[HN Gopher] Vietnam bans unskippable ads
___________________________________________________________________
Vietnam bans unskippable ads
Author : hoherd
Score : 936 points
Date : 2026-01-06 16:45 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (saigoneer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (saigoneer.com)
| cm2012 wrote:
| Basically banning brand advertising ads. Interesting. This will
| be a pain for a bunch of developers to adhere to lol.
| pif wrote:
| > Basically banning brand advertising ads.
|
| I don't get it. Could you please elaborate? Thanks in advance!
| cm2012 wrote:
| In marketing their is a distinction between direct response
| ads (get people to take action) vs brand ads (force people to
| just watch, no immediate action needed).
|
| Unskippable ads are almost always brand ads focusing on total
| view time.
| croisillon wrote:
| missing a T
| hart_russell wrote:
| viet fucking nam man - the dude
| edm0nd wrote:
| The T really ties the word together man
| joebig wrote:
| Unyielding fidelity to the original article title.
| otikik wrote:
| Faithful "to a t"
| winstonwinston wrote:
| What is unyielding fidelity? noun. A steadfastness in loyalty
| and support, characterized by a firm and unwavering devotion
| to a cause, principle, or person, demonstrating exceptional
| persistence and reliability despite obstacles or challenges.
|
| Without a t, it may as well be a streaming service.
| verisimi wrote:
| It doesn't bode well for the quality of the source, if it can't
| even spell a country's name right!
| benatkin wrote:
| I wondered if maybe it was about Vienna
| llbbdd wrote:
| Poorly thought out and family subscription to YouTube premium in
| Vietnam is $6/month USD. Google is just going to pull a different
| lever to compensate, like just displaying more shorter ads per
| session.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Then there can be regulation of that too.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Indeed, just keep pulling the policy ratchet if tech tries to
| subvert.
| nickff wrote:
| It likely wouldn't take much to get YouTube to just shut
| out Vietnam; ads there are _very_ cheap, so they probably
| weren 't making much money anyway.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Minimal loss, the content can still be ripped and shared
| through other systems. Youtube is adversarial S3 imho. We
| can collectively live without Google and Youtube, without
| getting into the slop argument. I would take a different
| perspective about social contract if Google did not do
| Google things, and try to squeeze its users as hard as
| possible.
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't think Google's gonna be hurting for this one given the
| fact that hitting the skip button gives Google a strong signal
| that a real human just watched the ad and it didn't just play
| to an empty room.
| senkora wrote:
| Yep. Ad viewability standards simply require that a video ad
| was 50% onscreen for a continuous 2 seconds in order for it
| to count as an impression. Google probably usually gets that
| even for skippable ads.
|
| > Picture this: an advertiser pays premium rates for space on
| your site, but their carefully crafted creative sits unseen
| at the bottom of a page your readers never scroll to. Despite
| technically delivering the impression you promised, you've
| essentially sold empty air. This disconnect between ads
| served and ads seen is why viewability has emerged as the
| cornerstone metric in digital advertising's maturity.
|
| > Video ads require at least two seconds of continuous play
| while 50% visible ... These seemingly arbitrary thresholds
| represent extensive research into human attention patterns.
|
| https://www.playwire.com/blog/ad-viewability
| mc32 wrote:
| That's not bad but better would be to require a default of
| chronological order for showing content with an option for
| "discover" other content but only on demand.
| nrclark wrote:
| Interesting, I wonder if this will spike VPN traffic into
| Vietnam.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| What's the subset of users with a VPN but no ublock?
| acureau wrote:
| NordVPN users sold by the "anti-hacker" ads?
| anvuong wrote:
| Yeah probably not. A large amount of posts and videos from
| social medias are blocked in Vietnam, it's still a communist
| country with very low level of free speech and press freedom,
| albeit still better than China.
|
| Source: I used to live there.
| energy123 wrote:
| Higher volume of skippable ads incoming
| _jab wrote:
| I've often wondered whether the world would be better without
| ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social
| media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society.
| Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing
| actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a
| service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer
| for whether real value is present.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware this is impractical. But it's
| fun to think about sometimes.
| iammjm wrote:
| The world would definitely be better without ads. All ads are
| poisonous. All of them first convince you that you and your
| life as it is is not good enough, and that in order to be happy
| again you need to spend money to buy a $product.
| spencerflem wrote:
| And the worst part is, from a societal point of view - it
| doesnt matter if $companyA wins over $companyB, if the reason
| they won is that there was more Geico ads than Liberty ads
| etc.
|
| We allow every space to be overrun with these things, wasting
| our time and infecting our brains and in the end its zero-sum
| for the companies and negative-sum for us. No value anywhere
| is created.
| ksaj wrote:
| The bigger problem is those fake "realistic robot dog" ads,
| and all the other ai-faked products.
|
| Why YT and Google in general would want to be associated
| with such scammery, I do not know.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Why YT and Google in general would want
|
| They want the numbers to always go up. Scam ads pay just
| like non-scam ads.
|
| Hence why companies have to be forced not to be assholes
| with legislation.
| immibis wrote:
| They get paid per ad. Whether the product actually works
| is not their problem, unless they get a lawsuit. IIRC
| Facebook _did_ lose a lawsuit over scam ads, but
| continued doing the process it was sued for, because it
| 's so profitable, and just added a check so those ads
| don't get shown to regulators.
| al_borland wrote:
| As much as I hate ads, I don't know that it's so simple.
|
| There are products that do solve legitimate problems people
| have. Maybe there is less of that now, but in this past this
| was very true, and advertising helped make people aware that
| solutions to their problems have been developed. The first
| washing machine, for example.
|
| The problem comes when the advertisement manufacturers
| problems that didn't previously exist.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| If a product is really that good than people will legit
| recommend it. It's not a problem at all.
| kyralis wrote:
| Depends on the niche, really. I despise ads, but I can
| also admit to having learned about products from them
| that I have subsequently purchased and been pleased with.
|
| Sometimes the ad lets me know about an entire _type_ of
| product that I didn 't know existed but found very
| useful, and I probably didn't even by the actual brand
| that was advertised.
|
| If you consider the general concept of "letting people
| know what products are available for purchase", I think
| it's hard to disagree that it's a reasonable thing to do.
| That doesn't excuse the manner in which it is done today,
| of course, but that core functionality is not
| fundamentally evil.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| There are still tests and reviews and content where
| people can show products without being paid by the people
| producing these products.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Advertising isn't the general concept of letting people
| know what products are available for purchase. It's more
| specifically doing this for money and showing it to
| people who don't want to see it. One might quibble about
| exactly what the word "advertising" encompasses, but that
| description covers the bad stuff pretty well, whatever
| name you want to give it.
|
| I'd boil it down to: if you added a "don't show this"
| option, would anyone use it?
|
| A catalog that comes in the mail because you requested it
| is not advertising, since you requested it. Products
| mentioned on the front page of this site aren't
| advertising, because they're organic, and it's part of
| what I'm here for. Classified ads, despite the name,
| don't really qualify since they're in a separate section
| that nobody reads unless they're specifically seeking out
| those ads.
|
| A useful product doesn't have "don't show this" buttons
| because it would be completely pointless. I seek it out
| because I want it. I don't get upset at the company that
| made my office chair foisting it on me, because they
| didn't. I ordered the chair and got what I wanted.
|
| But ad companies don't resist "skip" buttons because they
| think they're pointless because everyone loves their
| products. They resist "skip" buttons because they know
| people don't want to see their shit. Their entire
| business model is based around forcing people to see
| things they don't want to see, but might accept as part
| of a package deal for seeing the stuff they _do_ want to
| see.
|
| That is the stuff that should be completely destroyed.
| drdeca wrote:
| > and showing it to people who don't want to see it.
|
| So, do superbowl ads not count as ads because a non-
| negligible portion of the viewership wants to see them?
| Or are you saying that there needs to be a non-negligible
| fraction of the viewers who don't want to see it for it
| to be an ad?
| wat10000 wrote:
| There's a spectrum. Movie trailers are closer to the "not
| ads" portion of the spectrum, although when shown in
| theaters they are much more ad-like than when made
| available online.
|
| There are probably a decent number of football fans who
| would use a "skip ads" button if they had one for the
| Super Bowl, so they're still some way toward the "ads"
| end of the spectrum. But they're certainly less
| objectionable than most TV ads.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| I haven't really, most of the products I've bought after
| advertising were low quality.
|
| I do have some very high quality products that were
| recommended to me through friends. Like one local lady
| that makes really quality outfits. She doesn't advertise
| at all because she's already overwhelmed with orders as
| she's so good.
| haritha-j wrote:
| I wonder if there's a middle ground, where you only have
| statement based, textual ads. Amusing ourselves to Death
| (great book btw), discusses how until the 19th century, ads
| were basically just information dense textual statements.
| The invention of slogans and jingles was the start of the
| slow downfall in ads.
|
| I interned at an ad agency once, and I really enjoy
| creative advertising, but frankly there's just way too much
| advertising in this world.
| vel0city wrote:
| I just wanted to second recommend Amusing Ourselves to
| Death. A very good and short read that I find continually
| relevant applying the same ideas to social media.
| Gerard0 wrote:
| Damn! I have been reading about Amusing Ourselves to
| Death on here since weeks and I assumed it was a new book
| from a contemporary author! I'll get it now, thanks for
| being the one who finally got me to :)
| phantasmish wrote:
| This is _what a fucking store is for_. They have catalogs.
| You could ask for one. If they think people will want
| something _they will try to sell it_ and will tell you
| about it _if you go looking_.
|
| I see this pro-ads argument all the time and it's so
| obviously-stupid that I'm truly baffled. Is this the kind
| of lie ad folks tell themselves so they can sleep at night?
