of their
| marketing campaign. It's so preposterous and brazen that
| I still sort of can't believe it exists.
|
| The automakers know their cars are used irresponsibly and
| they literally feature that in their marketing. I'm sorry
| I just can't get upset about a scooter lying on the
| sidewalk by comparison.
| bjoli wrote:
| Is you best argument "what about cars"? Scooters are a
| problem because they go fast among pedestrians. Cars
| usually don't, and when they donit is usually labelled
| terrorism.
|
| I think a good comparison is a bike:
|
| Bikers usually stay either on the road or on a bike path.
| When they go in pedestrian zones, their rather bad
| manouverability make bikers go slow or get off.
|
| Just one week ago I was hit by a scooter going over 20km/h
| in a crowded pedestrian zone. Shit like that has become
| common, whereas the number of times I have seen someone do
| that on a bike can be counted on one hand.
| midasuni wrote:
| I don't know about your country but in my country 500
| people a week are killed or seriously injured by cars.
| dionidium wrote:
| Yes, because cars and scooters occupy and compete for the
| same space and the difference between them is so large
| that anybody who thinks scooters are the bigger issue is
| in my view either totally blind to the problems with
| automobiles or lying. I don't acknowledge a third
| possibility. Cars are orders of magnitude more
| problematic in cities than scooters. That's not
| hyperbole. They are literally orders of magnitude more
| problematic.
|
| If you're locked in a room with a lion and a kitten and I
| hear you complaining about the kitten, then I'm going to
| think you're either very confused or lying.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| this might not be the best site to start that particular
| argument on because you will find a lot of people who would
| sign exactly what you're trying to say sarcastically,
| namely that cars are a menace to urban life and cities that
| get rid of them should be applauded.
|
| And if you've never been annoyed by scooters you are lucky,
| because when that craze started in my city not only were
| people driving them like maniacs, they left them on
| sidewalks to the point where people were so pissed off they
| just started to throw them into the river.
| midasuni wrote:
| s/scooters/cars in your last paragraph describes the vast
| majority of cities in the U.K
| 323 wrote:
| > _Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice
| whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-
| arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it.
| Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone
| just threw at your head._
|
| Funnily enough, you can say the same thing about Bansky's art:
|
| > _An artist who defaced several works of famed graffiti artist
| Banksy has been charged with the crime of vandalism -- which is
| pretty incredible since Banksy 's collection is itself an act
| of vandalism_
|
| https://www.tmz.com/2014/04/02/banksy-david-william-noll-ric...
|
| What a hypocrite:
|
| > _The E.U. Rules Against Banksy in His Trademark Fight With a
| Greeting Card Company, Citing His Own Statement That 'Copyright
| Is For Losers'_
|
| https://news.artnet.com/art-world/banksy-trademark-full-colo...
| paulclinger wrote:
| I read his call as being specifically directed at ads, rather
| than all public works (like his work), so I don't really see
| the contradiction.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| What are you gaining by arguing this? What point are you
| trying to make? Do you really think an artist who hand-paints
| pieces on walls is comparable to a corporation that copy-
| pastes their flashing, carefully targeted, profit-seeking
| message onto dozens of billboards overlooking a highway? Are
| their motives and the results of their work not wildly
| different?
|
| Your second example is valid. But your first example is a
| complete strawman. Bansky didn't sue, the property owner did,
| because they _liked_ Banksy 's thing and _didn 't like_ what
| the vandal did.
| 323 wrote:
| A lot of times people who loudly yell "fuck the system" are
| also quietly using the system when it suits them, that's my
| point. Bansky is no "dismantle the capitalism" hero or
| whatever pedestal people have him on.
| jrm4 wrote:
| This argument, most of the time, is _just bad and not
| smart._ "If you hate capitalism, why do you use iPads?
| etc." It's dreck and it should stop because it's rarely
| constructive.
|
| Sometimes it's a necessary tool. Sometimes people are
| experimenting. Sometimes people do actually sell out.
|
| The problem with this argument is that it tries to shut
| down the above questions.
|
| Details matter, and bad arguments like the above rarely
| help.
| runarberg wrote:
| A few counterpoints I've heard over the years include:
|
| * The prevailing system will never be toppled by the
| conscious choice of the individual consumer.
|
| * No one person has the power to overturn capitalism, no
| matter how persistent.
|
| * There is no such thing as ethical consumption under
| capitalism.
| jrm4 wrote:
| All these points are doing the stupid thing of presuming
| a clear controllable definition of capitalism; when in
| reality, no "ism" is a controllable unified entity.
|
| People will always and forever make mutually beneficial
| trades, probably with money.
|
| Now, will people also always have the opportunity to
| freely invest sums of money in imaginary chopped up
| pieces of a corporation without fear of financial
| liability should they cause a great deal of harm? Maybe
| not, because Gamestop is teaching us a lot of things.
|
| Regardless of what happens, the dumb thing is presuming
| that these two things are both the exact same thing
| called "capitalism."
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >There is no such thing as ethical consumption under
| capitalism.
|
| That's such a useless statement that even were it true,
| it proves the parent's point. That moral judgement
| doesn't lead us closer to a world without capitalism. Go
| to any haven of anti-capitalism and ask for a link to the
| manual they have for getting from HERE to THERE. Not even
| a theory on how to dismantle what we have.
|
| FWIW personally I think capitalism is the worst system,
| other than all the others. Rein it in, set principles in
| stone for what we expect and demand from our system, but
| markets shouldn't magically disappear because we've lost
| control once.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| I hear you; the copyright case especially shows that he
| is no paragon of anti-capitalism. But I think it's worth
| maintaining that (1) some things are worse than other
| things and (2) motive matters and (3) imperfect people
| can still make good points.
|
| I have never, ever felt like a piece of Banksy's art, or
| any original piece of visual artwork for that matter, is
| being shoved down my throat. They're quiet, static,
| relatively low in number, and easily avoidable &
| ignorable. I've never felt distracted or distressed
| because my local coffee shop has a new mural on their
| wall, and nobody has ever forced me to walk through an
| art museum in order to get to the grocery store. On the
| other hand, advertisements are loud, moving, insanely
| numerous, and totally non-optional. My local subway and
| subway stations are plastered in advertisements; if I
| want to transit _anywhere_ , I must endure them.
|
| Plus, the motives are different! Sure, Banksy or
| $artist_name likely want folks to find their art
| appealing and then compensate them somehow, via buying
| copies, commissioning new art, spreading their
| reputation, whatever. But advertisers do not care if you
| found their ad appealing; they just want you to buy their
| _product_. In fact, many ads are purposely obnoxious or
| abhorrent just because it 's an effective way to bring
| your attention towards their product. How dystopian is
| that?
|
| And yes, there's some irony in Banksy, as someone who
| occasionally benefits from copyright law, to be making
| this point. But that doesn't make him wrong! And, it'd be
| far more ironic if, I don't know, Sergey Brin or someone
| else who use _hugely_ benefited from advertising and
| copyright law were making the point.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Multiply it times a billion. One Banksy is tolerable, a
| million people graffiting their opinions everywhere would
| be truly awful. Therefore what Banksy is doing is
| immoral.
| bigjimmyjohnson wrote:
| I disagree with the scale multiplier being a metric of
| morality. If one ice cream truck drives down my street,
| it puts me in a good mood even if I don't want to buy any
| ice cream from them. A continuous parade of ice cream
| trucks would be maddening. But that doesn't mean the ice
| cream truck driver who actually exists is behaving
| poorly.
| xphx wrote:
| One Jesus of Nazareth is tolerable, a million people
| preaching their opinions everywhere would be truly awful.
| Therefore what Jesus was doing is immoral.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Do you believe he doesn't have some sort of affiliate
| manager or pr department managing media and social media
| presence?
| jjulius wrote:
| >I hear you; the copyright case especially shows that he
| is no paragon of anti-capitalism.
|
| Does it, though? The linked TMZ article suggests the
| lawsuit was filed by the Los Angeles DA on behalf of the
| property owner whose property lost value because of the
| defacement. It doesn't appear that Banksy himself is
| involved in the lawsuit.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| The postcard copyright lawsuit, not the vandalism case.
| jjulius wrote:
| Ah, duh; forgive me for HN'ing while still waking up!
| b3morales wrote:
| It is similar to the logic of nations desiring peace but
| having an armed force for defense. If you are attacked
| and you refuse to engage in that system, disarming
| unilaterally, you may avoid violence, but at a loss of
| other values. Using the system judiciously can enable you
| to disengage from it in the longer term.
|
| The tradeoffs for choosing this path will be different
| for different situations, but I don't think it's fair to
| say that taking advantage of rules you claim to hate is
| always clear-cut hypocrisy.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > It is similar to the logic of nations desiring peace
| but having an armed force for defense.
|
| The whole point of having a strong defense force is to
| have peace. People don't start wars with a strong
| opponent, only a weak one.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Defense forces in some places serve in other defense
| capacities outside of military conflict. I would say they
| are quite desirable even in places you mentioned
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Banksy is a commercial enterprise, though. There is a
| financial benefit to putting their work in places where the
| public is forced to see it. By raising their public
| profile, they're also raising the prices they can charge
| for other work. It is, in a very real sense, advertising.
|
| I'm a fan, but there's still a point to be made here.
| Banksy works on public sites do function in part as ads.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| I agree, she/he/them are champagne socialists.
|
| And his quote in the top post is hypocritical, at least
| the advertisers pay for displaying the ads, banksy
| appears to use the anarchist non payment approach.
|
| Maybe all his revenue goes to charity but I sense an
| artist complaining about capitalism while laughing to the
| bank.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| I think it's critically different from advertising
| because the art is also the product itself. You're meant
| to enjoy the art for what it is. An ad on the other hand,
| is meant to encourage you to buy a separate product; this
| can be effective even if you absolutely hate the ad.
|
| A more apt comparison would be a company giving out free
| samples. If you get a free sample of a delicious new
| cheese brand, you might talk about it to others and raise
| their public profile. But that only works if the cheese
| is delicious. On the other hand, an ad might just rudely
| scream "KRAFT MAC AND CHEESE" at you for twenty seconds
| in hopes of subconsciously leading you to buy their
| product when you see it in the store later that week.
| blackboxlogic wrote:
| I'm not sure the author's intent is a good indicator of
| if the "art" will be a positive force in the community.
| Here's a local anecdote to the contrary.
| https://www.pressherald.com/2013/02/24/court-order-walk-
| whil...
| Retric wrote:
| I see nothing hypocritical about either of those. The vandal
| wasn't sued by the artist who may have approved.
|
| In the second case I find greeting cars as objectionable as
| street billboards.
| 323 wrote:
| So you called that artist a "vandal". Would you also call
| Bansky a "vandal"?
|
| Some people find unapproved grafitti objectionable. How do
| you feel about that?
| jjulius wrote:
| So I'm not trying to defend Banksy specifically here...
|
| >So you called that artist a "vandal". Would you also
| call Bansky a "vandal"?
|
| He can be both, "vandal" and "artist" aren't mutually
| exclusive.
|
| >Some people find unapproved grafitti objectionable. How
| do you feel about that?
|
| I'm not answering for the person you're responding to,
| but for me, I'd say I feel fine about that. There are
| people who find nudity in art objectionable; who object
| to the Mona Lisa; to surreal art; to abstract art; to
| land art; to a specific artist; to an artistic medium.
| There's always going to be someone who objects to some
| form of art, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
| greggman3 wrote:
| Objecting to unapproved grafitti is not about "is it
| art". it's about property destruction. If you disagree
| then I'll be happy to come over to your house and paint
| whatever "I want" on your house, your car, and TV, your
| computer, your sofa. If you'd be upset that I painted
| your stuff then you agree with the people who see it as
| property destruction. If you'd be upset for your own
| stuff but not when that stuff belongs to someone else
| then you're just being hypocritical.
| rolph wrote:
| there is a difference between public banksyification, and
| home invasion.
|
| advertizers invade our homes, our bodies and our souls,
| the most sinister social engineering campaign yet.
| [deleted]
| jakear wrote:
| Did you read the linked article? [1] The _only_ thing
| that matters is if the property owner likes it. If the
| property owner likes it, it stays up, if they don 't,
| they file a vandalism case with the city.
|
| Banksy is a vandal, as I'm sure anyone would admit,
| himself included. I am equally sure that there have been
| times when property owners haven't liked his work and
| have tried to report him for vandalism. But given he
| doesn't make a habit of posting videos of his actions
| online and bragging about them, he doesn't get
| caught/attributed.
|
| https://www.tmz.com/2014/04/02/banksy-david-william-noll-
| ric...
| watwut wrote:
| > Would you also call Bansky a "vandal"?
|
| Yes. I like Banksy drawings, really. But Banksy was
| vandal when Banksy drew his thing on the same wall again
| and again, while owner quite clearly did not wanted that
| and kept repainting the wall again again. And to be
| frank, he was also asshole about it.
|
| Banksy can be both and is both.
| lexicality wrote:
| If someone tagged my front door I'd be quite angry about
| it and clean it off. If someone spent 6 hours with a
| ladder carefully painting the entire outside of my house
| with a beautiful mural I'd still be upset that they
| painted my house without my permission but I'd probably
| leave it there.
| rolph wrote:
| advertizers vandalize the sensory experience across the
| board, they pollute our cognition with conditioned and
| conditional thinking, they remove our choices in a
| clandestine style, they reduce the world to a penny mill
| so the lunch is free while the consumers back is the
| table for a feast by candlelight
| anamax wrote:
| Are you suggesting that Banksy's sins have some relevance to
| whether or not he's correct on this point?
|
| If not, why/how are those sins relevant?
| jjulius wrote:
| Your TMZ article is about the Los Angeles DA filing a lawsuit
| on behalf of the property owners who lost value on their
| property when Banksy's work was defaced. It doesn't appear
| that Banksy, himself, is involved with the lawsuit _at all_.