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| There are also ads for services. I used to be a
| photographer, and without my little Facebook/Instagram
| ads people would have had to largely rely on word of
| mouth, meaning the more established photographers would
| absolutely dominate my little rural market even when
| their photography was worse.
|
| Also, I'm not sure we want a world where only the largest
| corporations get to sell things. That's what would happen
| if people could only find things through stores and
| catalogs, especially pre-internet.
| phantasmish wrote:
| If I go looking for a directory of [service, in my area]
| that's hardly an ad! If those include, say, reviews and
| pricing info, great! Yes, please!
|
| I definitely don't want that directory to be skewed _with
| ads_ in favor of those with the most money, or who have
| decided to burn the most of their limited resources on
| ads instead of improving their services, lowering their
| prices, or hell, just taking more profit. The ads were
| _the_ biggest problem with the good ol' yellow pages.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Oh you sweet summer child.
|
| Retail stores are basically rooms full of ads. Those end
| isle displays? How much shelf space allotted? Eye level
| shelf or bottom shelf? Distributors _pay_ for that. The
| whole damn store is advertising!
|
| You mentioned catalogs above... catalogs are almost pure
| advertising.
|
| _Looking for a directory of [service, in my area]_ ...
| you mean like the yellow pages? That were a literal giant
| book of advertising that companies paid for?
|
| Spend some time in retail technology. The world does not
| work the way you think.
| phantasmish wrote:
| Oh, I know how it works. You could have read my whole
| comment and saved yourself typing anything about the
| yellow pages. You sweet summer child.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Even in the phone books of old, you had ads as part of
| the directories... Businesses paid for those listings...
| Even today's equivalent, yelp, etc. are trying to sell
| add-on services to the businesses and can harm your
| businss if you don't pay up for the features.
| kelnos wrote:
| Right, and in this new ad-free world, those things works
| not be allowed, and all businesses would be on a level
| playing field, with none privileged over the others
| simply because they have a larger advertising budget.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I own ten thousand businesses, all of whom employ me as a
| contractor. All _businesses_ being on a level playing
| field puts me at quite an advantage!
|
| If people are using their advertising budget unethically,
| you should expect them to find _new_ unethical ways to
| use their advertising budget once you 've eliminated the
| existing ones. Rather than playing whack-a-mole, take a
| step back, and see if you can fundamentally change the
| rules of the game. _Why_ is advertising bad? What do you
| want to happen? Fixing the "how" too firmly, too soon,
| is an effective way to produce bad policy, no matter how
| good your intentions.
| tracker1 wrote:
| There's no such thing as a level playing field... you
| think EVERY brand can fit on store shelves for discovery?
| shimman wrote:
| This is entirely a human construct, we can absolutely
| make it a level playing field if we collectively choose
| so.
|
| What a sad comment.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Until you try to grapple with real world problems like
| limited shelf space, limited directory space, how the ads
| (ahem sorry, directory entries) should be sorted, how to
| deal with setting boundaries around local directories,
| etc.
| tpmoney wrote:
| You can make it more level, but in any system constrained
| by the physical world, you can never make it completely
| level.
|
| Ever notice that there used to be a lot of businesses
| with names like "A+ Heating and Cooling" or "AAA Chimney
| Sweeps"? That was because being at the top of the phone
| book's alphabetical listing was more likely to get you
| business since a lot of people would open to a section,
| start at the top and start calling.
|
| There's only so much shelf space to go around, eventually
| decisions will be made about who can put their products
| on a given shelf.
|
| Any large business with the ability to produce multiple
| different products will inherently have the advantage of
| getting more shelf space assuming you want to display all
| products.
|
| But even assuming you just wanted your shelf space to be
| a bunch of "per company" catalogs, businesses with more
| money to spend on glossier catalogs, or brighter inks, or
| more variations so thicker catalogs will have an
| advantage.
|
| Then there's names and numbers. Hooked on Phonics gets a
| leg up on every other competing reading program because
| they got the phone number that is 1-800-ABC-DEFG, no one
| else can have that number. The lawyer who gets
| 1-800-555-5555 (or other similarly easy to remember
| number) has a leg up on anyone with a random number out
| of the phone company's inventory.
|
| But I'm curious, what would this perfectly level field
| you envision look like? How would these sorts of problems
| be solved?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Your definition of _ad_ is too narrow then, because those
| are all different types of ads. A store advertising its
| goods or even having billboard ads saying the store is at
| such and such street is, well, an ad.
| layer8 wrote:
| Directories aren't ads. The crucial feature would be that
| nobody would have to pay to get listed, or only a small
| nominal fee that anyone can afford. Like in a phonebook.
|
| Paying for placement is what makes an ad. And that's what
| would have to be prohibited.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _The crucial feature would be that nobody would have to
| pay to get listed, or only a small nominal fee that
| anyone can afford_
|
| You see the contradiction.
|
| You're essentially saying no bad ads, only good ads,
| without defunding the difference. (Anyone can afford a
| Google or Meta ad in the way they could a White Pages
| listing.)
| layer8 wrote:
| I see no contradiction. Google or Meta ads are not a
| catalog. They are imposed on people who didn't decide to
| browse a catalog, and also you can't browse all
| Google/Meta ads as a catalog. A catalog listing products
| or businesses doesn't constitute ads, just as a phonebook
| doesn't.
| daedrdev wrote:
| companies have to pay to get their products on shelve in
| many grocery stores
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Who is maintaining and paying for this directory?
| layer8 wrote:
| Those who are interested in knowing what services exist.
| phantasmish wrote:
| It's absolutely wild to me that people can have
| experienced any amount of the Internet and not think
| "word of mouth" will absolutely wholly suffice to fill
| the role of informing people about products. Of course
| many, many people would create and maintain all kinds of
| lists and review all kinds of products without being paid
| to. We know this would happen because it has, and it
| does, even with the noise of advertising around. The
| early Web was _mostly_ this, outside the academic stuff
| and, I guess, porn & media piracy. Without ads clogging
| everything up, it might even be possible to find these
| folks' websites!
| mvdtnz wrote:
| And who puts together this magic directory, without pay?
| kelnos wrote:
| If I need a photographer, I'm going to go and search for
| one. If no one is allowed to advertise to me, then both
| the small and large players in the space are on an even
| playing field. Your photography website or Facebook page
| will be just as searchable or indexable as before, as
| will business directory sites that can help people find
| services they need, along with reviews and testimonials.
|
| Banning advertising could actually make it _easier_ for
| new entrants.
| keybored wrote:
| Capitalism always hides behind the petty business
| owner/store owner/craftsman. Then the haute bourgeoisie
| takes the bulk of the profits.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Maybe every advanced social system has a propensity
| towards totalitarianism. Similar criticisms can easily be
| foisted on feudalism, mercantilism, socialism, anarchism,
| etc. I think in Western Liberal Capitalism there's still
| space for a middle class. More, it appears the peculiar
| features of this system have enabled it to unlock
| tremendous social vigor and provide for the People
| historic material wealth. Perhaps what's missing in this
| system isn't material...
| keybored wrote:
| I'm at a loss as to what these abstract to the heavens
| responses even mean to reply to. What I commented on was
| the propaganda tactics of capitalism. The topic in itself
| wasn't even about the merits of it (but see the last
| sentence). What you get in response though are these
| chin-stroking platitudes about _but maybe all social
| systems have their faults_ , and _ah but look at how full
| and bountiful my fridge is because of this social
| system_.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Cadre, I can't help you. If the guy says meta advertising
| works for him, I'd take his word for it.
| keybored wrote:
| Nobody is immune to propaganda.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Brands pay stores for shelf space. How would you stop
| that in practice?
| phantasmish wrote:
| Impossible to solve I'm sure. Probably lower priority
| than stopping them from putting lead in bread and selling
| cocaine snake-oil elixirs, or forcing them to list basic
| nutritional information on food packaging. Alas, we lack
| the tools to make businesses do or not do things.
| layer8 wrote:
| By making it illegal? Brands can still compete on price
| and quality.
| al_borland wrote:
| Grocery stores are a low margin business. If you make
| selling shelf space illegal, they lose that revenue and
| will have to raise food prices to stay in business. This
| isn't a good outcome. I also question if the shelves
| would even changes much. They will probably prioritize
| their high margin products, which doesn't sound any
| better.
| mulmen wrote:
| What's the legal way to arrange things on a shelf?
| rick_dalton wrote:
| So instead of buying ad space we can now buy catalog
| space and reinvent the wheel.
| layer8 wrote:
| The principle would be that companies aren't allow to buy
| placement. It would be like a phonebook.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Yes, instead they register 1 million businesses that will
| all be listed in the phonebook.
| al_borland wrote:
| That would require regulation, as a catalog maker isn't
| going to turn down what is effectively free money. This
| also doesn't translate well to a physical store with more
| constraints on space.
|
| I recently got a catalog where everything was on pretty
| even footing. There was the occasional photo with someone
| wearing stuff, but it was a smattering of random brands,
| big and small. Nothing in it looked paid for. It was a
| catalog of stuff made in the US. The meat of the catalog
| was text that listed 1 item in a category per brand, when
| the brand may have had hundreds. A brand with literally
| one product was indistinguishable from a major brand. I
| actually found this quite frustrating as a potential
| buyer. If I was interested in a category I had to
| manually go to every single website to see what they
| actually had and if it was something I was interested in.
| There was no way to cut through the noise, other than my
| own past experience with companies that had some brand
| recognition (from advertising elsewhere).
| mulmen wrote:
| How do you sort the directory? Alphabetical can be gamed
| with names like A1 Locksmith. Chronological favors
| incumbents or spammers depending on direction.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are no successful economies without ads.
|
| Ads are a necessary evil for effective market discovery.
| They should be heavily regulated but you can't
| effectively operate a market economy without one.
| matthewkayin wrote:
| You're right, but I think this just highlights the issue
| with market economies.
|
| There is this capitalist lie that money is a stand-in for
| "value provided to society". So, when you provide value,
| society gives you money, and you can use this money to
| ask society for value back.
|
| Which sounds great. And truly, I do believe that people
| should have to contribute to society if they expect
| society to support them, but the problem with this lie is
| that, despite how capitalists make it sound, the market
| was not designed with this ideal in mind, instead we have
| imposed it onto the market after-the-fact in order to
| justify why the market is good and worth keeping around.
|
| But the real truth is that money does not reward the
| person who contributes the most value, it simply rewards
| the person who makes the most money. Money is not
| "value", money is power. And the system rewards profit no
| matter how it's acquired.
|
| This means that you can provide a good service that
| people want, but you still need to advertise and compete
| in order to be rewarded for your contribution.
|
| It also means that you can do something valuable, like
| cleaning up all the trash off of a beach, but that
| doesn't mean that the market will reward you for your
| contribution.
|
| And it also means that if you have a thing and you want
| to make profit selling it, you can run a manipulative ad
| campaign that convinces people that they truly need it,
| and the market will reward you.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _instead we have imposed it onto the market after-the-
| fact in order to justify why the market is good and worth
| keeping around_
|
| Not sure about that, markets existed since forever and
| are still useful even without ads.
| pluralmonad wrote:
| I don't think very many people in this thread actually
| mean markets when they say that. Sounds like they might
| mean corporate controlled markets? Otherwise the comments
| are gibberish. Markets are just a group of people
| exchanging time and resources. Wanting that to go away
| is... Bizarre and nonsensical.
| kube-system wrote:
| Advertising exists in some form even in ancient barter
| economies. It is older than currency.
| kube-system wrote:
| Alas, well-regulated market economies are the least-worst
| option we have.
| pluralmonad wrote:
| Saying you want some sort of discovery mechanism is
| different than saying the current ad tech malware
| landscape is a "necessary evil." It certainly is not.
| kube-system wrote:
| Not only did I not say that, but I also agree with you
| completely.
| gtowey wrote:
| I understand what you mean, but I would modify this
| statement a bit:
|
| There are no successful economies without _information
| exchange_. Discovery can happen without advertising -- if
| you consider that the main feature of ads is that it 's
| unwanted information distribution.
| kube-system wrote:
| There is not any real-world economy that has implemented
| that information exchange in the absence of activities
| that would be accurately described as advertising.
|
| Even thousands of years ago in illiterate societies
| people would advertise their goods/services via verbal
| campaigns, drawn pictures, songs, etc.
| dangus wrote:
| Isn't the catalog an ad?
|
| The issue is that anti-ad zealots won't acknowledge that
| advertising is a spectrum. You can go full blown
| horrendous dystopia or enter into a commerce-free hermit
| kingdom where private property is banned and resources
| aren't traded efficiently, with the end result being that
| everyone is poor because nobody trades anything with
| anyone.
|
| A sign for your store that identifies you is technically
| an ad. A brand logo printed on your product is
| technically an ad. A positive review is basically an ad.
| What lengths are we going to go to ban ads?
|
| Be honest: you've never bought a single useful thing that
| you found out about via an ad and ended up glad you saw
| an ad for?
|
| That is important because the wealth of nations is often
| predicated on the populace being able to trade their
| labor.
|
| For example, in recent years North Korea has developed
| their own Amazon-like delivery website for food and goods
| and has expanded intranet smartphone service because,
| obviously, fast communication and ease of transmitting a
| desire to buy or sell is helpful for growing an economy
| and keeping the nation from starving. Otherwise, why
| would they adopt an imperial capitalist concept like
| that?
| shuntress wrote:
| Yes, the store has a catalog. They want you to see the
| catalog, so they pay someone to tell you that the catalog
| exists.
| mulmen wrote:
| Catalogs _are_ ads.
| titzer wrote:
| Magazines, phone books, friends, stores. You know you could
| go to a store (or call them on the phone!) and talk to a
| person. "Hello, I am trying to find a thing to help me with
| X."
|
| Turns out that products that work well tend to get
| remembered, and ones that don't get forgotten.
| vel0city wrote:
| Magazines and phone books are often largely ad-supported.
| They largely wouldn't exist without some amount of
| advertising.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Mmmmmno?
| vel0city wrote:
| Go to any bookstore and open practically any paid
| magazine. Count how many pages are ads. It's far from a
| small percentage. Some I've looked at recently were
| practically 1/3 to 1/2 ads. This isn't far from how
| things were decades ago.
|
| Yellow pages (phone books) were essentially _entirely
| advertising_. They didn 't just list businesses out of
| the goodness of their heart, they took listing fees. This
| is a form of advertising!
| Panoramix wrote:
| I have never in my several decades of life seen and ad for
| anything and thought "I need to get that".
| meindnoch wrote:
| I remember having that experience as a kid - seeing an ad
| for Action Man(tm) during my Saturday morning cartoon
| block, and feeling that I _need_ that toy right now. My
| dad then explained to me that these advertisements are
| carefully crafted to elicit this response from kids, and
| that I should always think critically about the messaging
| in ads.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Not even movie advertisements like trailers? Or job ads?
| Housing ads?
|
| I've definitely investigated and eventually purchased
| things I first learned about through an advertisement.
|
| Mind, usually that was from print ads in things like
| magazines/newspapers, the occasional direct mail ad like
| the old Fry's electronics mailer or movie trailers.
| Online ads are overwhelmingly ugly attention grabbers for
| things I have zero interest in or no time for when
| displayed.
| lm28469 wrote:
| If you waited for an ad to solve your "legitimate problem"
| you didn't have a problem to begin with imho
| hk__2 wrote:
| You might not know it is a problem and that it is
| solvable.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| Yes but the amount of that happening is nowhere near
| enough to justify the ad-world we are living in.
| kube-system wrote:
| No, there are very few markets in which all of the buyers
| have perfect information.
|
| It is extremely common in the science/technology sector
| that buyers aren't looking for a solution to a problem
| they have because they are under the impression that a
| solution doesn't exist.
|
| The archetypal business-school case study for this is the
| story of Viagra. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati
| on/2025/03/27/viagra...
|
| But it applies to most new technology in a less dramatic
| sense.
| kibwen wrote:
| If the implication is that the ad industry helps to
| address the problem of buyers having imperfect
| information, that couldn't be more wrong.
|
| The entire point of the ad industry is to muddy the
| waters and psychologically manipulate consumers. It's not
| even remotely interested in _informing_ , it's interested
| in propagandizing.
| kube-system wrote:
| Obviously a gigantic industry has more than a singular
| impact on society. I only mentioned the one impact above
| because that was specifically the topic of discussion.
|
| There are also many reasons that the ad industry needs to
| be tightly regulated, of which your point is one.
| al_borland wrote:
| Having a problem and having a solution to that problem
| are two different things.
|
| I occasionally get the hiccups. When it happens, it's a
| problem. There are many home remedies that exist, but
| nothing has ever actually worked. I was watching Shark
| Tank one day, which is basically a bunch of ads, and
| there was a guy selling the Hiccaway. Several years after
| seeing this, I decided to give it a shot. I've used it 2
| or 3 times now and it's instantly stopped my hiccups. I
| feel a little weird for a while afterward, but at least
| the hiccups stop.
|
| This was a legitimate problem and I waited for an ad to
| solve my problem, because nothing else I tried worked,
| and I didn't know this thing existed until I saw the ad.
| I've also never heard anyone talk about it outside of
| Shark Tank, so word of mouth clearly isn't doing much
| either (at least in my circles). The topic of hiccups
| doesn't come up that often. Everyone gets hiccups, but
| they aren't out there actively looking for solutions.
| It's just something that happens, and it sucks.
| tensor wrote:
| The fix is actually fairly simple IMO, though will never be
| implemented. Make all ads passive, e.g. require people to
| explicitly ask to see them. For example, when I want to see
| what new video games are around, I go to review sites and
| forums. It's opt-in.
|
| Making all ads only legal in bazar-like environments,
| banning all other forms of "forced" ad viewing, and also
| banning personalized ads completely, would go a very long
| way to fixing the issues. Hell, we can start with simply
| banning personalized ads, that alone would effectively
| destroy the surveillance economy by making it illegal to
| use that data for anything other than providing the service
| the customer purchases.
| Aerroon wrote:
| But you are buying into viewing ads when you use services
| that show you ads.
|
| Also, ad bazaars sound great until you realize that every
| locality needs to have their own bazaar. Seeing ads for
| New York barbers is kind of useless when you're in Los
| Angeles. Now you have a million ad bazaars and that's the
| only advertisement allowed. A little bit of corruption
| and your ads outshine all your competitors in that
| locality and they go out of business, since signs are an
| ad too.
|
| Also also non-personalized ads mean that the only things
| that can be advertised online are digital goods or things
| that are available globally. Basically, it will work for
| Amazon and AliExpress but that's about it. And adsls in
| Russian or Japanese or Korean or German or French or
| Swedish or Portuguese aren't going to be that useful for
| you, are they? Ads in English but for a product in
| another country might be even worse.
| pluralmonad wrote:
| Word of mouth. It is okay for a system to be inefficient,
| especially when the tradeoff for efficiency is a poison
| pill (ad tech is definitely this).
| mrweasel wrote:
| Part of the issue may also be that to many companies rely
| on selling ads as their main source of revenue and there
| simply isn't enough money in "good ads" to fund all the
| services we've come to expect to be free.
|
| There simply isn't enough ads for soft drinks, supermarkets
| or cars to reasonably fund the tech industry as it
| currently exists. Ad funded Facebook, perfectly fine, but
| that's not a $200B company, not without questionable ads
| for gambling, scams and shitty China plastic products.
|
| Platforms should have higher standards, accept lower profit
| margins and charge users if needed, rather than resort to
| running ads for stuff we all now is garbage.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| As much as I hate ads, if you don't make yourself known to
| potential customers you're very screwed
| ksaj wrote:
| Most of the YT ads are AI rubbish. I can't imagine those
| fake "realistic puppy" ads generate any sales whatsoever.
| Same for the monocular that can zoom into a book title from
| a mountain range away. And nearly all the other YT and news
| feed ads one typically sees.
|
| Frankly, they should be illegal. If a physical store did
| that in Canada, it certainly would be. I'm surprised Canada
| hasn't reacted to these overabundant fake-product ads.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Is there not always some sort "marketplace" where people
| see what's being offered one way or another?
|
| I don't think we need ads for discovery, I see it more as a
| nefarious way to occupy space in people's conscious.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Is there not always some sort "marketplace"
|
| How exactly does that work for virtual products?
| cramsession wrote:
| If they provide value, people will seek them out.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Not that I ever use it but there are apparently services
| like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_Hunt people
| use to seek out new products.
|
| But as sibling comment said, if it's really good, people
| will find it eventually.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Funny you mention Product Hunt because it's pay-to-play
| too, there was a whole controversy a decade ago exactly
| now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Catalogs - offline and on-line, commercial and
| government. Deprived of constant noise and
| overstimulation of advertising, people will actively seek
| such information out, whether because they have a problem
| to solve, or just _out of curiosity_. All we 're talking
| about here is switching from current "push" model of
| advertising back to "pull" model.
|
| Who here never browsed a product or company catalog they
| found, just because they were curious?
| barbazoo wrote:
| I can almost feel the calm just imagining the world
| you're describing.
| cramsession wrote:
| That's not a problem for the customers though. Capitalism
| twists our incentives toward prioritizing return on
| investment over quality of life. Especially now with the
| internet, I literally never need ads. I just search for the
| solution to the problem I'm having. No push needed (or
| wanted).
| titzer wrote:
| > I literally never need ads. I just search for the
| solution to the problem I'm having. No push needed (or
| wanted).
|
| I _want_ to agree with you, but you only _think_ you 're
| not seeing ads. Obviously, the SEO corruption has made
| everything you search for distorted by irresistible
| economic incentives of tilting the search results and
| search engine in favor of promoters.