| pier25 wrote:
| Hopefully culture will evolve so that this aggressive mind
| violence will be as evident as physical violence.
| freediver wrote:
| There would be noting wrong with ads if they were always opt-
| in. Even if that included all the privacy-invasive tracking.
| You want ads, you turn them on.
|
| What is infinitely more invasive are ads that are on by
| default, that do not give you the choice of not seeing them in
| the first place. The audacity to push an idea on to you feels
| like a shovel across the face. If you are lucky you can opt-out
| (on the web usually with an ad blocker) and in the case of ads
| in public spaces you are just out of luck.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The quote is more Sean Tejaratchi than Banksy.
|
| Tejaratchi originally wrote the essay "Death, Phones,
| Scissors", published his zine _Crap Hound_ in 1999. Banksy
| adapted it.
|
| Tejaratchi is OK with that, and yes, it is a great rant.
|
| https://archive.vn/DD4ny
| sorokod wrote:
| Wery much in the spirit of make it personal from "altered
| carbon"
|
| "The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is
| political. So if some idiot politician, some power player,
| tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care
| about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice
| will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is
| theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at
| the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under
| it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have
| to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as
| you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better
| chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered
| dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken
| seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference -
| the only difference in their eyes - between players and little
| people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they
| liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your
| displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the
| ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's
| the way of the world, it's a tough life and that it's nothing
| personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal."
| sorokod wrote:
| On a tangent, if you are interested in Takeshi Kovacs's
| universe, do yourself a favour and skip the diluted and
| emasculated product made by Netflix.
|
| The books have a raw and anarchistic edge that is not present
| in the TV series.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I loved Altered Carbon the book, but really couldn't get
| into the TV adaptation either.
|
| I could never put my finger on exactly why they felt so
| different.... there is an energy to the book that isnt
| there in the TV.
| stormking wrote:
| Season 1 was okayish - the "A plot" was as strong as I
| remember it from the books. The "B plot" about Takeshi's
| past, however, was massacred.
| simion314 wrote:
| About online ads, is most of the tracking and code that runs to
| identify my preferences or is some kind of anti=fraud shit,that
| will get even more complex and invasive as bad guys will try
| commit fraud.
|
| I am thinking at a partial solution(emphasize on partial), offer
| the users a non-tracking account(Free) , you still give them
| targeted ads but using a non tracking method like a survey at
| account creation, options for the user to tell you that he does
| not like this type of ad, options for the user to tell you what
| kind of ads he wants to see (like I could accept non-animated
| ads, software related, local business related, technology
| related, and article related ads). But all of this would be
| impossible if most of the tracking is for anti-fraud , then you
| would need some DRMed browsers to confirm you probably are a
| human.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| You can just sell ads based on time periods, then it doesn't
| matter how many bots view the ads.
| sithlord wrote:
| I think my bigger problem with browser ads is they are targeted,
| I have less problem with ads that are not targeted.
| beloch wrote:
| It's interesting how the author of this piece uses "badverts" and
| "badvertisers" because it implies that there are "goodverts" and
| "goodvertisers" in the settings he's speaking of.
| bearbin wrote:
| As the author, yes. Some parts of the city are innately
| commercial spaces, and commerce requires advertising. But let
| it stop at colourful shop signs (even neon is fine, in a
| shopping centre!), signwritten vans for trades and deliveries,
| or the circus' sign on the fence of the public park. The
| badverts are the billboards covering up entire buildings; the
| LED pedestals that block your way as you walk and distract
| drivers; and the incessant advertising for unethical investment
| companies on public transport.
| rubicks wrote:
| Because I can't install uBlock Origin in my city.
|
| https://ublockorigin.com/
| dhosek wrote:
| I got stuck in traffic last week next to a mobile light-up
| advertising truck. The lights were so bright it hurt my eyes. I
| had to drive with one hand up blocking as much of it as possible.
| Welcome to the future.
| the-dude wrote:
| My city replaced the old billboards ( primarily in bus stops, but
| there are freestanding ones as well ) by _electronic billboards_.
| It is like there are giant 2 meter tall Phones everywhere, but
| this time they only show ads.
|
| I go out of my way to be offline when I am out of the house and
| now the city council has shoved these screens right in my face.
| No escape.
| jgrowl wrote:
| Adblock will be the first thing I install if usable AR-glasses
| ever become actually practical.
| randallsquared wrote:
| I mean, the simplest answer is that "your browser" implies actual
| possession of the browser, whereas "your city" implies only a
| metaphor of possession of the city, so the question is
| deliberately misleading.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| It's gotten so bad online that I do everything in my power to
| block them, prevent them, avoid them, and ignore them. I mute
| YouTube videos, I use adblock, and scroll right past the ads. I
| refuse to even look at them.
| timbit42 wrote:
| I recommend replacing Adblock (Plus) with Ublock Origin.
|
| Also, for YouTube, check out the SponsorBlock browser plugin.
| grahamjpark wrote:
| I like ads. Ads support the websites and people that I like.
| Sometimes I find cool things through ads. I still use UBlock
| Origin though because ads have broken my trust. They don't vet
| them enough, so malvertising happens sometimes. And they
| absolutely destroyed the concept of privacy across the web.
| posterboy wrote:
| actually, Indon't currently, and I feelnbad about it
| bennysomething wrote:
| Fuck my city deciding what adverts I see. That's called
| censorship.
|
| Want something like that check out drab soviet era cities were
| advertising was banned.
|
| Banksy certainly seems to have thin skin if he gets hurt feelings
| over adverts. Fuck that too, I'm responsible for my own feelings.
| geraldyo wrote:
| Look into the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, before and after
| banning billboard ads before drawing an example from the USSR
| bennysomething wrote:
| just read a guardian article about that, they brought back
| advertising in a controlled way. This seems fair. Also
| Googled before and after pics of the city, can't say there
| was much of an improvement. I live in the UK, advertising is
| probably controlled by planning laws here, I live in a very
| historic touristy city, there's advertising but it doesn't
| impact the beauty at all.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| I don't go out
| dcanelhas wrote:
| Because how else would google maps break ties between equally
| long paths when giving directions, if not by which ads you see
| along the way? ;)
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I prefer not to delude myself into thinking it's my city.
| speeder wrote:
| Well, a bunch of cities in Brazil where I live, banned ads too!
| Sao Paulo is a very notorious one.
| stevehawk wrote:
| I think this will be a whole new issue when AR becomes standard.
| In fact, it's the whole reason I don't want AR. I just see ads
| for days coming out of it. Everyone putting little ad starting QR
| codes (or whatever they settle on) everywhere so every time I
| turn my head there's a gecko on a coffee table in the random
| store I'm in trying to sell my car insurance.
| luma wrote:
| Depends on who owns that AR. If I own it, I could replace all
| the car insurance ads on the road with cute geckos doing
| adorable things.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > If I own it
|
| That's a big if. Looking at the current situation I predict
| Apple/Meta/Google will own "your" AR. Just like with
| smartphones.
| midasuni wrote:
| I think what's worth asking is what services will I have to
| use AR for.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| Probably via the free GEICO AR app!
| rosco5 wrote:
| i had mediated reality ads blocker via wearable a/r goggles in
| grad school in 2003.
|
| fig1 is an any billboard ads replaced with a xterm to show inbox
| or whatever.
|
| it worked well in labs and constrained environment. didn't work
| IRL.
|
| should work today IRL with 1k lines of code with modern hardware
| + algos/models.
|
| https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.58...
| IvanK_net wrote:
| I own a website www.Photopea.com, visited by 3 million people a
| month.
|
| Once in a while, I enable adblock detector, and do not allow
| usrers with adblocks use the service. I wish everyone was doing
| that.
|
| When you see someone willing to give you a car (or anything
| else), but they want money in exchange (i.e. sell it to you), you
| understand, that it is wrong to take the car without giving them
| money (i.e. stealing).
|
| But when you see someone willing to give you an article, a poem,
| a song, a funny video, but they want you to watch the ad in
| exchange, lots of people think it is fine to break their
| conditions.
|
| It is extremely easy to detect ad blockers on the web. I wish
| website creators stopped tolerating ad blockers. People would
| finally learn to watch ads, or pay for stuff, and the creators
| would be able to create much better content.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > When you see someone willing to give you a car (or anything
| else), but they want money in exchange (i.e. sell it to you),
| you understand, that it is wrong to take the car without giving
| them money (i.e. stealing).
|
| Someone _selling_ goods has to abide by some laws - typically,
| lies /false advertising is prohibited, they might have to
| provide a warranty, and most contracts can be cancelled within
| 14 days by returning the goods. This means that the car's
| specifications will be made available to me, the terms of the
| deal throughly detailed in a legal document I'd have to sign,
| and I might get to test drive the car before committing.
|
| Ads in contrast don't have any of this. In your example of
| articles/poems/songs/funny videos, I don't get to check out the
| content beforehand, I have no recourse if it turns out to be
| defective/fraudulent/etc (such as clickbait, or a video with 2
| mins actual content and 8 mins filler to get to the 10 min
| threshold for a second ad) after I "pay" by viewing the ad (and
| parting with my personal data) and I don't have any recourse
| either if the advertised product turns out to be a scam or
| malware.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| Nobody cares what your opinion about the ad is. If you do not
| like the "cost" of the item (watching a minute of an ad, to
| see a 10 second video), just go somewhere else to find an
| alternative. Or buy it once and never again.
|
| What you are saying is, basically, if someone is selling
| bread for $100, and they dont let you taste in advance, you
| are allowed to steal that bread, because $100 is not a right
| price for the bread.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Not liking the cost implies knowing the cost in advance.
| Does your website disclose that it's ad-supported, which
| data will be collected and how it will be used (which is
| required if your are based in the EU or offer service to
| EU-based customers) and whether you take responsibility for
| any ill effects from executing the ad code? Because
| otherwise it can be argued you are also "stealing" people's
| computing resources and personal data before they could
| make a conscious decision to "pay".
|
| > steal
|
| Theft implies that you are deprived of the item once it's
| stolen - this is not the case here, and the costs should be
| taken into account either way. You're comparing fractions
| of a cent from an ad view with $100. I'd feel much better
| about stealing the former than the latter even in case of
| actual, physical theft.
|
| > they dont let you taste in advance
|
| It doesn't have an impact on the "theft" scenario, but in
| case of a paid product I would still expect a refund if the
| bread is defective (moldy or fake) or was mis-sold with
| false advertising.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| "Theft implies that you are deprived of the item once
| it's stolen - this is not the case here."
|
| Yeah, exactly. If I write a book, and one person buys it,
| and a billion people copy it from that person (and I sell
| just one copy in total), there is nothing wrong, because
| I still have my book.
|
| I am glad that most of people dont think this way,
| because we would not have any books in our world.
| supermatt wrote:
| Thats a pretty disingenuous comparison.
|
| You aren't just charging your users "ad views". You are also
| facilitating 3rd parties tracking their online behaviour, and
| they certainly aren't agreeing to those terms when they first
| land on your site.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| Could you be more specific? What "3rd parties" are tracking
| what "behaviour" of yours, and why exactly is it worth so
| much? And what do you mean by "you" in "tracking you"? Do
| they know your name?
| timbit42 wrote:
| The behaviour is what websites you visit. It is worth money
| because websites have topics which hints how they can
| better target advertising at you. Yes, they know our names
| because they can track us across every website we visit.
| GlitchMr wrote:
| Out of curiosity, I decided to check your website with
| adblocker turned off. After rejecting (!) GDPR consent, the
| website decided to send my personal information to the
| following companies: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Ad Lightning,
| Setupad, UniConsent, Adagio, ID5, Criteo, Magnite, RTB House,
| Casale Media, EMX Digital, Adform, Pubmatic, Between Digital,
| Lijit Networks, AppNexus, 33Across, Adx Premium, Sharethrough,
| Smart Adserver, OpenX, BRealTime, bumlam.com (couldn't find
| information about owner of this domain), BidSwitch, Getintent,
| Yahoo, and more - at some point I gave up trying to figure out
| who owns given domain names.
|
| The privacy policy which is quite hidden on the website
| (https://www.photopea.com/privacy.html) says nothing about
| that. All it says is the following:
|
| > We use third party tracking tools to improve the performance
| and features of the Service (e.g. Google Analytics). Such tools
| are created and managed by parties outside our control. As
| such, we are not responsible for what information is actually
| captured by such third parties or how such third parties use
| and protect that information.
|
| This won't fly under GDPR, just saying. Not only you are
| responsible for third party behavior, but you didn't even
| mention all tracking scripts that are directly used (I see
| Facebook Pixel Code right in the source code for photopea.com).
| You are in Czech Republic, right? I think it is in European
| Union.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| And what exactly is "your personal information", that has
| been sent to so many websites?
| detaro wrote:
| That is what you should document on your privacy page,
| exactly.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| If you know how the web works, you must know, that
| websites do not have access to your device. You do not
| tell Photopea your name or your address.
|
| The only thing a website can know, is, that "someone with
| a screen resolution of 1920x1080 pixels visited
| www.Photopea.com at 18:37". It can be useful to know the
| number of visitors, or the usual screen resolutions.
| detaro wrote:
| > _Google, Facebook, Amazon, Ad Lightning, Setupad,
| UniConsent, Adagio, ID5, Criteo, Magnite, RTB House,
| Casale Media, EMX Digital, Adform, Pubmatic, Between
| Digital, Lijit Networks, AppNexus, 33Across, Adx Premium,
| Sharethrough, Smart Adserver, OpenX, BRealTime,
| bumlam.com (couldn 't find information about owner of
| this domain), BidSwitch, Getintent,_
|
| Which one of those do you need to know usual screen
| resolutions of users? Or maybe there are some other
| reasons those all get contacted?
|
| (You also missed some "minor" details like IP addresses
| and fingerprinting profiles overall, and I'm honestly not
| sure if you are as ignorant as you act or just pretend to
| do so, and which one would be more offensive)
| IvanK_net wrote:
| I do not know a lot about the ad mechanism, which my
| partners use. But it usually works by contacting several
| servers and asking them "hey, there is someone visiting
| www.Photopea.com, probably from Canada, with a screen
| resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, how much would you pay
| for showing them your ad?" ... there is an auction, and
| the ad from the highest bidder is shown to you. The more
| servers take part in the auction, the more money I can
| make.
|
| Like really, if you open a website for the first time in
| your life, what kind of secret information could it know
| about you?
| DitheringIdiot wrote:
| The trackers in your site use cookies, and browser
| fingerprinting to create a profile of the visitors to
| your site, which combined with other data on the visitors
| is used to identify them personally.
|
| That on its own should give you pause. But that data is
| then used by companies like Facebook or Google to allow
| the highest bidder to alter that users behaviour - by
| getting them to believe some propaganda, to vote for a
| political party, or to spend money on something they
| don't need.
|
| That's the business model. That is how you make money on
| your site.
|
| There are other ways of making money - I'm sure that had
| ad revenue not been available you would have found a
| different way.
| DitheringIdiot wrote:
| I just checked the same thing. I didn't get a consent banner
| at all, not sure why.
|
| I'd just like to add that a decent chunk of the traffic to
| this site is from people typing "free photo editor" or things
| along those lines.
|
| The creator of this site is specifically targeting people who
| want a free photo editor... And then complaining about people
| wanting to use it for free.
| GlitchMr wrote:
| Are you in European Union? I imagine the consent banner may
| skipped when not in European Union.
| DitheringIdiot wrote:
| I'm in the UK. So not anymore. But we still apply GDPR
| rules as far as I'm aware
| g_p wrote:
| GDPR still applies in the UK via their "equivalent" UK
| GDPR, as does the PECR (which is their implementation of
| the ePrivacy Directive, which covers cookies).
|
| UK cookie law is pretty strict, and also pretty clear to
| read - https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-
| pecr/guidance-...
|
| The issue is nobody bothers to follow it, and enforcement
| isn't likely enough, or crippling enough, to drive
| compliance.
| interator7 wrote:
| That's interesting, I use Photopea a lot. How did you start it,
| and what led you to going with ads/premium to unblock ads
| instead of charging premium for more features?
| IvanK_net wrote:
| 90% of my income is from ads. If I could not make money with
| my website, I would shut it down and would go get hired by
| some company.
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| p2detar wrote:
| I hate ads and I never understood the ,,watch ads to get
| content" business plan. Why not just provide demo content and
| ask users to pay for full access? By relying on ads for
| revenue, you basically invite adblockers. After all, if people
| didn't like them, they wouldn't exist.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| almost nobody pays for 'ad free' experience
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The problem is that the ad-free experience often costs
| orders of magnitude above what the ad view would earn them.
| Let's take newspapers for example, ad view on a single page
| load would maybe earn them 10c, but if I wanted to pay I'd
| need to _subscribe_ to a monthly commitment of ~15PS /month
| (for the WSJ) _and_ still have no guarantee my data won 't
| be used maliciously (there is no way to pay anonymously)
| nor whether cancelling the subscription will be easy (no
| idea for the WSJ but the New York Times is infamous for
| this).
| shukantpal wrote:
| The subscription doesn't have a limit on how many times
| you use the app, however. If you read 150 pages a month
| (~5 a day), then the math is equal.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I don't understand why you can't just load traditional ads
| related to your business that no ad blocker would work out of
| the box against.
|
| If I visit a website about cars, one could put up car ads
| because it's obviously in my interests at this point.
|
| I don't visit websites that require me to block my adblocker
| for the simple reason that it means they have no other
| monetizable content apart from me, and as I didn't even get to
| their magnet content yet I have no idea how the website feels,
| which makes me not so open to sharing my data fingerprint.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| My ads are traditional ads, and the ads are almost always
| related to the business.
|
| There are no good and bad ads. The creators of ad blockers
| decide, what the ad is. The code of an ad blocker literally
| contains a code like: if(website is Photopea.com) find a
| specific element and delete it.
|
| If an ad blocker tells you, that they are not blocking "good
| ads", they are usually blackmailing ad companies to pay them,
| so that they do not block their ads. The money, which could
| go to content creators, are going to ad block creators.
| davidodio wrote:
| Maybe watching ads would be a fair exchange if there was an
| option to pay, often (mostly), there isn't. Additionally to
| some (most), ads aren't the problem, its tracking, creation of
| shadow profiles etc
|
| Never used photopea, hope it works out for you, but I wish
| website creators stopped thinking that invasion of my privacy
| is a currency
| getsiu wrote:
| > if there was an option to pay...
|
| It doesn't work very well, unfortunately. Those willing to
| pay usually are the most interesting part of the audience for
| ad providers, so it's difficult to compensate that loss by a
| reasonably priced 'ad-free' option. You probably would be
| surprised if you knew how much your attention may cost.
| Targeted ads created a market where everyone pays
| proportionally to their spendings. I'm not saying it's a good
| situation, but it looks like that's a local optimum rather
| hard to leave.
|
| What bothers me is that huge companies are more resilient to
| tracking and ads restrictions, so that fight may further
| speed up centralisation of the internet. I would personally
| prefer the chaotic old-school world wide web with ugly
| flashing banners instead.
| IvanK_net wrote:
| Photopea.com has an option to pay for an ad-free experience,
| and one in 2000 users is paying for it.
|
| I make around $.01 (one USD cent) for an hour of using
| Photopea with ads. If someone was willing to pay me two cents
| for an hour of using Photopea (with no ads), I would gladly
| accept it.
| yanderekko wrote:
| Why stop at ads though? I should just have a personalized
| algorithm that filters all real-world content I see, or otherwise
| sanitizes it for my consumption. For example, apply beauty
| filters to everyone around me so I don't have to deal with the
| unpleasantness of ugly people. Block out any noise that might
| trigger discomforting thoughts, like political opinions that I
| disagree with.
|
| If it sounds dystopian, well.. once we're used to it, having to
| experience the ugliness of an unfiltered world would surely seem
| more dystopian. Right?
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| Tell me you only read the headline, without telling me you only
| read the headline.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| > Blocking ads may work online, but unless you spend your life in
| VR goggles, one cannot apply technical solutions alone.
|
| The VR goggle / IRL ad blocking is an interesting idea. I
| immediately jump to fear that something politically sensitive
| could be censored. However, I suppose we still have that issue in
| online ad blocking.
|
| Are there any known examples of censorship of content critical of
| $GOV being applied to an ad-blocker? Any crowd sourced list could
| in theory be vulnerable to censorship.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The difference is that it's _my_ computer, but I don 't own
| Oakland.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Don't you pay property taxes that pay the salaries of the mayor
| and councilors?
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Mojo Nixon and I both disagree. Each and everyone of us owns
| every bit of land on the planet. The seas too.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERXgL9hLuzQ
| partiallypro wrote:
| I have no problem with seeing ads in person, I think I'm not
| against height limits on signs for stores though, because they
| can really remove the beauty of a city.
| WaxedChewbacca wrote:
| unbanned wrote:
| ls15 wrote:
| I always thought that I at least should be entitled to be paid by
| companies who are using my mental bandwidth for their profit,
| without even asking for my permission.
| gumby wrote:
| The author's suggestion to go to the government can work. In the
| 1960s, the president's wife rallied support for a "Highway
| Beautification Act" to _remove_ billboards from much of the
| federal highway system. It largely worked.
|
| https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-lyndon...
| makeworld wrote:
| So it can work... if you're the president's wife. This is a
| terrible example to prove that an ordinary citizen can make
| change like this.
| dcanelhas wrote:
| Sao Paulo has been ad-blocked since 2006.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa
| tarkin2 wrote:
| When physical ads track me, and harass me in a shop, then I'll
| consider it.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Physical ads do actually track you in a lot of cases. Street
| level ad screens with cameras are widely available, though the
| ad companies promise they they only use those to profile you,
| not to track you.
|
| Traffic billboards have even begun reading license plates for
| personalised ads.
|
| The days where a billboard was just a billboard are over, ended
| by the ever scummier advertising industry and their lust for
| data.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Aye. If someone offers me a way to block them, I'll happily
| use it.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The US government subsidizes advertising on tax so that taxpayers
| pay for the privilege of being propogandanized to.
| samlosodesign wrote:
| Vermont outlawed billboards decades ago. It's already happened.
| einpoklum wrote:
| The giant ad billboards always remind me of the giant portraits
| of the supreme leader they have in authoritarian world states.
| Instead of his image dominating the public sphere, we have the
| Coca Cola company, or some clothers retailer or what-not. There's
| also that scene in Blade Runner with the giant ads about a new
| life in the other colonies.
| young_unixer wrote:
| Because blocking ads in a city would require coercion. Blocking
| ads in my browser doesn't.
| angled wrote:
| Canberra, Australia, doesn't have billboards except in the light
| industrial zones. It's much prettier for it!
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/curious-canberra/2017-0...
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Outside of my office's window I can see a billboard about 2
| blocks away from my apartment. For about 30 minutes every couple
| of hours it flashes red, blue, white and purple at about 3
| different colors per second, with the following text in the
| middle: "You should advertise here!"
|
| It honestly blows my mind how someone can look at it and think
| it's a good idea, instead of how absurd that someone is allowed
| to put up a giant seizure machine in one of a city's busiest
| streets.
|
| I used to think that advertisement had gone too far when it was
| used to track people online, but a literal real life recreation
| of the iCarly episode where Spencer causes a traffic accident
| using a billboard caught me by surprise.
| ghusbands wrote:
| If it is three times per second, it's unlikely to induce
| seizures in those with photosensitive epilepsy. Though,
| depending on where you live, there may still be rules against
| it (some places set the limit at 2Hz), so it may be worth
| reporting it.
|
| Flashing signs like that are still very rude, though.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. My point is that it's
| fast, but I don't know how fast.
| titzer wrote:
| Samsung has started spamming people with mobile notifications
| that are ads.
|
| The goal of the system is to mediate every interaction with
| digital technology and then leverage that mediation to become an
| ad delivery platform.
|
| Fight it.
| soheil wrote:
| Ads in real life don't track you and watch your every move.
| franklampard wrote:
| Because it takes more effort than clicking a few buttons
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Iowa seems to have a law that forces billboards to be further
| away from the interstate. They occupy a much smaller slice of
| your visual field. It makes a difference.
|
| It also makes a difference that they can't put too much text on
| them, because they're too far away for you to be able to read
| that. So you have visually smaller billboards with simpler
| messages on them. Driving across Iowa is more pleasant because of
| this.
| kiryin wrote:
| I strongly believe that advertising by definition is unethical in
| all of it's forms and "block" ads to the best of my ability, in
| real life as well. I do not view ads that reach me by mail, and
| as for billboards and posters I see around town, I make a note to
| avoid the products they advertise. I know this doesn't make a
| difference but it's an ideological thing. If my actions could in
| theory cause a tiny little dent in a graph somewhere, I make a
| point to do it.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I agree with you, but you might be getting down voted because
| you didn't say why you think it's unethical.
| kiryin wrote:
| A commenter below us put it rather nicely:
|
| "Advertising is a huge business predicated entirely on
| manipulating people to make purchases they otherwise
| wouldn't, surgically exploiting weaknesses in our psyche."
| Someone wrote:
| > I strongly believe that advertising by definition is
| unethical in all of it's forms
|
| So, you think "Show HN" is unethical, too? If so, how are
| people with a new product going to find customers? Word of
| mouth? How do they find their first customer?
|
| I suspect your opinion on advertising is strong, but not _that_
| strong.
| ljm wrote:
| Junk mail is particularly frustrating because companies are
| generating so much paper waste only for someone to deliver it
| to your door, and you to put it directly in the bin. No,
| Dominoes, I don't give a fuck about your shit pizza, and
| sending junk through my letterbox 5 days a week isn't going to
| change my mind.
|
| I wish it was banned outright.
| timbit42 wrote:
| I asked my local post office to not put anything in my
| mailbox that doesn't have my name on it. Life is good.
| Izkata wrote:
| Sports Illustrated recently started sending me their full
| monthly magazine with my name on it, without a subscription.
| It also goes straight into the trash.
|
| (For anyone thinking once a month doesn't sound too bad:
| Sports Illustrated has so many pages it stacks up to almost a
| centimeter thick)
| litoE wrote:
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah the garage in front of my house often leaves their sign on
| after 8pm (when it's supposed to be off) and it's super bright.
| Really annoying in summer when I have the windows open.
|
| It would be nice once AR glasses come. Although they probably
| won't be able to black things out (unless they also have an LCD
| layer to darken certain pixels) as well as a colour layer. Life
| online has improved so much with adblockers. I literally rarely
| see ads anymore online or on TV.
| broabprobe wrote:
| it's honestly a big reason I live in Vermont: no billboards
| armendhammer wrote:
| Be ready for websites that make you pay to read them.
|
| They gotta make money to keep up somehow, and if they can't do it
| through ads, they will do it through subscription.
| timbit42 wrote:
| This is what the world needs. "Free" products and services mean
| you are the product or service.
| shukantpal wrote:
| The world is fully capable of building what it needs, in this
| case. And if the world needs it, it'll get subscription
| products.
| novok wrote:
| There are some cities and places that do reduce intrusive real
| life advertising by banning billboards for example, or putting up
| a billboard tax to reduce them and divert the visual pollution
| cost into the city budget. Same with regulations reducing the
| loudness of audio ads, or banning them, or changing how
| storefronts can put their names up. That is more like a HOA
| regulating what kind of house style you can have although. It's
| definitely possible!
| nullc wrote:
| Marin County CA has banned outdoor advertising billboards since
| the 1930s[1]. This results in a noticeable reduction in night
| time light pollution compared to surrounding areas, and -- of
| course-- a lack of obnoxious outdoor adds.
|
| [1] https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=HTES19380414.2.41&e=-------en--
| 2...