| cramsession wrote:
| Oh I agree. I don't want or need to see ads, I currently
| do though.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Adverts I specifically request are fine. Trailers for example
| -- I specifically go to youtube to find trailers.
|
| Or I'll go to rightmove if I want to look at adverts for
| houses. I'm happy to spend both time and even money on
| seeking out new products.
|
| But it seems that people have a parasitical relationship with
| adverts, they can't imagine a world where there aren't wall
| to wall adverts on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies
| and at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts
| and bananas and written in the sky.
|
| Adverts should be for my benefit, i.e. I can turn them on or
| off.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Even as a consumer I am legitimately happy that I've seen ads
| for some products.
|
| Now sure, it probably happens about once a quarter, and for
| that I watched probably hundreds if not thousands of ads, so
| was it worth it, I don't know, probably not.
| bigyabai wrote:
| As a consumer, I am fully willing to swallow the
| opportunity cost of blocking advertisements. I'm not afraid
| of having unspent money sitting around.
| thenewnewguy wrote:
| Obviously, if you could just delete the ads without changing
| anything else the world would be better, but that's not how
| it works.
|
| Lots of businesses sustain themselves on ad revenue - would
| the world be a better place if we had no ads, but
|
| - TV was twice the cost
|
| - Google, YouTube, etc. (insert your favorite ad-supported
| website here) didn't exist or cost a monthly subscription
|
| - All news was paywalled
|
| - Any ad-supported website providing basic information (e.g.
| the weather) was paywalled or didn't exist
|
| - etc etc
| kelnos wrote:
| Given that companies often spend a significant fraction of
| their budgets on advertising, I wonder if some products
| would be _cheaper_ if advertising was banned. Sure, maybe
| some ad-supported services would be paywalled, but it might
| end up being a wash in the end.
|
| At the very very very least, every ad-supported service
| should be required to offer an option to pay and see no
| ads. I do pay for services I use regularly when they offer
| it as an option to avoid ads.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| I actually think so, yes, the world would be better off
| with everything you listed happening.
|
| When we used to pay for newspapers, the informational value
| of the news was a lot higher, news and news-like social
| media posts were not the primary tool to spread stupidity.
| Levitz wrote:
| Yes. I'm not even sure it's a question anymore. Yes it
| would be a better world.
|
| Not even because of the first order consequences of the
| ads, but because since there are ads, we have an entire
| media ecosystem based on grabbing your attention.
|
| So that TV displays series and movies meant for people with
| the attention span of a goldfish. This applies to Netflix
| and Hollywood by the way. All of it. Even music changes for
| radio, meaning more ads.
|
| Google, Youtube, etc, along with news, along with social
| networks, depend on ragebait, being the first to spout
| whatever factoid, true or false, polarization of thought
| and basically a good chunk of what is very evidently wrong
| in today's society.
|
| I trust we could support a weather app with donations. For
| the rest? If I could remove either ads or cancer from this
| world I would sit a long time thinking about the decision,
| but gut feeling? Ads. The actual cost of the ad industry is
| enormous and incalculable, not even mentioning the actual
| purposes ads serve.
|
| As for the rest, I'm very much a fan of the Bill Hicks
| standup bit regarding the subject.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >The world would definitely be better without ads.
|
| I don't have the proof but I'm guessing that this is provably
| wrong. Without advertising in some existance it would be
| nearly impossible to start a business which means everyone
| would be peasants farming for subsistence living. I think the
| problem is that the propose of ads has become divorced from
| product. The issue is poor regulation not the existence of
| ads.
|
| Think about it, how as a small or competitive business owner
| would you get people to buy your soda vs coke/pepsi without
| advertising in some way? The issue is that coke/pepsi know
| they have a simple product so they blast ads not to sell
| their product but to adversarially drown out competitors
| before they can exist. Tons of advertising has counter agenda
| purposes like this rather than selling a product, its
| propaganda not advertisement. There are probably tons of
| unenforced laws already about this but IANAL.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| Why would it be impossible to start a business? You would
| still be able to list your business in mediums where
| potential buyers willingly go and search for products and
| services. If anything, it would level the playing field,
| paying more for ads would not mean you getting your poorer
| services more visible buy paying more for ads.
| tirant wrote:
| Definitely the world wouldn't be better without all ads,
| because that would be a clear violation of free speech.
|
| However ads should be limited only to communication channels
| that are optional to engage in. As for example, an ad on
| YouTube, a private video platform, should be perfectly fine.
| That's part of the product. On the other hand, ads on a
| highway, on the street, should not be allowed. I have not
| given permission for them to enter my personal mental space.
| I'm fine with shops advertising their presence, but not full
| fledged advertising on roads, streets, etc.
| moffkalast wrote:
| If free speech is you rolling up with a megaphone to yell
| promotional nonsense at me, then it's my free speech to
| vote for you to get banned I think.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| Free speech does not mean you get to yell at me. In the
| same way, banning ads where they are shown to users without
| their consent would not mean violation of free speech.
| kibwen wrote:
| Furiously seconded. Ads are just a tax that we pay _both_
| with our attention and then with our wallets. Every dollar
| that a company forks over to Google is a dollar they recoup
| by passing the costs on to you, for absolutely no benefit
| whatsoever to the product you 're paying for. Destroy this
| heinous rent-seeking industry.
| charcircuit wrote:
| You are ignoring the value of discovering a good or
| service. Increasing the customer acquisition cost for a
| company to infinity doesn't make them lower their prices.
| It makes them go out of business because they have no
| customers.
| hoorayimhelping wrote:
| > _All ads are poisonous_
|
| This is a silly and short-sighted blanket statement. People
| used to love getting catalogs, which are just big books full
| of ads. In the right context, people appreciate being
| informed of products that can help improve their lives.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| Exactly. I hate seeing ads when I do not want to, and I
| love going out and buying a furniture catalogue. The
| difference should be obvious.
| tzs wrote:
| How are the ads that local grocers and restaurants mail to me
| telling me of sales or giving me coupons which let me get
| things I'd be buying anyway for less money poisonous?
| iceflinger wrote:
| If you were going to be buying it anyway why does it even
| matter what the price is? Why can't they just list it at
| the coupon price for everyone?
| shuntress wrote:
| The problem is not ads. The problem is SPAM.
|
| There are plenty of legitimately well-intentioned ads that
| can connect someone who needs a good/service with someone
| that supplies it and everyone wins.
|
| The problem is that we use a nearly totally free unregulated
| market where anyone can advertise anything anywhere.
|
| edit: I'm not saying we should necessarily try to optimize
| for good ads over bad ads or even assuming that is possible.
| I would settle for just somehow reducing the total volume of
| ads to help make email, snail main, voice mail, and other
| methods of communication more usable.
| arethuza wrote:
| I don't think that's impractical - isn't it exactly what
| YouTube Premium offers, ad free viewing for PS12.99 a month.
|
| I watch quite a lot of content on YouTube and really should
| sign up for Premium but I feel that the shockingly irrelevant
| ads I get presented with on YouTube are trying to drive me to
| sign for it - they're certainly not going to get me to buy
| anything!
| jaapz wrote:
| YouTube has been increasing both the amount, frequency and
| length of ads in their video's for a long time now. They know
| people will keep using them anyway because of the network
| effect, and people who are really fed up with these ads will
| buy premium anyway. For them it's a win/win.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| It's a decent deal.
|
| Comes with YouTube Music for 15$.
|
| I probably use YouTube more than any other website, for
| about 10 minutes my premium subscription had expired and u
| rushed to throw money at Google to turn it back on.
|
| Musicians complain about low streaming payouts, but 30
| years ago I'd pay $40 ( inflation adjusted) for 15 songs
| and only like 3 of them.
|
| Now I can listen to 500 or 600 unique songs a month + music
| that would of had to be imported for that 15$.
|
| If I actually like an artist I'll buy an album as a
| keepsake.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Don't pretend that its just YouTube forcing the ads on you.
| The creators can choose where ads go in their videos.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The "creators" are complicit, and are in fact directly
| responsible for the worst aspects of the platform.
| Especially with most popular and well-known ones, the
| content itself is typically a very long, insidious ad,
| which makes the platform-supplied ad breaks a breath of
| fresh air in comparison.
| nalekberov wrote:
| Yet, most content on YouTube these days are sponsored by the
| companies trying to sell you a crap.
|
| And with 'Native ads' it's nearly impossible to have ad-free
| experience nowadays.
| gordonhart wrote:
| SponsorBlock works very well for skipping in-video ads.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >most content on YouTube these days are sponsored by the
| companies trying to sell you a crap.
|
| Because YT doesn't pay shit to content creators, hence
| being part of creating this.
|
| The people making the content need to make a living too, as
| much as ads suck.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| At least on youtube premium it has a feature to "Skip
| commonly skipped section".
| master-lincoln wrote:
| I think it would have been a better world without ads. There
| would be more competition which would improve products and thus
| outcome for customers.
|
| Also most of the demand of goods is artificially created by
| ads, so there would be less production of crap and thus less
| resources wasted.
|
| It would also mean a whole industry of people would do
| something else that is potentially not as detrimental to
| society.
|
| The money spend on the digital marketing industry was estimated
| at 650 billion USD 2025. For comparison that is equivalent to
| the whole GDP of countries like Sweden or Israel.
| vladms wrote:
| While I agree that the world would be better without ads in
| their current form, we should think why are ads required and
| what are the benefits.
|
| The main issue is how you discover a new product. The main
| benefit to society is/could be faster progress. The main
| downside to society could be unhappy people that consume
| crap.
|
| I think smart people should think about alternative
| solutions, not just think "ads are the problem".
|
| I personally have the exactly same issues as above when I
| look for example for open source libraries/programs for a
| task. There are popular ones, there are obscure ones, they
| are stable ones, etc. The search space is so big and complex
| that it is never easy.
|
| My personal preference would be a network recommendation
| system. I would like to know what people I know (and in my
| extended network) are using and like - being it restaurants,
| clothes or open source software. I have 90% of friends (or
| friends of friends) satisfied with something - maybe I should
| try. Of course it is not a perfect system, but seems much
| better than what we currently have...