| ipaddr wrote:
| Ad based services have empowered the poor at the expense of the
| rich who would gladly pay more to hide ads where the poor gladly
| trade ads for free or reduced price services.
|
| If getting rid of ads means the poor will be worse off why do so
| many well intentioned people support this position?
| krolden wrote:
| Have any examples of ads benefiting poor people? This is the
| first time ive ever heard anyone make an statement like this
| and its really blowing my mind that people think this.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| Ads should actually be blocked in your city. Advertising as such
| should be something done in catalogues for this specific purpose.
| If you are looking for "random things to buy", there is a section
| for that in the catalogue.
| unbanned wrote:
| Governed areas for advertising where you choose to be
| advertised at.
| rzz3 wrote:
| I block ads in my browser primarily because I want to block the
| ad networks from collecting information about my browsing habits.
| Doesn't really apply here.
| habosa wrote:
| I can't stand ads on government property, particularly in spaces
| where I am captive. The best example is public transportation.
| There are ads all over the station and then ads all over the
| interior (and exterior) of the train/bus during your ride.
|
| Why should I be subjected to this private noise while taking
| public transportation? Some city needs to stand up and fix this.
| Allow me to get where I am going in peace.
| will4274 wrote:
| Would you pay higher taxes to avoid those ads?
|
| I think it's hard when our public transportation is chronically
| underfunded. Politicians and voters see corporate (advertising)
| funding as less onerous that citizen (taxes) funding.
| midasuni wrote:
| In London adverts bring in less than 10% of the firebox
| revenue. Rather than spend PS2.30 on a journey charge PS2.50
| and you're set.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| They accept ads because the city needs a way to pay for your
| trip. Faires can be raised but that shuts out a class of people
| who need public transit more than you who will gladly trade a
| few ads for a few dollars on each trip.
| rambambram wrote:
| Exactly. I can stand ads on the internet, I just block 'm. I
| can stand ads on private property. But just don't scream for my
| attention on (semi)public properties. The price of that sh!t is
| already covered by taxes. And if it's not, the officials are
| incompetent.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Transport for London (9000 buses, 985 trains, trams, hire
| bicycles, taxi administration, disabled people transport,
| some trains, some major roads in London, 755km of railway
| track) have a budget of PS9.7 billion, of which PS5.1 billion
| is from passengers (tickets etc), and PS0.16 billion from
| advertising.
|
| That is lower than I thought it would be, and lower than one
| would expect given the space TfL dedicate to advertising in
| their budget report.
|
| I would pay 3% more on travel tickets to not have any
| advertising.
|
| https://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-budget-2020-21.pdf (this is
| pre-Covid.)
| ghusbands wrote:
| Even if it were all advert free at some point, someone with
| a huge advertising budget would probably offer hundreds of
| millions to be a 'sponsor' and get their logos all over the
| place, and then the advertising will start again. Even the
| PS160 million they're getting now would likely be enough to
| persuade them, as it's not a trivial amount, even compared
| to their overall budget.
| keraf wrote:
| I just came back home to Europe after a month long stay in a
| village in Africa, I was baffled by how oppressing the amount of
| advertisement is in Western cities. It's the first thing I
| noticed when I got back. It never really occurred to me before
| that, but now I see it everywhere and it's sickening. Especially
| most of it is for low-quality/unhealthy products. I developed a
| particular hate for attention grabbing digital advertising
| displays.
|
| The anti-billboard movement, adopted by a few cities such as
| Geneva[0], is a good step towards less visual pollution.
|
| [0]
| https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/directdemocracy/geneva-z%C3%A9r...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I wouldn't mind ads in my browser if they behaved inobtrusively.
| What makes me block them is their infuriating attempts to hijack
| my attention even at a cost of preventing me from reading /
| listening / watching the real content.
| peckrob wrote:
| My wife and I were talking about this a few weeks ago.
|
| I've basically stopped listening to terrestrial radio because it
| seems like the majority of it is ads.
|
| A trend I've noticed over the last few years is that gas stations
| specifically. As gas stations have replaced older pumps with
| newer ones, the new ones feature LCD screens that, as soon as you
| are done selecting the myriad of options it now requires just to
| put fuel in a car, you are suddenly bombarded with videos and
| _very loud_ advertisements.
|
| I have been walking away and sitting in my car but, a few weeks
| ago I got yelled at by a pump attendant that I had to stay next
| to my fuel door while it was filling for "safety reasons." So now
| I have to stand there and be bombarded by this thing screaming at
| me about what is for sale while filling up and it is very, _very_
| annoying.
|
| Another one is a restaurant here in town that has one of these
| new LED signs that is _so bright_ at night that it actually hurts
| my eyes. It is so bright that you can 't make out what is in the
| road beyond it. Multiple people have complained about it my
| city's subreddit and it has lead to at least one traffic accident
| that I know about. I even went to file a complaint with the city
| zoning board about that one but was told there was nothing they
| could do as there were no regulations regarding the brightness of
| signs. They suggested I complain to the owner.
|
| And it's so manipulative. "Hey, you're not good enough because
| you're too fat, or your hair is thinning, and no one will ever
| love you." "Look at these starving abused puppies, just LOOK AT
| THEM and donate now."
|
| In the ever increasing war for our attention, it really does feel
| like physical advertising is becoming louder, more aggressive,
| more insulting, and just so much more ubiquitous that it is
| almost impossible to get away from it. We have got to find a way
| to start to reign in some of the more annoying - and dangerous -
| advertising going on out there.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Do you vote in any in your city? Mayor/councillor? Tell them
| and tell them you represent other voters for greater pull. The
| city can regulate if you can get a rule on the books.
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| This reminded me this project on kickstarter.
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ivancash/irl-glasses-gl...
| PhilippGille wrote:
| No mention of Sao Paolo:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa
| dcanelhas wrote:
| Ah, you beat me to it.
| f00zz wrote:
| Highly debatable whether the policy has achieved its goal of a
| "clean city". The city is uglier and dirtier than ever,
| especially downtown. A least billboards covered the decay (and
| were a source of income to buildings).
| Krasnol wrote:
| So now they can work on that instead of hiding it behind
| billboards.
|
| You're closer to a solution now.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| A very effective way to solve problems in a community
| resource is to demand maintenance from a private party in
| exchange from exploiting it in a sustainable way. Sao Paulo
| just closed that possibility.
|
| Yes, there are other possibilities. By nature those are
| more bureaucratic and jittery. Maybe they are closer to a
| solution now, but if that's the case, it's because it
| easier to make that law more relaxed than strict.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >Yes, there are other possibilities. By nature those are
| more bureaucratic and jittery.
|
| Not really. The biggest corruption, waste of money and
| worst outcomes are when private and public sector
| intersect. Pure public (like healthcare systems outside
| US) or private (like food distribution) segments work
| best.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I consider solving a problem directly to be less
| bureaucratic than solving it indirectly by involving even
| more parties and hoping they do what you want them to do
| and having to negotiate with them on how much they will
| do in exchange for what they are getting.
|
| Taxpayer pays x to government which pays workers to
| clean.
|
| Taxpayer pays x-y to government which pays x-y to
| government workers who need to go out and negotiate
| without private businesses and inspect to see if they are
| doing their job and then punish them if they are not and
| then deal with disputes. And it is very possible for y>x.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There are unavoidable inefficiencies for a government to
| perform any action.
|
| The idea that a government can maintain all the surfaces
| of a large city in a pleasant situation is completely
| unrealistic. It can at most decentralize to to smaller
| bodies (and get a huge variance of outcomes, what is
| quite an ok solution too), but Sao Paulo doesn't have
| those bodies and is organized in a way that makes them
| almost impossible to create.
|
| Yeah, maybe the best policy for the city is pushing
| governance into smaller bodies. But if your goal is to
| make the city visually pleasant, that's the solution that
| will take decades instead of years from the alternatives.
| [deleted]
| makecheck wrote:
| One of the worst examples is we (still) have _PLANES_ flying with
| banners behind them in California. They make noise, pollute the
| air, and assault your eyes when you could be looking at a
| beautiful blue sky without them. And I don't know why it's OK to
| "rent" this "space" to advertisers because, unlike something like
| a billboard, it's not like someone went to the trouble of
| erecting a sky board with limited ad space.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| NYC was plagued by floating, glowing LED billboards in the
| Hudson River for a while. Something out of _Blade Runner_.
|
| https://ny.curbed.com/2019/10/9/20906159/ballyhoo-media-floa...
| HKH2 wrote:
| Like in They Live?
| Fnoord wrote:
| As soon as AR glasses take off some bright fellow will make an
| adblocker for it. And as soon as that happens I will want AR
| glasses and reward the dev for their work.
| midasuni wrote:
| Some bright fellow will be paid to replace the Pepsi adverts
| with coke adverts. Ones which dance around and take even more
| of your attention.
| sureklix wrote:
| who is building an adblocker using ARKit?
| sh4un wrote:
| Are we even allowed outside any more?
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| The amount of ads packed into an NBA basketball game on TV is
| startling: - each player's jersey - arena
| walls - courtside walls - projected onto the court
| floor (updated each minute) - on the side and top of the
| backboard - most TV graphics ("Taco Bell play of the day")
| - split-screen ads during free-throws - traditional
| commercials during time-outs
|
| Monetize all the things! It's exhausting.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| Don't forget one of the most obnoxious phenomena: making the
| _name of the sports venue itself_ into an advertisement (e.g.,
| "Regional Bank Stadium," "Big Telecom Co. Arena," etc.)
| midasuni wrote:
| But not in our dreams. No sir-ee
| n0n0n4t0r wrote:
| I live in the area of Grenoble, a french city leaded by
| ecologists than banned ads several years ago (since 2014 if I'm
| correct). This is a pleasure, or, more precisely, I feel
| overwhelmed when I exit my city and am surrounded by so many ads!
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.france24.com/en/20141124-fr...
| grapescheesee wrote:
| AMP link is ironically perfect for this ..
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Came here to write this. Grenoble rocks :)
| goodcanadian wrote:
| The state of Hawaii also bans most ads and billboards (they are
| considered to take away from the natural beauty, which, of
| course, is a big tourism draw). I find it odd that there is
| even much debate about it and that most places do not have laws
| like this:
|
| https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/vol10_ch0436-0474/...
| niij wrote:
| I agree they're generally ugly. But I assume most places
| don't ban them due to freedom of speech and private property
| considerations.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| How are ads freedom of speech though? Unless it's the old
| "corporations are people" again.
|
| I invite any CEO to personally walk around my city with a
| banner of their choosing. Being allowed to spend millions
| of dollars to make kids addicted to smoking and drinking
| isn't free speech, it's legalized crime.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Non-AMP link:
|
| https://www.france24.com/en/20141124-french-city-grenoble-ba...
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| Austin, TX long ago passed a law that said a billboard can be
| used to advertise only for the business on the parcel of land
| where the billboard is physically located. Thus, a car repair
| shop could have a billboard advertising themselves, but they
| are not allowed to lease it out to advertise, say, a tanning
| salon that is not on the same site.
|
| At the time it was passed, any existing billboards were granted
| an exemption, and can be leased to show arbitrary ads. There
| has been a trend to replace those billboards with digital
| versions. Austin passed a law to prevent such conversions, but
| it has been challenged up to the Supreme Court, as the
| advertising companies which own all those "analog" billboards
| claim their first amendment rights have been violated.
|
| https://www.kut.org/austin/2021-11-09/austins-billboards-sup...
| pgcj_poster wrote:
| > The good citizen in real life fights the planning applications
| for new adverts; they tell their local politicians about the
| damage badverts cause; they fund campaign groups to tell others
| the same. Make a conscious decision to avoid adverts, and enjoy
| your life more.
|
| The analogue of blocking ads in real life is physically removing,
| destroying, or defacing them.
| smarx007 wrote:
| But ads in real life do not prevent me from going on about my
| day. There is no analogy to interstitial pages with ads like in
| Forbes some time ago with the button Continue to your article: it
| would be infuriating if you had to view an ad before being able
| to use the subway ticketing system. You also don't have ads on at
| the airport timetable screen. You don't have pinkertons following
| you to learn your habits and show you "relevant" ads. If you walk
| into a grocery store wearing sunglasses, the clerk will not stand
| in front of you and say "I am sorry, please remove your shades
| before continuing because ads support our store and you need to
| see them."
|
| But yes, unhealthy amount of advertising IRL should be limited as
| well.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Reminds me of the miniseries Maniac. It portrays an "alternate
| future" without Javascript, etc., where targeting advertising
| is in fact taken to these extremes, including the "pinkertons"
| idea.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniac_(miniseries)
| Forge36 wrote:
| My best friend is a former smoker. He's quit many times. The
| biggest struggle he has is when anti-smoking commercials show
| up, being reminded of smoking makes him want to smoke.
|
| They don't prevent going about the day, they make going about
| your day more difficult.
| jyu wrote:
| Have you run into the IRL pop up ads? People walking in front
| of you, interrupting your UX for a quick "5 min conversation"
| about their chosen cause? These pesky ads get through my
| blockers no matter how often I update my filters.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I actually find those pretty easy to block, by just not
| engaging with them at all. Being polite is only for
| gentlefolk, riff-raff have no requirement for it.
| nulbyte wrote:
| The local cable co. has set up shop in random places
| throughout the closest grocery store to me for a number of
| months recently. I can't stand it; it's like walking onto a
| used car lot to buy groceries.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| An effective way of revenge could be to pretend (actually,
| if they're a cable company pretending may not be necessary)
| to have a bad experience with them and ask about your money
| back or why you've been overcharged/etc, especially if
| their colleagues are pitching to another mark within
| earshot.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Bring your cable box and remote and ask them how to tune
| in to your favorite show Firefly.
| eloisius wrote:
| Sounds like a typical stroll down Market Street. Never a
| shortage of people trying to get you to sign up and donate
| money to some cause, and they won't take "no thanks" for an
| answer.