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| That's a great idea for a dystopian sci-fi story: you can
| opt out of ads, but your product choices are publicly
| broadcast instead.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Oh man this is a nice idea, I will try to add on
| somethings which I can think about from the top of my
| mind
|
| To be really honest, even if things were publicly
| broadcasted, The amount of choices of products we make in
| each day would be huge.
|
| So no random stranger would go and look for your product
| choices. What would matter are the close friends and
| family or perhaps when one becomes really famous?
|
| Would the fundamental idea of anonymity go away from all
| internet? Like if someone posts a youtube video or even a
| yt comment, would I get to know what they ate for dinner?
|
| Can ads still be blocked? If my product choice is an LLM
| lets say, would my prompts be choices as well that will
| get leaked with the conversation to everyone?
|
| To be really honest, Govt.'s (snowden showed us) already
| can know about your product choices pretty good enough
| and the internet/infrastructure behind it is pretty
| centralized nowadays as well
|
| Sure there are alternatives but how many people do you
| see using beyond the tri-fecta of cloud and how those
| choices come downstream to us consumers if services run
| there
|
| I feel like this is gonna be a classic example of
| Hawthorne effect (Had to look the term for that) meaning
| that people will behave differently now that they are
| being observed.
|
| Also do you know that its not any technical limitation
| which limits it but financial incentives.
|
| There is no incentive to having your product choices be
| publicly broadcasted but for the services, there is an
| incentive of money if they show you ads and which they
| end up showing to ya.
|
| If there was an financial incentive for the servers to
| create this choice itself of opting out / public
| broadcasts option, they probably would be reality.
| owisd wrote:
| > how you discover a new product
|
| Buying magazines for trusted 3rd party reviews used to be
| way more common, far better experience than trying to sift
| through SEO slop these days.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > I personally have the exactly same issues as above when I
| look for example for open source libraries/programs for a
| task. There are popular ones, there are obscure ones, they
| are stable ones, etc. The search space is so big and
| complex that it is never easy.
|
| And adverts don't help determine what the best tool for
| your problem is. They determine which product spent the
| most on adverts.
|
| So yes, adverts do not help you with decision making at
| all.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > My personal preference would be a network recommendation
| system. I would like to know what people I know (and in my
| extended network) are using and like - being it
| restaurants, clothes or open source software. I have 90% of
| friends (or friends of friends) satisfied with something -
| maybe I should try. Of course it is not a perfect system,
| but seems much better than what we currently have...
|
| I can think of a hacky solution where your friends can
| share their (trustpilot?) or alternative accounts username
| and then you can review what they are reviewing/what they
| are using etc.
|
| The problem to me feels like nobody I know writes a
| trustpilot review unless its really bad or really good (I
| dont know too much about reviewing business)
|
| I feel like someone must have built this though
|
| Another part is how would you get your friends list? If its
| an open protocol like fediverse, this might have genuine
| value but you would still need to bootstrap your friends
| connecting you in fediverse and the whole process.
|
| And oh, insta and other large big tech where your friends
| already are wont do this because they precisely make money
| from selling you to ads. It would be harmful to their
| literal core.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| > My personal preference would be a network recommendation
| system.
|
| Random question: do you have a personal site where you
| write about things you recommend? Because that's the
| solution IMO. And that's the network you're talking about:
| it's the web. You find enough people you trust and you see
| what they recommend. The issue is that in modern society
| 99% of the people consume and 1% are fucking influencers
| getting paid to promote crap.
| vladms wrote:
| I was thinking (theoretically) we should strive for a
| more efficient system that could include more people.
| There are plenty of simpler and less efficient to achieve
| the same goal.
|
| For example I have for example a list of restaurants that
| I share with people that visit my city (plenty of tourist
| traps around), but it is cumbersome to manage/share. Does
| not feel like a solution.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think it is largely a Marketer's fantasy that people get
| up in the morning with a goal of "discovering new
| products." I don't want to discover new products. I
| especially don't want to while I'm trying to do something
| else that I actually WANT to do. If I need a new product, I
| will deliberately go out and look for it. I don't need
| marketers doing drive-by product announcements while I'm
| just trying to live my life.
|
| The question of "how do people spontaneously discover
| products" is invalid. It's just not something people want
| in their lives.
| amelius wrote:
| > The main issue is how you discover a new product.
|
| We live in the information age.
|
| How did you learn about your programming languages? Ads?
| vladms wrote:
| I learnt Basic, C++ in that order because at the time
| there were the only options (Basic because of a computer
| like Sinclair that only had basic, C++ because there was
| the only thing offered as a course at a computer club
| around).
|
| Programming languages are easier to discover because they
| are a reasonable number (tens) you can asses, they are
| very important (if you are in the field), so you can
| invest a lot of time in choosing and following the
| trends.
|
| I will not spend the same amount of time deciding about
| everything...
|
| One thing that I prefer something like ads/reviews (and
| in fact works well enough in my case): cultural events in
| the city I live.
| amelius wrote:
| Ok, but do you agree that we should put ads in designated
| places (and out of sight, generally) where people can
| look them up whenever they find it convenient rather than
| the other way around where companies just shove them in
| your face at random times?
| layer8 wrote:
| Open source software (mostly) don't have ads, and that
| doesn't seem to be a problem in practice. Good projects
| become known by word of mouth, people blogging about it,
| etc. If anything, it exemplifies that ads aren't required.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > I think it would have been a better world without ads.
| There would be more competition which would improve products
| and thus outcome for customers.
|
| How would people learn about various choices?
| amelius wrote:
| > How would people learn about various choices?
|
| By going to a website where they can learn about various
| choices.
|
| It could be similar to ads, but with higher truth value to
| it.
|
| AND most importantly, the user would view the information
| when THEY want to see the information, not when the
| marketeer wants to shove it in their face.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > By going to a website where they can learn about
| various choices.
|
| Who pays for the website? In the end, a world without ads
| gets very pricey very quickly.
| amelius wrote:
| Millions of ad haters would gladly pay for the website!
|
| But seriously, you think there is no money in a website
| for showing ads?
| mock-possum wrote:
| It's a well-established fact that _my_ world would be much
| better without ads.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| People won't pay a few bucks a month for YouTube. They won't
| pay to keep their favorite sites online. They won't pay for
| their news. Without ads, a lot of things wouldn't exist.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| No I won't pay for premium because even if I pay for it I
| still get ads in the content itself.
|
| Fix that and then I'll pay.
|
| Until then I just block the ads and the sponsors.
| driverdan wrote:
| YT makes it easy to skip embedded ads now. They mark places
| where people skip past and shortcut it so you don't need to
| watch them.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Sponsorblock exists as well.
| driverdan wrote:
| Sponsorblock is great but only works in the browser. Most
| people view YT on other devices.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Revanced Youtube's app support sponsorblock as well.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yes and Tubular and SmartTubeNext (Android TV!) and
| Grayjay too. Many options
|
| Tubular is a clone of Newpipe by the way, newpipe's devs
| didn't want to allow the sponsorblock plugin so it had to
| be forked.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| so you just dont think people making video content should
| make money in any way? if you hate ads that much dont watch
| any creators that have sponsored content. oh wait, the only
| way they can make videos that good is because they make
| money and are professionals. doh!
| wolvoleo wrote:
| No, I think they shouldn't be double dipping. If I pay
| for premium I want no ads whatsoever. Not for the content
| creators to sneak some in anyway.
|
| And no I don't tend to watch many with sponsor crap in
| them because they aren't actually very good (think the
| low-quality crap from LTT etc). The best channels
| (EEVBlog is one notable one) don't have sponsors at all
| because they're made for love.
|
| What I am not doing is watching the sponsorship segments
| anyway. So yeah I use sponsorblock. And I use Ublock
| origin or revanced to remove the ads too because there's
| way too many now.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| ok so you actually dont think they should be single
| dipping because you use ublock origin and sponsorblock?
| platevoltage wrote:
| I don't like ads either. Who does? I really don't mind
| unless they are hard-cut and aren't made by the creator
| themselves. What's your solution here? A new policy that
| prevents creators from doing sponsor spots? We all know
| what the result of that would be.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| > A new policy that prevents creators from doing sponsor
| spots? We all know what the result of that would be.
|
| Well or not show the sponsors to premium users. They
| could simply upload a separate premium version. Don't
| forget, these content creators are _already_ getting a
| lot more money from YT when a premium user views their
| vids. So they 're not entitled.
|
| They can walk away but where would they go?? Besides,
| more and more people are using sponsorblock since it's
| become totally insane with these.
| somenameforme wrote:
| There are already numerous competitors to YouTube. Of course
| they have collectively like 1% marketshare, but that's
| because it's basically impossible to compete against YouTube
| right now. But if YouTube died, these sites would rapidly
| become fully competent replacements - all they're missing is
| the users.
| abenga wrote:
| How would they pay for the infrastructure required to
| support all those users? I can't stand ads, but when I was
| younger, no way would I have paid for YT Premium (though to
| be fair, ads are much, much worse now).
| cons0le wrote:
| Let me pay usage based, with full transparency in
| hosting, infra, and energy costs. Like a utility.
|
| Subscription services are like hungry hungry hippos, you
| give them $10 a month and next year they want $100.
|
| I honestly think if everyone starts paying, it will only
| make them remove the free tier quicker. I think society
| is better with youtube free, even if ads are annoying.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >these sites would rapidly become fully competent
| replacements
|
| they wouldn't. For two reasons. Without the capital (that
| to a large extent comes from ads) nobody could run the
| herculean infrastructure and software behemoth that is
| Youtube. Maintaining that infrastructure costs money, a
| lot. Youtube is responsible for 15% of global internet
| traffic, it's hard to overstate how much capital and human
| expertise is required to run that operation. It's like
| saying we'll replace Walmart with my mom&pop shop, we'll
| figure the supply chain details out later
|
| Secondly content creation has two sides, there aren't just
| users but also producers and it's the latter who comes
| first. Youtube is successful because _it actually pays its
| creators_ , again in large part through ads.
|
| Any potential competitor would have to charge significantly
| higher fees than most users are willing to pay to run both
| the business and fund content creators. No Youtube
| competitor has any economic model at all on how to fund the
| people who are supposed to entertain the audience.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| And that's extremely harmful. In theory we have
| democracies. In practice, if you have the capital, you
| get to decide for what products and services the world's
| resources are used for.
| godshatter wrote:
| This makes me wonder how the system makes any money.
| Presumably the same people that won't pay a few bucks a month
| for YouTube won't buy things from ads either. So how do the
| ad companies make any money on them?
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| They will actually. Youtube premium has had explosive growth
| after YT started pushing more ads and blocking ad blockers.
| People pay for streaming services quite regularly. And
| youtube has one of the strongest platforms/content bases to
| sell a subscription.
| simplicio wrote:
| Maybe, but on the otherside, ads make available a huge amount
| of media and services to people who would otherwise be unable
| to afford it. Like, I suspect a non-trivial percentage of
| people wouldn't have email if it weren't for gmail and other
| free w/ads services.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Most internet services are very low cost to offer for any
| company that has some infrastructure setup already. So for
| instance 'back in the day', before Google hoovered up
| everybody's email, what would typically happen is you would
| get an email address with your ISP.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| But that also bound you to your ISP in a way, because
| switching ISPs meant switching emails. It is better to have
| then separated.
| layer8 wrote:
| ISPs could be required by law to allow the porting of
| email addresses, just like it happens with mobile phone
| numbers.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Maybe. Or maybe we could fund those services from all the
| money we'd save without advertising.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Assuming a zero sum economy, which is a pretty poor
| assumption.
| thuuuomas wrote:
| We aren't even mining asteroids near Earth's orbit. Space
| colonization is a ketamine dream. There's no
| extraterrestrial economy. Earth is all we have. One pie.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| Because we are spending our resources on stupid shit like
| tiktok virals funded by ads.
| iso1631 wrote:
| If a company is willing to spend $5 to force you to watch an
| advert, then they are expecting more than $5 from you in
| return.
| simplicio wrote:
| Sure, but a lot of that is 1) just influencing what type or
| brand you get of products your going to buy anyways, and 2)
| only an average, presumably wealthier consumers are
| "subsidizing" poorer ones, since they have more spending to
| be influenced.
| Aachen wrote:
| > ads make available a huge amount of media and services to
| people who would otherwise be unable to afford it.
|
| They don't. Follow the money: why do ads power free services?
| The advertiser needs to expect to make _more_ money in the
| scenario where they run the ad as compared to where they don
| 't. The viewer must be spending more money in response to
| having seen it
|
| If the viewer doesn't have the money to pay the first party
| fair and straight (say, a video website), they also don't
| have money to splurge on that fancy vacuum cleaner in
| addition to the website and advertisement broker getting
| paid, no matter how many ads you throw at them
|
| Ads are useful for honest products, like if I were to start a
| company and believe that I've made a vacuum cleaner that's
| genuinely better (more or better cleaning at a lower or equal
| cost) but nobody knows about it yet. However, I don't see the
| point in money redirection schemes where affluent people
| inefficiently pay for public services (if they're
| indistinguishable and the company shows ads to both, thereby
| funding the poor people's usage). Let's do that through taxes
| please
| thfuran wrote:
| >The advertiser needs to expect to make more money in the
| scenario where they run the ad as compared to where they
| don't
|
| They don't necessarily make more money from every user
| though.
| Aachen wrote:
| I addressed that above. If that's the point, the people
| with disposable income who view the ad subsidise the ad
| broker and the website as a hidden charge on a product
| which they probably didn't need. It doesn't get less
| efficient than that. I'd rather that people living under
| the poverty threshold get subsidised directly
|
| Advertisers/brokers will also do everything to optimise
| to whom the ad is being shown to not waste they money.
| Poor people can't turn it into arbitrary cash, they can
| just waste time on video sites and freemium games while
| they barely (or don't) have enough money to make ends
| meet
|
| I guess I am very much in the "let's pay fair and square"
| corner, both for websites/services and for
| taxes/subsidies where needed. I don't see it working
| reliably or efficiently any other way in the long run
| stemlord wrote:
| Then we'd be living in a world that didn't _require_ you to
| have an email in order to do anything like have a job or a
| social life, which is probably a good thing
| abuob wrote:
| Probably not too popular of an opinion on HN but email in my
| opinion would be a _great_ example of a service that could be
| run by the government. Just like postal service (at least in
| some parts of the world)
| geek_at wrote:
| There was something like that in Germany called de-mail. It
| was official and receiving and reading a mail was
| considered legally binding (invoices, etc.)
|
| It could have been great but the implementation lacked
| encryption and had wild security issues. So nobody used it
| and it was shut down
| matthewsinclair wrote:
| I've often wondered what would happen if we _taxed_ advertising
| [0]. The same rationale applies: it'll never work, and it'll
| never even be tested, but I agree, it was fun to think about.
|
| [0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-
| adver...
| croemer wrote:
| You're forgetting a very important problem: hard to
| implement. Sugar in drinks and CO2 emissions are easily
| measured. The definition of what's an ad is much harder.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >what's an ad is much harder.
|
| Not really that much harder, and would immediately cover
| the worst offenders. I mean we already have disclosure laws
| on product placements and ads.
| bee_rider wrote:
| He talks about a Pigovian tax for ads, which is interesting.
| I don't have any thoughts other than "yeah good idea."
|
| But, something I haven't fully worked out but have vague
| suspicions about: are ads actually a tax-favorable business
| model under the current system? We watch ads in exchange for
| some service, if it wasn't an ad-supported service we'd have
| to pay money for it, and that transaction would be taxed.
|
| Of course, the transaction between the ad network and the
| company placing the ad is taxed. But it seems like they could
| have a lot of play, as far as picking where that transaction
| takes place...
|
| Ads should _at least_ be taxed as heavily as if we had paid
| for the thing with money, IMO.
| al_borland wrote:
| I pay for YouTube Premium, which would in theory pull me out of
| the perverse incentive structure around an ad-based model. Yet
| I feel like I still get pushed toward all the same "features"
| of ad-funded accounts. I find it incredibly frustrating and
| keep sending feature requests and reporting site issues as a
| result.
| pyth0 wrote:
| Can you explain what features you're talking about? Do you
| mean stuff like "shorts"?
| layer8 wrote:
| The video feed, notifications, and the whole UI are still
| structured to maximize engagement, instead of giving paying
| users better control.
| al_borland wrote:
| Autoplay keeps turning itself back on. I've probably turned
| it off a dozen times now.
|
| The other autoplay, where it starts playing stuff while
| browsing. I've tuned this off many times too.
|
| The massive thumbnails so I can only see 2 thumbnails on
| the screen, I'm not sure what the advantage is here other
| than better tracking what you linger on. They also get
| bigger on the active row, so if I see a video I might want
| on the 2nd cut off row, then make it my active row, the
| thumbnails get bigger and I can't see it anymore. I lose
| context due to this all the time and it drives me nuts.
|
| Shorts, yes, but not just Shorts in the Recommendations,
| but Shorts dominating search results, where it almost
| doesn't show traditional videos anymore. In the browser you
| can filter search results for videos vs shorts, but not on
| the AppleTV.
|
| It keeps showing big banners with a demo video next to it
| for features Premium users can get... it's an ad for
| something I've already signed up for. I report these as
| spam.
|
| The games. I've never once played one, yet they are
| prominently displayed in my recommendations.
|
| I think as a Premium user I should be able to choose what
| screen the app opens into, or what is on my home page. I'd
| like my watch later list, for example. Instead, it just
| randomly mixes some of those into the recommendations and
| it may or may not make it clear which ones those are.
|
| I know there is more, and some big ones I'm missing, but
| those are some of the things they come to mind.
| squigz wrote:
| The problem isn't fundamentally advertising - it's stuff like
| toxic and anti-user advertisements, and the ad industry not
| knowing what the word "privacy" means.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I would disagree on this. The reason is that the main point
| of most ads is to induce artificial demand. When successful
| this is essentially making people think their lives are
| missing something, repeatedly. I think it is fairly self
| evident that at scale this simply leads to social discontent,
| materialism, and the overall degradation of a society.
|
| There are endless studies, such as this [1] demonstrating a
| significant inverse relationship between ads and happiness.
| The more ads, the less happy people are. And I think it's
| very easy to see the causal relationship there. And this
| would apply even if the ad industry wasn't so scummy.
|
| [1] - https://hbr.org/2020/01/advertising-makes-us-unhappy
| thfuran wrote:
| I think there is a fundamental problem with an ad-subsidized
| service. Even ignoring the privacy issues inherent to the way
| modern advertising works in practice (which you probably
| shouldn't ignore), the mere presence of an advertiser as a
| third party whose interests the service provider must
| consider creates malign incentives.
|
| I also think providing a service for free is fundamentally
| anti-competitive. It's like the ultimate form of dumping. And
| there are many studies showing that people are irrational
| about zero-cost goods, so it's even harder to compete against
| than might be expected.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Arguably, the advertiser is not merely a third party whose
| interests the service provider must consider, but rather
| _the_ actual paying customer (and much more of the second
| party) whose interests the service provider must satisfy to
| make revenue. That to me puts into perspective the
| absurdity of this business model: the user is not the
| customer, the product or service itself is not the product
| but only a means to keep offering the actual product to the
| paying customer.
| sensanaty wrote:
| I mean, infinitely so. I don't give a shit that you (the royal
| you, not literally you :p) and your business can't find their
| target demographic without ads, they are psychological
| manipulation of the worst kind and they should be eradicated
| from existence with prejudice. There is NO type of
| advertisement that is okay in my mind, whether it be a 5x5cm
| image in a black and white newspaper or the ubiquitous cancer
| that we're inundated with daily on the internet, none of it
| should exist. Moreover, if your business isn't possible without
| ads, then good riddance. Maybe at some point in the past I
| would've been okay with the "innocuous" ones like the newspaper
| ones, but the advertising industry and the psychotic, soulless
| ghouls that inhabit it have changed my opinion forever on it.
|
| For every "innocent" and well intentioned ad out there, there
| are quite literally a billion cancerous ones that rely on pure
| deception to make the biggest buck out of you. Ads are the
| driving force behind the cancerous entity that is Meta and all
| the ills that they've brought upon the world such as _actual
| fucking genocides_. The "people" I've had the displeasure of
| meeting that come from advertising backgrounds have all been
| soulless psychopaths who would sell their own family for a bit
| of cash.
|
| I mean just look at the type of shit they come up with in this
| very thread. It's all just games on how they can circumvent
| these kinda rules. "Oh you'll force me to let people skip my
| brainwashing? I'll just put up 20x more ads to make up for it!"
| Who even talks and thinks like this other than ghouls?
| bko wrote:
| Better from whom? As a user, maybe. But if you're trying to
| compete, it's incredibly useful to get exposure. For instance,
| suppose you run a competitor to Salesforce and you want to buy
| the Salesforce keyword because you provide a better product. I
| don't know how you would bootstrap that otherwise.
|
| If anything the big businesses use advertising as a protection
| moat. As a small business, I would def prefer to be in a world
| that allows me to advertise, even if I have to compete for
| things like my own name
| titzer wrote:
| > If anything the big businesses use advertising as a
| protection moat. As a small business, I would def prefer to
| be in a world that allows me to advertise, even if I have to
| compete for things like my own name
|
| These two sentences are contradictory. Big business uses it
| as a defensive measure, yet you think a small business can
| use it as an offensive measure. It's an absurd outcome of the
| SEO of the last two decades that people think it's fine to
| pay for get traffic using your own keywords. Stockholm
| syndrome.