| grishka wrote:
| Actually yes. There are these "tea promoters" on the main
| street in my city. They would get in your way, and sometimes
| even literally grab you, to "ask a question", which is
| inevitably "do you drink tea?". This is a scam scheme where
| the next step is to take you to their store nearby, offer you
| a sample of their tea, and then it _surprisingly_ turns out
| that this needs to be paid for and costs an exorbitant
| amount. Of course, this breaks every consumer protection law
| possible, but way too many people are amenable to guilt-
| tripping.
|
| I either ignore them and walk around them, or loudly tell
| them to fuck off. If only the police would act on this as
| vehemently as on anything even remotely related to opposition
| politics...
| mcculley wrote:
| I think that most people don't recognize the harm that these
| memes can cause. Most don't see them consciously at all. I
| realized at some point that I am what I label a "compulsive
| reader". When I see a sign, it intrudes into my perception and
| I have to read it. Many people don't even consciously see these
| words/signs. It is important to realize that not all brains
| work the same when weighing the costs of allowing theses
| intrusions.
| blackhaz wrote:
| But they do. You have to mentally process the incoming data
| first, then discard it. It's a waste of attention, especially
| with mind-catching ads you can't figure out immediately.
| Sometimes they are as blocking as browser pop-ups, e.g.:
| logotypes (or even full ads) displayed before a responsive UI
| is shown to you, duty-free zones in the airports, and so on. I
| am pretty sure we will soon have real-life targeted billboards.
| Even with the current tech, what prevents a webcam with NN to
| recognize if you're wearing sneakers and tell the display along
| your way to show some beanie ads, especially if it's cold
| outside? If you walk into a grocery store you are bombarded
| with displays outright, and before checking out you are tasked
| with cross-sale suggestions. All this crap blocks your mind and
| steals your attention.
| sacado2 wrote:
| If browser ads had a real-life equivalent, they would be more
| like that creep who suddenly pops in front of attractive
| women in the street trying to grab their phone numbers, and
| no matter what you do you'll never get rid of him and he'll
| be following you on your way back home (probably to provide
| you with a "better user experience").
|
| If all web ads were limited to a static gif here or there in
| the corner of a web page, I don't think adblock plus would be
| a thing at all.
| ouid wrote:
| ad blocking would absolutely be a thing still.
| Fundamentally an ad blocker is just a filter on what
| portions of web page get loaded. It is my intention to
| increase the signal to noise ratio on the things I
| experience, so I would filter these things out myself at
| the brain level. I'm just automating the process and
| offloading it to the browser, and there will always be
| strong incentive to automate things.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| If ads were just gifs or pngs that loaded from the same
| site, did not noticably impact page load times, and were
| displayed alongside the main content (analagous to ads in
| a magazine) I would likely not bother blocking them (and
| blocking would be more difficult: how would the blocking
| software know that they were ads and not part of the main
| content of the page?)
|
| I block ads when they do things like take over focus, are
| distractingly animated, slow down the page, overload my
| CPU, etc.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| In fact, most ad blockers do just that: they filter out
| all ads but the ok-looking ones that fits a non-invasive
| standard.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| we stopped watching tv in our home a few years ago, coupled
| with pi hole and ublock origin across all browsers, i
| personally do not see ads and neither does most of my family.
| if i do see them at a friends house or somewhere, it is a
| really jarring experience. i was at a friends house recently
| and they were watching tv. i found the ad break as a
| horrifying experience. the volume is turned too high, you
| can't skip it and it becomes irritating after the third ad
| break in an hour.
| rambambram wrote:
| This. I also block ads and got rid of my tv years ago. But
| the moment an ad does pop up somewhere, it's really extra
| annoying.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Ads are louder as an industry standard.
|
| In 2012, USA tried to implement the CALM act, which
| mandated content and ads to be at the same level ("A/85"),
| but it didn't play out because ads are measured
| individually whereas a program is measured as a whole.
| Complaints to the FCC are still about the loudness of
| ads... See https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/the-mixers-
| guide-to-loudnes...
| aix1 wrote:
| A while back I built an ad/not-an-ad classifier for TV
| frames based purely on pixels (i.e. not prior knowledge
| of specific ads). One of the interesting findings --
| perhaps obvious in retrospect -- was that ad frames were
| on average brighter than content frames.
| eloisius wrote:
| I'm sure it's out there, but I had a similar idea to make
| an audio device plugin like soundflower to pipe audio
| through and automatically mute when it detects an ad. We
| really need an OpenWrt-like project for smart TVs so that
| you could run something like what you created to mute the
| sound and display art during ad breaks.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Everybody draws the line somewhere else, but I hope you agree
| that "stealing your attention" is different from requiring an
| _active_ action to be able to continue onward towards
| whatever task you were trying to accomplish (even if you
| might consider both unacceptable).
| tekromancr wrote:
| We do have real life targeted ads. The NYC Link terminals,
| for example, can detect tons of data about the devices people
| carry, and the comings and goings of the owners, and
| sometimes link them to their ad profiles. ads for display can
| then be selected accordingly.
|
| This isn't even particularly new tech, they prototyped
| roadside billboards thay could infer what radio stations the
| cars driving by were listening to, and this was in the early
| 2000s
| aesthesia wrote:
| > they prototyped roadside billboards thay could infer what
| radio stations the cars driving by were listening to
|
| Any idea how this was supposed to work? I don't know how
| that information would leak out unless it was just
| listening for the audio from a car with windows rolled
| down.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| An archive of the company behind that tech [1], has this
| to say:
|
| > Each car radio sends out a signal at a frequency higher
| than the one it is receiving from the radio station. When
| a car passes by one of the MobilTrak sensors, the sensor
| picks up on the signal to determine what the driver is
| listening to on the radio
|
| And US6813475B1 seems to be the patent behind the tech.
|
| If they ever really could find that sort of signal in the
| noise of the real world, I've got to imagine that
| improved tech for in-car radios, not to mention people
| listening to their phones via Bluetooth and SiriusXM, has
| rendered it even more broken.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20020720075012/http://www
| .mobilt...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Each car radio sends out a signal at a frequency higher
| than the one it is receiving from the radio station.
|
| Why would it do that? I thought car radios were merely
| receivers, not transmitters. This is insane...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| It is a result of the mechanism used for operation. See
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheterodyne_receiver
| especially the section on Local oscillator radiation
| Seirdy wrote:
| > People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt
| into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear.
| They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small.
| They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not
| sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else.
| They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. ...
| Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no
| choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to
| take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like
| with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock
| someone just threw at your head.
|
| -- Adaptation from a Banksy essay in defense of remixing
| ("vandalising") public advertisements.
|
| Fundamentally, all these ads share the quality of showing
| people content they didn't ask for to lure consumers into
| spending money they otherwise wouldn't have. Why the wouldn't
| I block them everywhere? It's disgusting.
|
| I know many people like to argue that they're a "necessary
| evil" to pay for content, but I have little patience for this
| argument because it assumes that vendors are entitled to the
| success of their flawed business models, and people should
| give up freedoms to support the industry.
|
| My consciousness is not for sale, sorry.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| This essay looks amazing. Can you please reference it?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're
| not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere
| else.
|
| wow, it is like they know me!
|
| but anyway, I'm all for blocking ads when you go out, and
| hopefully once they can do that the technology can be
| extended to allow blocking of people who are not sexy
| enough, because imagine what I could do with the power of
| invisibility!
| whiplash451 wrote:
| They definitely do. Ads in the subway carry an outstanding
| cognitive load. A simple experiment helps understand this:
| just walk through a super ad-heavy subway (Paris or London)
| then through a much lighter one (Vienna). The difference is
| significant. The mental experiment is literally different.
| grishka wrote:
| Ads in the subway just shouldn't be a thing, period. You
| already pay for the ticket.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Unfortunately the ticket covers much less than the
| infrastructure cost. Then public spending covers some of
| it but ads are needed to fill the gap. Public money that
| would be spent to cover the ad revenue would not be spent
| elsewhere (in a hopefully useful way). I hate subway ads
| just as much as you, but wanted to make this reality
| check.
| dml2135 wrote:
| Good point, but I wonder what % of say, the NY MTA's
| operating budget is funded with ads. I feel like these
| things are sold for way cheaper than they should be.
|
| I think I remember reading that the naming rights for
| Citibike were sold for like 40 million dollars. Seems
| like an incredible bargain for literally thousands of
| mobile ads all over the city.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| The only reason ads exist is to reprogram our brains and
| make us want things we didn't previously want. It's
| brainwashing. People who say ads in public spaces do not
| bother them might be easier influenced than they
| understand. I often hear people say ads don't work on them
| but we're all susceptible to being manipulated.
| Fnoord wrote:
| What annoys me most is advertising on highway and in traffic.
| I am not allowed to use a smartphone because it distracts me;
| fair enough. What about safety on the road though? All these
| signals are pure noise, irrelevant to traffic.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Safety takes a back seat to corporate profits of course.
| Who cares if some schmuck crashes his car because he was
| looking at a billboard depicting a nearly nude woman,
| right? The need to sell products to these people is all
| consuming, they just gotta do it and all other concerns
| don't really matter to them.
| shukantpal wrote:
| Should we cut down all trees next to road? They're a
| beautiful distraction.
| agumonkey wrote:
| There's something different about streets and web. I'm not
| sure but on my laptop i kinda expect things to go to the
| point, fast. A street is not a mean to an end. So a bus stop
| with some ad.. doesn't really changes everything.
|
| Consider web ads more like annoying bus boys trying to get
| you to order something in their restaurant by stepping in
| front of you and mirroring every move.
| blackhaz wrote:
| A street is as much a mean to an end as a laptop. I use
| streets to get from point A to point B, much like you use
| your laptop to arrive from state A to state B. I never have
| an intention to see ads when I go outside. Sometimes I use
| streets for fun, to stroll without aim, but never I go
| outside to "see some ads," much like you likely never open
| your laptop with an intention to see an ad.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > I use streets to get from point A to point B
|
| This is an excellent point to make: Streets are for
| getting from A to B, and ads don't impede that.
|
| The Internet is for getting access to information, and
| many of the online ad formats _do_ impede that.
| egeozcan wrote:
| It changes a lot if you have ADHD. IMHO, it's an
| accessibility problem for people like me.
| agumonkey wrote:
| It really disturbs your way in public space ?
|
| Maybe i'm too oblivious to IRL ads.
| boomlinde wrote:
| It very much depends on where you live of course.
| Thankfully, most places regulate public advertisement to
| some extent, but the level of regulation will differ from
| place to place.
| danShumway wrote:
| I think it makes navigation harder for me; I notice that
| it's a lot harder for me to parse out actually relevant
| information in busy spaces like airports/cities.
| Particularly while doing something like driving, because
| I'm juggling a lot of information in those situations and
| paying more attention to the people around me, rather
| than just focusing on signs.
|
| For a long time I thought that was all just due to
| crowds/stress and nothing else, but I'm increasingly
| convinced that part of it is just that it's harder for me
| to pick out when scanning a room where the signs are the
| indicate where I'm supposed to be. Also seems to make it
| more likely that I'll walk past an indicator or miss
| something while I'm trying to navigate the space. I'm
| always paranoid inside of these busier spaces about
| whether I'm going to miss something important and end up
| walking in the opposite direction of where I need to go.
|
| It may depend a lot on not just the area but also what
| you're personally used to; navigation in these spaces are
| a skill that people get better at over time. I suspect
| that some of the difficulties become less difficult as
| people's brains get better at filtering things out or
| recognizing indicators that they need to zero in on. In
| the same way that after a while playing a game you start
| to instinctively zero in on certain UX choices or
| indicators in a level, people also instinctively start to
| zero in on how a city indicates important information (is
| the sign always green, does it tend to show up in a
| specific place). So this might also be more of an early-
| user UX problem for people who don't go into the city all
| the time or who are particularly susceptible to getting
| distracted by motion/colors.
|
| ----
|
| There's a lot of research that brains are really good at
| learning to filter out advertising; part of the arms race
| in advertising isn't just with ad blockers, it's figuring
| out how to present ads in increasingly unusual ways where
| your brain won't just do pattern recognition and
| literally just refuse to process or register them. Human
| brains are heckin good at pattern recognition.
|
| But that means that there is an arms race with
| advertisers trying to figure out what the next evolution
| is with billboards or how to trick your brain to register
| things, and it means that people who are less equipped to
| do that filtering or are just unfamiliar with the space
| often end up getting thrown in the deep end because their
| brains aren't trained to do that filtering yet, or are
| trained to filter different things.
| shukantpal wrote:
| Seems like a you problem.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yes!! It's hard enough to maintain attention as it is.
| Last thing we need is entitled corporations stealing it
| every chance they get for the sake of profit.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| I don't know if I would call it an accessibility problem
| for me personally, but yeah as someone who has trouble
| staying focused, a moving screen or flashy ad is almost
| impossible not to look at, and extremely intrusive. Using
| the web without an ad blocker is an absolute nightmare
| for me.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Flower gardens cause problems for people with allergies,
| but we don't ban them. We cannot make the entire world
| ideal for everyone.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Most cities do limit the sorts of flowers they plant.
|
| > We cannot make the entire world ideal for everyone.
|
| Huh? So just f** accessibility and leave everyone on
| their own? I'd understand if you'd argued that it
| wouldn't be feasible to do a particular thing, but such
| general statements leave a very bad taste.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I hate ads as much as the next person, but let's be clear:
| your comment is an advertisement. You are attempting to get
| me to think and feel a certain way about a certain thing. And
| it worked. Now I've spent time processing it and etc.
| shmageggy wrote:
| Another difference not mentioned by sibling comments is
| that ads are purchased. They are necessarily the domain of
| the well-funded and therefore already-powerful, and whose
| purpose is to typically to enhance their purchasers wealth
| or power. They are a tool for inequality.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| I strongly disagree, his comment is not an ad, it is
| content. We all came to this page looking for comments like
| that. Every single experience in life changes the way I
| think and feel, that doesn't mean everything is an ad, the
| defining characteristic of an ad is the fact that it is
| unwanted, that it is imposed on people as an attention tax
| imposed on some other experience we actually want.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The difference is that his "ad" is relevant; you are on a
| comment thread about ads reading his (relevant) reply,
| similar to seeing an ad about a phone in a phone store.
|
| In contrast, ads in most public places are completely
| irrelevant and unwelcome.
| wowokay wrote:
| Idk, I have never been upset about ads in real life, I
| wouldn't consider most if any as unwanted.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Not really. Comments are comments. Not ads. You came here
| to read the comments. Nobody paid some ad company to show
| it to you and force the ideas into your head. The fact you
| agreed with the comment doesn't mean it's an ad, it means
| you found it persuasive.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You do have to view ads on subways though. I guess people don't
| mind because they are waiting anyway. That interstitial ad only
| stops you for 3 seconds, maybe the same time it take for the
| ticket gate to open.
| jorvi wrote:
| I think one element missing in that comparison is that you'd
| get a free subway ride or a grocery discount for viewing the
| ad.
|
| I vehemently dislike ads but I thought that should be
| mentioned.
| mellavora wrote:
| So you mean the only thing funding the subway is ad revenue?
| Not, for example, taxes?
| Flankk wrote:
| The people writing articles at Forbes are on payroll. Ad
| blockers take food off their plate just to avoid a minor
| inconvenience. All you're doing is pushing these companies to
| either go subscription only or go bankrupt. Watch the level of
| entitlement of the people who will inevitably try defending
| their content theft. They can't win the argument and they
| always appeal to false moral virtues. They act like targeted
| ads are the dawn of an Orwellian police state.
| rfrey wrote:
| Am I a victim of satire blindness? This reads to me like it's
| parodying arguments made by advertisers.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm responsible for my computer's configuration; site
| operators are responsible for theirs. If I configure my
| computer to not show me ads, that's my choice. If they
| configure their computer to not show me content, that's also
| their choice. If they decide to show me content even if I'm
| not displaying ads, that's also on them, same as if I
| configured mine to show ads and was then dissatisfied with my
| choice.
| shukantpal wrote:
| Then if they decide to fingerprint you, you should have no
| recourse either (other than to block it by yourself).
| sokoloff wrote:
| From a totally practical perspective, I agree. Whatever
| I'm sending to a site, I can't realistically expect that
| no one will ever use it.
| smarx007 wrote:
| I only visit Forbes when someone sends me a link and 9/10
| times I get disappointed when I finish the article. When many
| of the resources I read put up paywalls, I ended up making 2
| subscriptions to resources I trust/read most.
|
| I think you are taking this in a wrong direction. The real-
| world analogy of what you say would be "look at all that food
| a person is getting for free, all they need to do is to watch
| ads for 1hr; watch the level of entitlement of people who
| watch those ads in sunglasses!"
|
| Regarding theft: I don't agree with the use of words like
| theft or piracy. Nobody loses an article and nobody is held
| at gunpoint to give one up. If you want, call it freeloading
| or schwarzfahren (literally black riding, ie riding without a
| ticket).
| davidodio wrote:
| Honestly, going full subscription or bankrupt would be fine
| with me. It's the publisher's responsibility to find a
| business model that works. What exactly am I stealing by
| blocking ads? I have no moral or ethical oblication to view
| them or to allow them to follow me round the web... nowhere
| was I asked or consented to the exchange of my personal
| information and resources to view their content
| southerntofu wrote:
| Ads are everywhere you go on the streets. They lure your
| attention span with bright colors and LEDs which may create
| accidents. They reinforce a sense of need to consume and/or a
| feeling of being inappropriate as a person. Supermarkets will
| try very hard to "give" you their customer card so they can
| collect more detailed info about you and profile your habits.
|
| Companies often place adverts illegallly [0] by recruiting
| precarious workers who are going to face the police, not them.
| They'll even go as far as to cover a cycling area with a
| slippery material for their ads [1], or to cover historical
| monuments in spite of architectural regulations [2]. A
| multinational like Amazon will even steal a wall reserved for
| artists and pay goons to intimidate the population [3] in order
| to promote its shitty services.
|
| Also, i don't know about the current situation in regards to
| this, but more than a decade ago there was a "scandal" in which
| public French companies wanted to setup spy cameras in
| advertisement panels so they could target ads and study
| reactions. The tiny pinkertons following you around is,
| unfortunately and scaringly real: https://antipub.org/ecrans-
| de-pub-espions-du-metro-les-assoc...
|
| Last time i was in a big city i had the occasion to see an
| advertisement panel graphed with a huge red "Adblock". It was
| heartwarming, and reminded me that pretty much every where
| local people organize to sabotage advertisement panels and
| companies, and you should do the same in your neighborhood! I'm
| personally lucky enough that there's no advertisement where i
| live, and i think nobody from the neighborhood would let such a
| trend emerge.
|
| [0] https://lareleveetlapeste.fr/affichage-sauvage-quand-les-
| mul...
|
| [1] https://www.bfmtv.com/societe/paris-burberry-recouvre-une-
| pi...
|
| [2] https://www.latribunedelart.com/le-patrimoine-parisien-
| denat...
|
| [3] https://www.streetpress.com/sujet/1600089407-paris-amazon-
| em...
| brokenkebab wrote:
| Telling "lure you attention" is just a way to frame it. There
| are plenty of evidence that visual monotony has negative
| effect on mind, and FWIW in most modern urban environments
| (blocky, and painfully uniform) ads often do a little bit of
| favor by providing variance. I've been to places where street
| ads are heavily regulated to the point it's noticable that
| there are less billboards and they are more plain. Unless
| those are full of historical baroque, gothic/art nouveau
| buildings it absolutely doesn't make it more attractive (I
| support restricting ads in historical towns).
|
| As for claim about accidents: how about murals, decorative
| lights on houses, big brightly lit windows?
| fock wrote:
| Well, not every roof over a busstop bench needs to look the
| same. With ads it does. Plant (different!) trees inplace of
| the billboards. Or (god forbid) just let your local
| graffiti-guy spray there...
|
| Btw.: a nice info-display emits over its life around 2t of
| CO2 PER YEAR! Most of it in waste..
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Ads making a city more beautiful...?
|
| How about some landscaping and art instead?
| luma wrote:
| Your opening reminded me of this piece attributed to Banksy:
|
| People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt
| into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear.
| They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small.
| They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not
| sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else.
| They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They
| have access to the most sophisticated technology the world
| has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The
| Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
|
| You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks,
| intellectual property rights and copyright law mean
| advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with
| total impunity.
|
| Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no
| choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to
| take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like
| with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock
| someone just threw at your head.
|
| You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you
| especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They
| have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you.
| They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking
| for theirs.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Advertising is mind rape. Not a single person who looks at ads
| has consented to giving corporations their attention, much less
| have their minds violated when they insert their little brands
| and offers.
|
| They are _not_ entitled to our attention. Advertising should be
| illegal no matter what. Disruptiveness just makes this
| unacceptable practice even worse.
| ghusbands wrote:
| One big problem with your argument is that the word "yet"
| should be added almost everywhere. And in fact other responses
| have pointed out that there are plenty of places where ads are
| delaying interactive purchases. It's only a matter of time
| until it is in almost all the places you mentioned.
|
| For as long as there's no good pushback/regulation, there'll
| always be someone willing to pay to insert ads somewhere and
| someone willing to accept their money, because there's almost
| no immediate downside and the amount of money offered keeps
| going up until you fold. It happens continually, everywhere,
| that more and more ads, and more and more intrusive ones, keep
| appearing, and defending the status quo won't help us.
| boomlinde wrote:
| _> But ads in real life do not prevent me from going on about
| my day._
|
| If I run around you all day shouting expletives at you, you
| might consider that there's nothing that I do that
| fundamentally gets in your way for as long as I keep a certain
| distance. But it will be annoying, exhausting and likely
| detrimental to your mental health in the long term.
|
| There's nothing inherently offensive about advertisement, IMO.
| Display the products you can sell me and their prices in your
| storefront window. Publish informational ads in categorized
| directories. Advertisement insofar that it lets consumers stay
| aware of the available alternatives for the products they need
| and use is a good thing, but when advertisers are no longer
| content with my demand for consumption and feel like they
| should create that demand through manipulation, they've
| outstayed their welcome.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _If I run around you all day shouting expletives at you,
| you might consider that there 's nothing that I do that
| fundamentally gets in your way for as long as I keep a
| certain distance. But it will be annoying, exhausting and
| likely detrimental to your mental health in the long term._
|
| But that's different. Ads in real life are passive. They are
| part of the environment like the color of the house. They
| don't actively interact with you specifically.
|
| > _Advertisement insofar that it lets consumers stay aware of
| the available alternatives for the products they need and use
| is a good thing_
|
| And the vast majority of people will never ever check that to
| find relevant things to them.
| boomlinde wrote:
| _> But that 's different. Ads in real life are passive.
| They are part of the environment like the color of the
| house._
|
| So let's say that the "color of my house" is obscene and
| disturbing imagery designed specifically to elicit an
| emotional response in viewers for the sake of making them
| feel bad. Point still stands; you don't have to actively
| get in someone's way to be a nuisance that's detrimental to
| the quality of life and leaves people worse off than
| without it.
|
| It's also worth mentioning that advertisement
| overwhelmingly refers to its targets in second person
| exactly to create the subtle illusion of addressing you
| specifically. To some small degree our brains probably
| don't recognize the difference.
|
| _> And the vast majority of people will never ever check
| that to find relevant things to them._
|
| If I'm not actively looking for things that will improve my
| life, perhaps I am already content with my situation, and
| the things in question actually aren't that relevant to me.
| jevoten wrote:
| But ads in real life do mar the landscape, the real world, with
| their presence. You can drive through the countryside, and have
| the idyllic rolling hills scarred by a giant poster for the
| nearest McDonald's.
|
| Even in cities, they're visual pollution.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| If you don't like it, buy the property and take the ad down.
|
| I understand the eyesore, but I draw the line before telling
| someone he can't have a sign on his property.
| eloisius wrote:
| We don't allow things on your property to emit all kinds of
| things without limitations. Smells, gases, smoke,
| radiation, etc. Why is visible EM radiation an exception?
| In fact it isn't: try displaying pornography on your
| property.
| CyberShadow wrote:
| > it would be infuriating if you had to view an ad before being
| able to use the subway ticketing system
|
| What about using a gas pump?
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/ozu1up/havin...
|
| Seems that the trend is going in this direction.
| pvinis wrote:
| wow, that's bad.
|
| I don't know if the "trend is going in this direction",
| because I would never go to that gas station again after
| seeing that once. I'm sure most other people would too.
| tetraca wrote:
| In practice, not so much. Every gas station in my area
| installed these things, and they are busy as they've ever
| been. You would have to go well out of your way to avoid
| ads.
| danShumway wrote:
| > But ads in real life do not prevent me from going on about my
| day.
|
| More common than you might expect, other people here have
| brought up checkout processes, etc... Beyond what they have
| said, I want to suggest though that some of the spacing and
| positioning and navigation around cities/roads is limited by
| needing room for advertising. There's a limit to how much
| information you can put along the side of a road in a city, and
| more of that space could be devoted to more obvious navigation
| signs at more regular intervals if advertising wasn't taking up
| some of that space.
|
| Maybe this is a stretch, but I wonder how much less stressful
| it would be if the biggest visual indicator on a bus stop was
| the actual bus stop number and not the full-page ad. In my
| mind, that is kind of delaying information until after you've
| passed through this space where you can only see the ad.
|
| > it would be infuriating if you had to view an ad before being
| able to use the subway ticketing system. You also don't have
| ads on at the airport timetable screen.
|
| Another example that springs to mind, I ride publicly funded
| transportation. The trains have displays inside of the train
| that indicate what the next stop will be. Those get interrupted
| by ads, if you glance up and want to see how close you are to
| your stop, you will likely need to sit through an ad before
| that information will pop up on the screen again. And that's
| not even in a private establishment, this is ads showing up in
| public space that isn't owned by any company. It's not even a
| 1st Amendment thing, they don't have any right to that space,
| we just decided to sell advertising space to those companies.
|
| Forcing people to view ads before they enter a subway or check
| out at a store is definitely something companies are starting
| to pay attention to and would be willing to try. A few physical
| stores have even started to roll out non-transparent glass in
| frozen sections that have ads overtop, so you can't walk
| through the isle and look to see what the store has, you have
| to open each section and manually check, and the glass screens
| just show you ads instead.
|
| > You don't have pinkertons following you to learn your habits
| and show you "relevant" ads.
|
| This is also kind of a fun rabbit hole to jump down, there is a
| surprising amount of real-world data that gets processed for
| advertising; stores have experimented with tracking customers
| as they go through isles using facial recognition and/or
| tracking signals emitted from devices. Most loyalty cards feed
| purchases into a database so you can be tracked.
|
| And companies have been for a while now experimenting with and
| kind of openly talking about doing eye tracking in billboard
| ads in cities. To the best of my knowledge this has not
| actually been rolled out anywhere, but it keeps on coming up in
| research papers/patents/etc... and I think it's likely it will
| become common practice at some point.
|
| There's a connective tissue between digital advertising in
| physical spaces and digital spaces, and once you start to pick
| apart the links, it's hard to stop seeing them. A lot of
| digital tracking is augmented by physical tracking, and a
| nontrivial amount of digital tracking/profiles gets used in
| situations with real-world consequences.
|
| Some of the systems I talk about above like in-store ads are
| really only waiting for ways to be personalized per-customer
| before they can linked back into the tracking systems, and for
| stuff like dynamic displays, ads pre-purchase, etc... there's
| potential there to personalize them, which I think companies
| are likely to start taking advantage of.
|
| ----
|
| > But yes, unhealthy amount of advertising IRL should be
| limited as well.
|
| All that being said, I do think you're completely right, and I
| do think this is the slightly stronger argument: excessive
| advertising is just plain unhealthy period.
|
| I get into the tracking/disruption aspects of things because
| people respond to those aspects, but there's a downside there
| which is that they suggest there's a way to do pervasive
| advertising everywhere that would be fine if only they were
| more private or had skip buttons, and I honestly don't think
| that's true.
|
| I dislike abusive ads a lot, but I also dislike _ads_ , in
| general. I think it's unhealthy for us to have this much mental
| energy devoted to basically fielding corporate propaganda all
| the time, I think this affects our ability to devote energy to
| responding to things like political propaganda or researching
| news articles and validating facts we see online, or being
| charitable to other disruptions or focusing in on the world
| around us.
|
| That could be a much, much longer conversation, but I think
| you're completely correct to kind of step back and say, "does
| it really _matter_ if the physical space is completely
| analogous to the online space? " There are negative outcomes
| related to having so much of urban space devoted to trying to
| trick people into buying things. And I do think there are
| healthier ways to do that advertising, and I do think some
| advertising is worse than other advertising, and there is
| definitely a spectrum and a continuum here in how I respond to
| ads, but I also just think that excessive advertising is
| unhealthy regardless of the form it takes and I worry that when
| I talk about eye-tracking and loyalty cards that I might
| distract people from the more primitive and basic argument of
| "it's heckin ugly to have giant ads blocking your view of the
| actual products in a store, and it's heckin ugly to have a
| bunch of billboards for Pepsi in the middle of a public park."