| vel0city wrote:
| I can see how it's contradictory on its face, but the
| reality is pretty nuanced.
|
| Large brands continue to run ads to enforce brand loyalty
| and keep their image fresh. For a lot of companies,
| dropping advertising will lead to reduced sales.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/cmo/2024/12/18/why-cutting-
| adve...
|
| However, as a new entrant to a consumer facing market, how
| is one supposed to drive new customers to try their
| product? Just being a bit better or a little cheaper isn't
| necessarily going to win over a lot of people if they never
| bother trying it due to existing brand loyalties. So you've
| got to do some amount of advertising to build some kind of
| awareness to the product and get people to try it.
|
| That doesn't necessarily mean unskippable video
| advertisements or whatever, but one should try and do
| _some_ kind of marketing push to get awareness of your
| product up other than hoping presence on some store shelves
| will result in enough sales fast enough to keep your
| company alive.
| dcrimp wrote:
| If you have to advertise - shove your product in people's
| faces - to keep sales, your product is not supplying
| enough real value, does not have staying power, and you
| should lose.
|
| "Just being a bit better or a little cheaper isn't
| necessarily going to win over a lot of people if they
| never bother trying it due to existing brand loyalties"
|
| This is a feature, not a bug. Brand loyalties are built
| when products are reliable and good. Your product should
| be enough of an improvement to make people move of their
| own accord.
|
| If your new product solves frustrations present in an
| incumbent, on a long enough timescale, your product will
| come out on top.
|
| If both products are presented equally in a marketplace,
| the better one will win. If your company does not survive
| because you can't shove it in people's faces, this is a
| good thing.
| vel0city wrote:
| > If your new product solves frustrations present in an
| incumbent, on a long enough timescale, your product will
| come out on top.
|
| I've got numerous examples where this _didn 't_ happen
| because of other brand awareness. Neato had a very
| competitive and better bot vacuum to iRobot for years and
| yet they failed to gain traction. A large part of that
| would be because _everyone_ knew about iRobot 's
| offerings and yet ask any random person if they've ever
| heard of Neato Botvac and you'll get crickets. You're
| imagining an ideal world where clear better performers
| always win. This doesn't often happen in practice.
| dcrimp wrote:
| How did everyone know about irobot's offering?
|
| What if in the stores, botvacs and irobots were presented
| right next to each other with the same amount of real
| estate?
| cramsession wrote:
| "Users" are the only people who matter. Companies are
| artificial constructs and, in an ideal world, would never be
| prioritized over the public.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| If I search for "Salesforce alternative" and something that
| isn't Salesforce shows up, great! That's what I want!
|
| If I search for Salesforce and something that isn't
| Salesforce shows up above Salesforce, the tool I'm using is
| wrong and I will assume that the promoted product is a scam.
|
| This happened to me yesterday when installing the mobile
| version of Brotato. Some other game appeared above Brotato in
| the Google Play store. I already hate Android but this only
| makes me hate it more. Google already gets an unjustified cut
| of the money I'm paying for the game, yet on top of that they
| serve me the wrong result at the top.
| Rygian wrote:
| And if I am _not_ searching for Salesforce or alternatives,
| and an ad for Salesforce or an alternative gets pushed into
| my face, the ad is wrong and the advertiser is wrong.
| lkramer wrote:
| It's infuriating, the other day I had to download an app to
| pay for parking. What the fuck do I need the top choice to
| be a competing parking app? That won't do me any good when
| the place I'm parking need the one I searched for and who
| the hell goes "oh, an exciting new parking app? I'm gonna
| drive around until I can find a place that uses it so I can
| park there!"
| Anon1096 wrote:
| >Google already gets an unjustified cut of the money I'm
| paying for the game
|
| Brotato is free to distribute their game outside the Play
| Store as well, Android isn't locked down. If the cut was
| unjustified why would they give money away to Google for
| free? The reasons are actually extremely similar to the
| reasons ads benefit society.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| They kinda created this fake locked down market that
| people expect to be able to be used, same as Apple,
| compared to say, just downloading apps normally like on a
| computer.
|
| Also "sideloaded" apps cannot be automatically updated,
| although personally I think it would be better if nothing
| could automatically update lol
|
| I'm also not the biggest fan of Steam. But at least on
| Steam if I search for Brotato it's the top result, Steam
| is not tied to the OS so if gamers and game makers
| decided they hate Steam they could jump to some other
| market (as opposed to, say, the built-in Microsoft store
| in Windows that thankfully seems to be failing), and
| Steam has helped drag Linux into the 21st century in a
| good way.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _For instance, suppose you run a competitor to Salesforce
| and you want to buy the Salesforce keyword because you
| provide a better product. I don 't know how you would
| bootstrap that otherwise._
|
| Why would you assume I'm providing a _better_ product? Ads
| are predominantly needed by those providing _worse_ products,
| because spending money on marketing has much better ROI than
| actually creating a good product.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| In reality, even if I provide a better product than
| Salesforce, they will outcompete me by their ad-buying power.
| TechSquidTV wrote:
| When crypto was genuinely new, and I was young, I had hope that
| one day we might actually embrace micropayments. Turns out I
| was not only young, but stupid.
| maxglute wrote:
| I think my tolerance for ads would be higher if algos stop
| showing repeat ads, or limit same ad from playing more than X
| times to user.
| keybored wrote:
| Why not. Just run with it sometimes. Get people to argue for
| ads.
|
| > Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware this is impractical. But
| it's fun to think about sometimes.
|
| Yeah, sure. Get them to convince you how impractical it is. How
| the economy relies on it. How things "wouldn't work" without
| it. Then you/they have just argued themselves into the position
| that society relies on this shitty practice to sustain itself.
| Then in turn: why _ought_ we live like this?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There is a huge chunk of companies who do not pay to advertise
| their products or services, because their value offering is
| good enough to not need to. And a huge chunk who does very
| little advertisement for the very same reason.
|
| For example, when was the last time you saw a TV or YouTube ad
| for a motorcycle from any of the big Japanese brands? The
| products are so mature and the value proposition is so good
| that they don't need to. And that's a 70 billion dollar annual
| market.
| redeuxx wrote:
| I was just in the Philippines, tons of ads for Japanese
| motorcycle brands. In places where competition and usage for
| the product or service is high, there will be ads, and lots
| of it. You use motorcycles as an example, but it probably
| isn't a very good example.
| Zigurd wrote:
| When I first visited Latvia, I thought it was a charming side
| effect of communism that store names were quite small on the
| facades. Was there an ethic of abjuring crass commercialism?
| Then I noticed the shadows left by larger store names above the
| small Latvian store names. It wasn't that Marxism Leninism
| called for demure commercial logos. The Latvians had just taken
| down the Russian signs. Commercial promotion is, I suppose, a
| condition of life,
| amelius wrote:
| > I've often wondered whether the world would be better without
| ads.
|
| Of course. Ads make us buy more things. Things we don't need
| most of the time.
|
| Think of the environmental win if we banned ads tomorrow!
| jonplackett wrote:
| Nice linguistic explanation of social media just been coined as
| 'ultra processed language'
|
| https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQh50UKkt10/?igsh=MWx6ZW41ZHV...
| kelnos wrote:
| No need to wonder: the world would certainly be better without
| ads. Advertising is psychological manipulation. They should be
| illegal.
|
| And don't whine about "how will new companies find customers?"
| They'll figure it out. Capitalism always finds a way. Business
| interests should always be secondary to the needs and safety of
| real people.
| Babkock wrote:
| Billboards are outlawed in Alaska.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| It's not ads IMO, it's just reality. Remove the ads, people
| (instagram/tiktok/youtube) still get influence by "strive to
| addict their users"
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Without adverts, the platform has less incentive to maximise
| engagement. They won't send you push notifications, they
| won't implement short form video, etc. My gym/ISP/email
| provider don't design their services on making me spend the
| whole day using them. If anything they don't want me using
| the service at all but I myself want to.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| Absolutely. The world would be vastly better off without 2
| things:
|
| - Ads. Lower quality products/services perform better with
| more/better ads.
|
| - Venture Capital. Services out-compete others by using free
| money early on, killing the free market.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _often wondered whether the world would be better without
| ads_
|
| You'd probably have to compromise on free speech, since the
| line between ads and public persuasion is ambiguous to the
| point of non-existence.
|
| Better middle steps: ban on public advertising ( _e.g._ no
| billboards, first-party-only signage). Ban on targeted digital
| advertising. Ban on bulk unsolicited mail or e-mail.
| fsflover wrote:
| > whether the world would be better without ads
|
| What if we made advertising illegal? (simone.org)
|
| 1975 points by smnrg 9 months ago | 1409 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269
| nielsbot wrote:
| > Lei Cidade Limpa (Portuguese for clean city law) is a law of
| the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, put into law by proclamation in
| 2006 that prohibits advertising such as outdoor posters.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa
| mvdtnz wrote:
| My experience is that people who make sweeping claims like "all
| advertising should be banned" have never run or managed a small
| business. There is simply no way to survive as one of the
| little guys without some kind of marketing.
| catapart wrote:
| Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. But I really wish ad
| companies would implement this rule across the board. If you
| can't sell me on your ad in 5 seconds, it's unlikely you can sell
| me on your product in 15 or 30 seconds. And if your product is of
| any interest to me whatsoever, I'm happy to continue watching the
| ad. I sit through movie trailers and tech ads all the time, even
| with an option to skip. But I have no use for seeing the entire
| Dawn dish soap's aw-shucks, faux-folksy ad play out. In five
| seconds, you can remind me that dawn exists, fulfilling the main
| purpose of the ad, and I can get on with the content I'm actually
| interested in.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| > Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion.
|
| Why?
| cm2012 wrote:
| Its market distortionary and makes global advertisers have to
| customize for the local audience, some might not bother
| oompydoompy74 wrote:
| Good?