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| What's a "healthy" amount of advertising?
|
| IMHO I would argue that 0 advertising is a healthy amount.
| leppr wrote:
| Some new forms of IRL ads do interrupt your flow.
|
| Examples I've encountered:
|
| * In a mall touchscreen navigation kiosk, an ad is shown when
| you first wake up the device by touching it.
|
| * At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order touchscreen
| kiosk flow.
|
| * On Starbucks screen menus, the whole menu is periodically
| replaced with a video ad, forcing you to wait until its end to
| finish making your choice.
|
| _> You also don't have ads on at the airport timetable
| screen._
|
| In the biggest international airport in my country, there are
| now periodical Covid-19 "info spots" interrupting the display
| of timetables, check-in desk and gate information screens.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| I heard some gas stations have ads on the pump display
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| The fist time I saw that my first instinct was to set the
| pump on fire. Pure rage. I'll leave with only fumes when I
| see that. Fortunately it's not that popular here.
|
| If it ever becomes ubiquitous, something's going to have to
| be done about it. I'd never convict anyone of destroying
| one of those ad screens.
| technothrasher wrote:
| These pumps with "Gas Station TV" are so annoying that I go
| out of my way to get my gas at a different station. I've
| wondered if it actively drives other customers away too or
| if I'm just very sensitive to it.
| timw4mail wrote:
| Where are these gas stations without them? They are
| everywhere!
| noahbradley wrote:
| I've found you can often mute those screens if you press
| one of the buttons beside the screen. Apparently it's
| different depending on the machine, so just mash them all
| I guess.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I've seen this too. I don't think you can find the option
| unless you keep swatting at the screen like a crazy
| person, so irritated at the ad that you're barely paying
| attention to the slightly dangerous act of fueling your
| vehicle. I think I've found it on every one I've used. I
| recall one having a mute that wasn't a proper mute, but
| instead would unmute itself after about 30 seconds,
| causing you to have to remute it. I think I screamed.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I avoid them too, and I've never found one where pressing
| any buttons mutes it.
| DarylZero wrote:
| Try pouring water into the speaker.
| yuliyp wrote:
| Ah yes. trying to create sparks near gasoline vapors.
| What could go wrong?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It is annoying, but I ignore it. The convenience of
| buying gas where I buy it (it's on the way home, etc.)
| outweighs the annoyance.
| bestnameever wrote:
| The gas station tv has never bothered me but I'm also
| able to tune it out completely. As I think about it, I
| struggle to even know which gas stations use it around
| me.
| mvkvvk wrote:
| I also avoid area gas stations with gas station tv. So
| theres at least two of us.
| hsdropout wrote:
| Three.
| DarylZero wrote:
| Yep, me too. A new gas station was beng built and I drove
| by it many times. When I noticed it opened, I got gas
| there, and they had ads on the pump! Shocking at the
| time. I decided never to go there again.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Don't forget the loud advertisements at the petrol pump!
| the_snooze wrote:
| And in airplanes. Airlines like to use those screens in
| front of each seat as billboards. They're on by default and
| don't time out, so they keep cycling bright ads while
| you're trying to sleep. Sure, you can turn yours off, but
| most of your neighbors won't bother changing the default on
| state.
| [deleted]
| Symbiote wrote:
| Has any American budget airline reached the depths
| Ryanair goes to make every last cent?
|
| They don't have screens on the seats (too expensive),
| just a printed advert. But they do play audio adverts on
| the PA system a couple of times per flight, typically for
| things you can buy on board.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| All of those are on a computer screen.
|
| The fact that people have so much difficulty on identifying
| blocking ads that are actually in real life (like changing
| the shafts configuration of a market) is pretty good evidence
| that they aren't as much annoying.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > * At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order
| touchscreen kiosk flow.
|
| Yeah lately this is really bad. Are you sure you don't want
| to order another side? And then you have to scroll to the
| "nope" button which is obviously off-screen. Am I sure I
| don't want to give 50 cents to the Ronald McDonald stuff?
| Piss off. I don't trust them to keep most of it themselves
| for 'overhead'.
|
| > In the biggest international airport in my country, there
| are now periodical Covid-19 "info spots" interrupting the
| display of timetables, check-in desk and gate information
| screens.
|
| Yeah this is really annoying in shops here too. Every minute
| or so they remind people to use the sanitiser or wear the
| mask. Yet some of the staff don't even do this. It just
| serves no purpose, other than virtue signalling. It becomes
| background noise. If someone doesn't know they have to wear
| the mask by now they have been living in a cave or something.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order touchscreen
| kiosk flow.
|
| Sounds like just one more reason in a long long long list of
| reasons not to go to McDonalds
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's amazing really. There has to be a business school case
| study there in how you go from being the trail-blazer and
| biggest success story in fast food, to one of the worst and
| getting worse with everything you do.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's also a school case study in showing how regardless
| they've gone down hill in food quality, in service
| quality, etc, their customers continue to patronize them.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > * At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order
| touchscreen kiosk flow.
|
| And they've only added (most of) these recently. What they've
| done for me is is increased the time it takes to check out by
| at least a third. They're paying for the ads with lengthened
| lines, which is a little shocking when talking about the
| automated option, because customers choose the automated
| option to save time.
|
| It might be a bad expectation for us to have. McDonalds might
| find it more profitable to start ripping out seats
| (especially with covid), and adding more automated checkout
| stations. Have us spend 5-10 minutes ordering. Offer
| discounts if we spend 10 additional minutes ordering and
| watching ads. Enter us into a sweepstakes while we order that
| pays every half-hour in free food.
|
| You could cram a lot of 2-sided touchscreen stations in the
| footprint of a McDonalds; people standing everywhere like a
| pachinko parlor, or a storefront full of video poker
| machines.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Who uses those ridiculous kiosks? Most people I see still
| just go to the counter, order, and pay. It's much faster.
| Macha wrote:
| Don't know what mcdonalds you're in, but most of them
| combine the kiosk revamp with cuts to the amount of staff
| hours. It's definitely not faster to join the single line
| in 5th place than use one of the 3 (of 5) vacant kiosks.
| MichaelBurge wrote:
| The McDonald's nearby doesn't allow counter orders
| anymore. You can only order through the kiosk, or using
| the phone app.
|
| Both of them have numerous problems, and it's more time-
| efficient to order Uber Eats. But that has massive added
| fees.
|
| I considered signing up to be an Uber Eats driver and
| filtering for anyone within 1 meter of me so I could pick
| up my own orders and save time(Uber's app is better), but
| there's not enough precision to do that.
|
| So I ditched McDonald's and mostly drink Soylent
| nowadays.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| They probably did the math: they don't need the order
| taking machine to take less time than making the meal
| itself. If they made it so you could place an order in 1
| second you'd still be in their store for a while. "Might as
| well bombard them with ads!"
| DarylZero wrote:
| They can even do A-B testing on the ads. Even if they
| lose some customers in line they can know they make more
| sales to compensate. Also they only really care about the
| 10% of customers who are totally addicted to the product
| and buy 90% of it. Those ones aren't leaving the line.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| So basically all digital ads are bad. All analog ads are less
| bad.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Analog ads have an installation & maintenance cost
| associated with them. Digital ads don't - if you have a
| screen anywhere, it can be turned into an ad with little
| effort and will require no ongoing maintenance.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Exactly. Ads are basically pollution. Digital (and
| network-connected) ads drive the cost of polluting to
| near zero, so you see them everywhere: on transit, in gas
| stations, on your TV's UI, in your operating system, etc.
| Analog ads actually have a deployment cost, so they don't
| pollute the space as much.
| brokenkebab wrote:
| These are all essentially browser ads, it's just not your
| browser.
| amelius wrote:
| For most women, photoshopped models on billboards already
| crossed the line decades ago.
| brokenkebab wrote:
| I doubt there was a global women poll on this issue. And
| strongly suspect even if existed it wouldn't show that
| majority of women even care. You are welcome to change my
| mind
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| And for men the same, but with boxer-shorts ads right?
| nirui wrote:
| I think those ads were designed for womans too...
| shakow wrote:
| Why would they be designed toward women; don't millions
| of men buy their own underwears in your country?
| ciphol wrote:
| Ads are designed for whoever is doing the buying. I would
| guess that most underwear is bought by individuals, not
| their opposite-sex partners.
| danShumway wrote:
| I guess the argument here is that those ads are designed
| for men, but they're designed to prey on an extremely
| primitive, kind of circular logic: "you would look like
| this if you bought this underwear." Sort of a "this man
| is desirable to women, please act like him."
|
| I am pretty iffy about that kind of detailed
| psychological reading into people, it's not completely
| clear to me that people internalize those ads in that
| way, and I suspect a lot of people internalize ads
| completely differently from each other, so I question if
| any of those explanations are actually generalizable. But
| I guess it's somewhat reasonable, maybe, to make the
| argument that male model ads are trying to say something
| like, "this is the clothing that attractive men wear, and
| if you were attractive you'd buy this." Or even, "this
| man is attractive and thus obviously has his life put
| together, and maybe you'd feel more like him if you had
| his brand of underwear on."
|
| But I'm much more sympathetic to and supportive of
| extremely broad statements like, "both sexy women ads and
| sexy men ads influence beauty standards in sometimes
| unhealthy/unobtainable directions regardless of the
| intent/purpose of the ad." I feel like getting super-
| specific about what exactly is running through a man's
| mind when they see an ad for underwear is when we start
| to get uncomfortably close to pseudoscience. But the much
| broader statement feels a lot less like pseudoscience, it
| does seem fairly clear that beauty standards are
| influenced by advertising (and by other things too,
| advertising is just one aspect of this).
| zo1 wrote:
| You could say that "sexy women" ads were designed for
| men.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| you could say that "sexy women" ads were designed by men.
|
| This isn't so much of a FTFY as much of just a different
| perspective of the same comment.
| qybaz wrote:
| Thank the Lord reality (still) does not have cookie banners.
| shakow wrote:
| I don't understand the hate toward cookie banners. It's like
| if the citizens of a surveillance state complained if
| civilian-dressed informants had to carry a big ugly sign.
| Sure, the sign is ugly and everywhere; but maybe the actual
| problem is that there are so many informants that you have to
| see so many signs, rather than their signs being ugly.
|
| Shoot the actual problem (i.e. the dark patterns and
| malicious compliance of the concerned websites), not the
| messenger.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| We already knew cookies were being used everywhere. I dont
| need to be told the same thing 100000 times because it
| makes some people feel better and altruistic.
|
| It didn't bring any benefits and has wasted excessive
| amounts of my time.
| watwut wrote:
| The banners are about tracking, not about cookies. You
| can use cookies and not have banner.
| shakow wrote:
| *tracking cookies
|
| First-party, non-tracking cookies do not require a cookie
| banner.
|
| I'm always flabbergaste how good the propaganda machines
| of ads agencies is that people are actively fighting
| protective measure on their behalf. _Nihil novi sub sole_
| I guess, but it 's fascinating to see this process happen
| first hand.
| Aerroon wrote:
| It's not propaganda by ad agencies. Why make it into a
| conspiracy? There are pretty great tools out there that
| you can use for websites, such as Google analytics, but
| the moment you use that you're implementing a cookie
| banner.
|
| Want to have ads? Cookie banner. Want to have
| YouTube/Twitter/whatever integration? Cookie banner.
|
| europa.eu has a cookie banner. A website that doesn't
| even need to pay its own bills!
| shakow wrote:
| > Want to have ads? Cookie banner.
|
| That's just wrong, you don't need a cookie banner for
| non-tracking ads.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| You need to have a cookie banner to have a third party
| provide ads, which is the most common way to do ads.
|
| Regardless, I block the ads, but I'm still trying to
| figure out to block all the dialogs about cookies for the
| ads I'm blocking.
| shakow wrote:
| > You need to have a cookie banner to have a third party
| provide ads
|
| No, you only need a cookie banner if those third parties
| collect data.
| qybaz wrote:
| detaro wrote:
| GDPR doesn't ban having log files with IPs. It requires
| you think about why you have them, what's in them and how
| you use them though.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| If it took a banner for you to realize people used Google
| analytics or similar services, then the banner isn't
| helping you avoid it.
|
| You should've been running a blocker already. I run third
| party blockers as much as possible, but these banners are
| just excessive and useless.
| shakow wrote:
| > then the banner isn't helping you avoid it.
|
| That's just plain false. I know many people, especially
| in the older, less technically literate people, who now
| systematically disable such analytics thanks to these
| banners - people who had never realised the real
| dimension of users tracking before this law.
| southerntofu wrote:
| This is so true.
| nulbyte wrote:
| Both are a problem in their own right. Tracking visitors to
| make up for your lackluster business model is abusive, but
| cookie banners as usually implemented are but one way to
| comply with regulations aimed at curtailing this. And in my
| book, it's a form of malicious compliance, making it
| equally part of the problem.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Annoying consent flows aren't compliant, at least not
| with the GDPR. A compliant consent flow should make it as
| easy to accept as it is to decline, so pre-ticked
| checkboxes or hiding/burying the decline option doesn't
| comply.
|
| Incompetent regulators that are asleep at the wheel and
| still haven't done anything to punish this (GDPR went
| into effect in 2018) are definitely a problem though.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Even if the regulators attacked more websites it wouldn't
| matter. You'd just have more and more websites that block
| European users.
|
| You can't expect websites to give you a pop up that asks
| whether they can monetize your visit or not. Everyone's
| going to click "refuse" because ads are annoying. As a
| consequence your website makes no money. At that point
| why run the website at all?
|
| Regulators don't want to regulate too hard, because it
| would ruin all the freely available websites.
| shakow wrote:
| > As a consequence your website makes no money. At that
| point why run the website at all?
|
| Many European websites are now proposing users to either
| accept cookies or buy a subscription to the website. This
| looks like a very sane way to address the problem to me.
|
| > You'd just have more and more websites that block
| European users.
|
| Why should I care? Market changes, adapt or disappear.
| qybaz wrote:
| >Why should I care? Market changes, adapt or disappear.
|
| This is not the market changing, it's a law crushing a
| free market that already existed.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > This is not the market changing, it's a law crushing a
| free market that already existed.
|
| In that case, what's the difference between a free market
| and a compulsory market?
|
| If market participants must only participate by choosing
| to spend or to not spend, they are beholden to the
| economic system, and are unfree actors in the status quo
| "free market" economic situation.
|
| And yet by exercising political freedom to make
| themselves (more) free, these unfree participants in the
| "free market" somehow make the market unfree, and instead
| of viewing that as a benefit to market participants, you
| view it as a loss of freedom in the status quo "free
| market" to the detriment of the unfree participants.
|
| I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to
| understand where you're coming from.
| qybaz wrote:
| The "unfree" participants could choose not to visit the
| websites, thus not receiving the content/services they
| want.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| And those same "unfree" participants are free to
| legislate what websites may or may not do with
| information that websites collect. The websites are
| similarly free to not do things that are prohibited by
| law in a given jurisdiction, or else not offer services
| to users subject to that legal jurisdiction.
|
| There was never any "free market" status quo in the
| absence of regulation to begin with, either in statute or
| in practice. There always are forces external to the
| market which act upon it, and some of those forces are
| individuals and groups of people.
|
| To say the free market exists, did previously exist, or
| could one day exist, is a truth claim I don't see the
| evidence to support. Advocating for a "free market" as
| opposed to the status quo is both an economic and a
| political position, and thus should address both economic
| and political aspects of the issue you present.
|
| What about this would you rather be different, and how
| so? Or what about this would you characterize
| differently?
| Abroszka wrote:
| > I don't understand the hate toward cookie banners.
|
| My main issue with it is that if I disable cookies, then
| every single time I need to accept it. If I enable cookies
| then I only need to accept it one time. I think this
| annoying thing actually reduces security, because people
| are more likely to just not delete the cookies at the end
| of the session to avoid this annoying popup. Makes the web
| totally unusable if you delete the cookies regularly
| without a plugin to hide the cookie banner.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _I don 't understand the hate toward cookie banners._
|
| Because they fundamentally don't work. The EU politicians
| had to have known that they didn't work from previous
| experience, but decided to inflict us with these pop ups
| anyway. Their own damn website has this pop up.[0]
|
| Reasons why cookie banners don't work:
|
| 1. They need to be implemented by the website. This means
| that if a website decides to ignore the cookie law they can
| set all the cookies they want and you won't be notified. If
| they are outside of the EU's jurisdiction they won't even
| care.
|
| 2. Targeted advertising is how a lot of websites pay the
| bills. This means that websites will use every trick in the
| book to get you to not click on the "refuse" button. Why
| wouldn't they? You're using their server time, but
| generating no revenue if you refuse. Websites will fight
| this process. They'll eventually lose, but the internet
| will either turn into a splinternet or cable TV. Ads are
| what make free websites work and cookies is how it happens
| right now.
|
| 3. Websites are made by people who aren't always well-
| versed in legalese and can't just hire a lawyer for
| everything. They don't always know whether they need a pop
| up or not. The safer option is to put it up there. If the
| EU's own website has one then probably so does yours.
|
| 4. Popups are annoying.
|
| Cookies should be handled by the browser. Not some
| harebrained JavaScript.
|
| [0] https://www.europa.eu
| cuu508 wrote:
| When you sign up for a store loyalty card, there's usually a
| form you fill out and sign. That's your "cookie consent".
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I have never given correct information for those. I always
| sign up with the name of a president and the address of the
| White House. I've been using a phone number from 15 years
| ago for those.
| [deleted]
| qybaz wrote:
| I don't have a problem with accepting some ToS when I sign
| up to a service. My problem is this new law where you have
| to accept the ToS of every single website on the internet
| before you can use it, then the ad networks, the analytics
| services, etc. It would be like having to sign a ream of
| papers every time I enter a store.
| summm wrote:
| The sites wouldn't need to get your consent for
| justifiable usage only. They actively decide they want
| more than that, they want to sell your data. So it's on
| them, the law itself is fine.
| qybaz wrote:
| Given that the sites wouldn't exist at all if it wasn't
| for the ad networks they use to feed their editors, it
| seems justifiable to me!
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I have zero problems with ad-supported shit going out of
| business and making space for good, paid content. Imagine
| a world where content has to be so good as to convince
| people to take out their wallet. No more clickbait, "this
| video is sponsored by ShitVPN", chumboxes, etc.
| IcyClAyMptHe wrote:
| Fully with you on that one. The fact of the matter is
| that most "free" content is fast food style content - you
| eat it because it's designed to be addictive. Consumers
| may feel like they want it, but that's just because it's
| there, prodding you, calling out to you, autoplaying the
| next video out of "convenience". If it were to disappear
| tomorrow, I'd likely spend more time reading old books,
| practicing programming for my entertainment
|
| There was a time when the likes of YouTube and blogging
| were just a hobby, not a job for pseudo marketers.
| Replacing paid "influencers" and "content creators" with
| plain hobbyists again would be a wonderful thing.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Outside of email (which I do pay for), I can't think of
| an online service I'd pay for. HN is about as close as it
| gets, but I wouldn't pay for what it is today.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I can imagine such a world. It would be cable TV with
| heavy region locks. The poorer parts of the world
| wouldn't be on it at all.
|
| Paying for things online is _still_ a terrible
| experience. You need a credit card, which isn 't always
| easy to get outside of the rich western countries. I
| would never have used websites like reddit, HN, Twitter,
| YouTube or Google if I had had to pay for it. As a kid I
| wouldn't have been able to pay even if I had wanted to.
|
| > _No more clickbait, "this video is sponsored by
| ShitVPN", chumboxes, etc._
|
| No, you would have _even more_ of this, because this type
| of monetization is not linked to cookies.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| You don't, that's the point of the law. As in, the _old_
| "EU cookie law" focused on you knowing the terms, but
| that proved ineffectual where every website operator said
| "accept or GTFO" (you'd think that would end up an
| unstable equilibrium, but it didn't).
|
| Thus the "new" GDPR is predicated on the idea that
| consent given under "... or GTFO" terms is invalid, given
| the imbalance in negotiating power, and said consent
| (where required) had to be voluntary by that definition.
| The result is cigarette-labelling-level malicious
| compliance on part of website operators (and compliance-
| in-a-box vendors they use).
|
| Many of the things you see, such as requiring you to turn
| off every single "purpose" or "partner", are manifestly
| illegal (or rather, don't legally constitute voluntary
| consent, so showing them is legal but tracking you
| afterwards isn't), but enforcement has been lackluster so
| far. We'll see where we end up I guess. (I genuinely
| don't know how I want this to go.)
| Werbung wrote:
| I wrote that before but happy to repeat:
|
| I do sometimes antiadvertisement. I see anoying ads? I will write
| those companies. Works best when cc as many mail addresses you
| can find from them.
|
| I also don't think most advertising is fair anyway. Most
| companies can't afford it, you actually don't see a lot of
| different ads as well.
|
| It's always magnum ice cream, cigarettes, some weird hipster new
| thing no one needs.
| riedel wrote:
| See also http://cyborganthropology.com/Diminished_Reality
|
| or watch Steve Mann's explaination what the ey tap is good for:
| https://youtu.be/DiFtmrpuwNY
|
| I guess unfortunately the holo lense and alike will be rather
| used to inject ads to reality
| izacus wrote:
| My city (and several others I've lived in) strongly restrict the
| amount of advertising that can be put in its center and is thus a
| much more pleasant place than many other cities I've visited.
|
| So there are "adblocks" in cities, they're just done in a much
| better way than on the web: the ads aren't created at all instead
| of forcing citizens to spend time fighting an individual war
| against them.
| akagusu wrote:
| If we get rid of all ads, how will advertisers trick our brain to
| buy stuff otherwise we would never buy?
| anfilt wrote:
| I wish I could. Kinda hard to block billboards or screens showing
| ads that you don't own.
| aww_dang wrote:
| There's an important distinction between prohibiting speech or
| commerce you dislike and refusing to consume or participate in
| what you dislike.
|
| If the equivalent augmented reality technology were developed,
| I'm unsure of what grounds objections would stand on. If someone
| wants to go about with video goggles which replace billboards
| with waterfalls or wildflowers, go for it. Develop the technology
| and release it.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Absolutely. I don't much care what people do with their stores
| but billboards are even worse than online ads because they're
| entirely non-consensual manipulation since you can't avoid them
| at all. It really should be considered a form of psychological
| violence.
| knolan wrote:
| I cycle to work on an ebike. About 25 km each way. One of the
| major issues is the lack of proper infrastructure and awful
| attitude by drivers, in particular service drivers.
|
| Advertisement company vans are a prime example. There are rolling
| advertisement posters in most bus stop shelters. These drivers
| will park up on the footpath blocking pedestrians and those using
| the bus to update the advertisements, often in the mornings
| during rush hour. They will park on the cycle lanes and force
| cyclists out into fast moving and unaccommodating aggressive
| traffic.
|
| The same goes for delivery drivers. Legally they are permitted on
| double yellow 'no parking' lines on the street but the perception
| is no not hinder car traffic so they park up on the footpath
| instead.
|
| During the pandemic there was a lot of temporary work on cycling
| infrastructure, mostly lazy efforts such as painted cycle lanes
| and plastic bollards. These drivers simply drive over the
| bollards or if wide enough down the protected lane. If you
| challenge them they are verbally abusive.
|
| The attitude of all persons in a mechanically propelled vehicle
| is that this is not their fault. They are just doing their job.
| Their companies trot out the tired line that they take safety
| seriously bla bla bla...
|
| So in regards physical advertisement is public space, for me this
| is a symptom of a wider problem of perceptions of ownership of
| our cities public space. We forget that cities are for people. We
| let cars dominate the majority of the available space. We let
| oversized vehicles make deliveries in medieval city streets. We
| use cars for short inappropriately short journeys such as for
| bringing our kids to school, often because it's too dangerous to
| let them walk or cycle because there are too many cars.
|
| We need to start treating our cities like parks with a focus
| people and figure out ways to remove ICE powered vehicles and
| limit the space all vehicles occupy.
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| I don't know where I heard it, but there was a story about a
| hammer-wielding bicycle gang that smashed up cars that weren't
| friendly to bicycles. Sort of like https://abc7ny.com/bikers-
| attack-car-bmw-attacked-flatiron-n.... When the police won't
| enforce the laws then I guess groups emerge that take matters
| into their own hands.
| visarga wrote:
| > We forget that cities are for people. We let cars dominate
| the majority of the available space.
|
| In my city it's especially bad. Cars on the road, cars on the
| road side, cars on sidewalks, cars on pedestrian crossings,
| cars chasing you while crossing the road on the designated
| crossing. And as you say, if you object they become abusive.
| It's a large Eastern European city that is living the American
| dream of going everywhere in a car.
| throwaway55421 wrote:
| I recently submitted an objection to an advertising banner in my
| city and the planning board rejected it.
|
| Result.
| quocanh wrote:
| What if we could have free public transportation in exchange for
| an advertisement bombardment? That actually sounds like a great
| idea (to me). Sure getting on a metro train would make you dizzy
| and overwhelmed. But we would actually have a metro train!
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Bangalore did this for the last 2 years, albeit for a different
| reason. BBMP (the civic body) took down thousands of billboards
| and hoardings over weeks, and while there were violations,
| Bangalore was (for the last 2 years or so) a city with adblock.
|
| Unfortunately, the ban was struck down by the court this year in
| August, so we're going back.
|
| For what it's worth, the ban was called out as great by various
| citizen activist groups[0], even if the reason it happened was
| quite political.
|
| A few links:
|
| - https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...
|
| - https://www.myhoardings.com/blog/ban-on-bangalore-hoardings-...
|
| [0]: https://bengaluru.citizenmatters.in/bbmp-bangalore-
| illegal-h...
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I live in bangalore. I found the ad ban extremely irritating,
| because they took down the billboards, but left torn cloth or
| plastic sheets in place! It even empty boards. It was looking
| so ugly everywhere. I'd rather see the ads. At least
| advertisers try to make their billboards look aesthetically
| pleasing. I do agree that it becomes excessive in some places.
| I feel that public (taxpayer funded) infrastructure should not
| have any ads.
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