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Not as good when you just end up having to pay more for
| services right
| mc32 wrote:
| The incentives are better aligned though, so long as they
| are not undermined (by moving the target) Ala cable tv.
| oompydoompy74 wrote:
| Nope still good
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Isn't that presumably the point of the Vietnamese
| government whenever they set new requirements?
|
| To make it harder for people who dont care about Vietnam to
| do business.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Ad skipping should be handled at the platform level and not
| left to individual advertisers to control. Regulations like
| this make such an outcome more likely.
|
| Mobile ads in the US are heinous. Each one has a different
| mechanism for skipping, the skip buttons are micro sized
| and impossible to tap, some of them don't even work.
|
| Standardization should have been up to the platforms
| selling ads, but they haven't done it. It's past time for
| local authorities to step in and protect consumers from
| predatory behavior.
| hasperdi wrote:
| why is it a bad thing if global advertisers have to
| customize? If they're global, they should have the
| resources. Anyhow none of our concerns
| bobro wrote:
| Can you spell out more what's wrong with distorting a
| market or customizing for local audiences?
| mystraline wrote:
| Simply put, fuck the "market" (aka: uber-rich people). The
| market should serve us humans, not the other way around.
|
| Ive heard this garbage excuse since Reagan took a wrecking
| ball to regulations. Not making effective regulations is
| ALSO a market distorting thing, that encourages the
| absolute worst behaviors. And now with Citizens United, its
| $1 = 1 vote.
|
| But no, "marrrrrkeeeeetttttt"
| pbasista wrote:
| > market distortionary
|
| I am unsure what you are trying to say here. But if you
| mean to refer to "market distortion", I cannot see how that
| can be happening.
|
| The reason is that these rules are supposed to be
| applicable _universally_ to every company in the same way.
| And as such, they do not create any market distortion in
| one way or the other. Because everyone has to play by the
| same rules. Those are as fair market conditions as one can
| get, in my opinion.
|
| > some might not bother
|
| Why should that be a problem? If someone does not like the
| regulation in a particular jurisdiction, it is fine. No one
| is forcing them to operate there.
|
| The main point is the following: _If_ they want to operate,
| they have to play by the local rules. Just like everyone
| else.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I would assume that the global advertisers are already
| having to customize for the local audience since the spoken
| language is Vietnamese.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Markets are not a natural phenomenon and are themselves the
| result of complex social arrangements, involving coercion.
| So, the market is the result of "distortions" before and
| after various regulatory measures.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| > market distortionary
|
| So what if it is?
|
| > makes global advertisers have to customize for the local
| audience
|
| My understanding of advertising is that there is already
| substantial customization for local audiences.
| echelon wrote:
| Second order effects.
|
| Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad
| budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue.
| This means the platform and the video creator both make less
| revenue. This means less videos get created.
|
| All of these happen at the population level.
|
| I hate ads, but regulations that are for things that aren't
| public health (including mental health), anti-monopolization,
| etc. are probably bad for innovation and growth.
|
| You have to balance regulation and over-regulation.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Too many people think removing ads means they'll still
| continue to get content for free, they just won't have to
| watch ads.
|
| At best, it's as you said, the platform and creator make
| less money (Youtube gives 55% of ad revenue to the
| creator). This would naturally lead to less content
| eventually.
|
| At worst, video content becomes unsustainable without a
| subscription.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| > This would naturally lead to less content eventually
|
| I, personally, am drowning in "content".
| echelon wrote:
| > I, personally, am drowning in "content".
|
| Until the content is utterly captivating and speaks to
| your soul in a way even your closest friends and partners
| can't, we haven't hit peak content.
|
| You know that one movie you see every decade or so that
| you can't get out of your head? The one that left you
| flabbergasted, that you've watched at least half a dozen
| times, and that you frequently and fondly remember? It
| touched your mind and soul and fit your tastes like a
| glove.
|
| _THAT_ is peak content, and until we are swimming in it,
| we 're not there yet. Most of what we have today is
| utterly disposable and ephemeral - transient dopamine
| activation instead of philosophically world shattering
| indelible experiences.
|
| We have a long way to go.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Why would you ever expect or even want us to be
| 'swimming' in such emotionally activating content? The
| reality is that people will just get desensitized and
| there will be the same proportion of dreck and the same
| discoverability problems as ever. Your argument is
| dopamine junkie logic, sitting around waiting for a
| dealer to bring you something stronger instead of putting
| effort into searching out or making things that satisfy
| you.
| echelon wrote:
| Because I want to.
|
| I don't care what you want. I know what I want.
| vitorfblima wrote:
| I don't see how less video time for people would harm
| innovation.
|
| If you, like me and most people I know, hate ads, why would
| it be a bad thing to limit it?
|
| What are we expecting to actually accomplish with all this
| platform growth thing?
| keerthiko wrote:
| I would argue that limiting the amount of unrequested
| product evangelism shoved into users' eyeballs is a
| valuable public and mental health initiative. I wish we
| could have seen the alternate reality where ad-revenue was
| not the most lucrative business model for the internet.
| echelon wrote:
| Regulation is always too slow and too stupid. By doing
| this, you'll chase the ads into embedding themselves into
| the content itself. And that's just the start. Creators
| are already doing this, and now we're seeing tooling
| emerge to support it. Wait until the platforms get in on
| the game.
|
| I say this as a proponent of antitrust regulation against
| tech giants and a privacy advocate against tracking,
| storing, and correlating user activity.
|
| Everything needs to be kept in balance. Regulation is a
| blunt instrument and is better used to punish active rule
| breaking rather than trying to predict how markets should
| work.
|
| Break up Google. Don't tell content marketplaces how to
| run ads. They know their customers far better than old
| politicians do.
|
| If ads become onerous, alternatives emerge. Different
| channels, platforms, ad blocking. It's a healthier
| ecosystem that doesn't grow ossified with decades old
| legalese. Regulations that actively stymie the creation
| of new competition.
|
| Now every new video and social startup in Vietnam has to
| check a bunch of boxes.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad
| budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue.
| This means the platform and the video creator both make
| less revenue. This means less videos get created.
|
| this all sounds great. ideal, even.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If your revenue comes from parasitical strategies it's
| negative sum and the economy is better off without it.
| echelon wrote:
| Are you seriously trying to argue the world is better off
| without YouTube?
|
| I derive incredible value from YouTube. It wasn't always
| great, but it is recently full of extremely good
| educational content, tech talks, independent journalism,
| how-tos, independent film and animation, and so much
| more.
|
| I'd wager that you use and benefit from a lot of services
| that are paid for via advertising. Even public transit is
| subsidized by advertising.
| catapart wrote:
| Just a hip-shot, not a considered position. When I hear
| "regulation", I think "threat". Either of violence (any
| physical touch), or financial garnishment. So, to me, ads
| that last longer than five seconds do not rise to the level
| of threatening anyone.
|
| But assuming that they did, the situation seems like one
| where there could be any number or ways of following the
| letter or the law, while flouting the spirit of it. I don't
| dare imagine the creative ways these people will come up with
| to make entertainment even worse than it already is. So for
| areas that seem to require miles and miles of caveats and
| very specific rule-making, my gut reaction is that the
| regulatory path isn't the right one until we can break down
| the scope into something that simple regulations can
| accommodate without loophole. Put more simply: if it seems
| like people will just find ways around the problem, my
| assumption is just that we're not targeting the right problem
| yet and we need to break it down further, if regulation is
| the right solution at all.
|
| But that is pretty assumptive, so - again - it's just a first
| feeling. Doesn't pass my vibe check.
| miki123211 wrote:
| I personally like descriptive regulation over prescriptive
| regulation.
|
| Instead of prescribing exactly what you should do, describe
| the outcomes you want, and let case law fill in the rest of
| the owl. That's the only way to prevent violations like
| this.
|
| To be fair, the main disadvantage of this approach is that
| law is much harder to understand. You can't just read the
| law as it is written, you also have to familiarize yourself
| with all the rulings that tell you how that law should
| actually be interpreted.
| dnqthao wrote:
| Vietnam does not follow common law (i.e. case law) , it
| follows civil law (same as other Europe and Asia
| countries)
| simplicio wrote:
| Think the best argument against it is that it makes
| advertising less valuable, which in turn limits the how many
| "paid for with advertising" services will be available and
| how good those services will be.
|
| Especially in a developing country where consumers ability to
| pay for such things is going to be limited, that will
| presumably deprive some margin of the population of
| media/services that are currently ad supported.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| I am fine with advertising becoming less valuable. I fully
| appreciate there is a lot of media I take for granted due
| to advertising. Yet, ever since I was a small child the
| goal of advertising was to influence consumer behavior more
| than selling products or brand identity, which is extremely
| toxic. Once consumer gullibility wears off the dollars
| poured into advertising always find a way into political
| lobbying and policy influence campaigns, which is really
| just more of the same.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Funny, I would say making advertising less valuable is big
| win.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Heh, advertizing, individually has become less valuable
| because there are so many ads everywhere on every surface
| to the point that people mentally adblock half their day
| away.
| 63stack wrote:
| One of those mythical "win win win" scenarios
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm much less concerned about being sold in 15-30 secs as much
| as the "ads" that are paid promotional programming that runs
| >30 _minutes_ in the middle of a video that is <30 minutes.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| Nothing makes me quite as irrationally angry as a 30 second
| ad on a one minute video
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't know why you feel it is irrational at all. That a
| perfectly rational reason to be angry about the state of ad
| injection
| catapart wrote:
| That stuff is so _bizarre_! I can understand how an
| advertiser might try to sneak an infomercial onto an ad
| campaign, and I can understand how it might be attempted on
| accident. But I can 't understand why an ostensible ad
| platform would ever allow you to upload a 30 min. ad without
| lots of flags going up and needing some approval.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > and needing some approval.
|
| and here shows just how bad the rot is. I would assume that
| buying that much "air time" to have your longer content
| played would come a quite a premium. I would also not be
| surprised if selling those premiums come with a bonus.
| There's a reason those paid-programming shows run with no
| commercials. The cost of airing it paid for all of the ad
| pods during that block of air time, plus extra for being
| special snowflake.
|
| If these long content "ads" are flukes, then that also
| shows the rot of the ad market that this isn't handled as
| an exception.
| grayhatter wrote:
| > But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule
| across the board. If you can't sell me on your ad in 5 seconds,
| it's unlikely you can sell me on your product in 15 or 30
| seconds.
|
| When talking about how ads "don't work on you"; it's very
| important to remember that just like every single other human
| you're not immune to propaganda.
| catapart wrote:
| I did not claim, nor imply, that ads do not work on me. In
| fact, I alluded to the opposite in my closing line: " In five
| seconds, you can remind me that dawn exists, fulfilling the
| main purpose of the ad _[...]_ "
|
| > the main purpose of the ad
|
| I recognize that showing me the name of the product is the
| most valuable part of an ad, by far. It's entirely about
| repetition which breeds enough familiarity for trial, and
| enough personal affirmation if the trial is a positive one.
|
| But, that aside, if I'm looking for a skip button before the
| 5 seconds is up, I either do not purchase the product (I'm
| not sold: I don't buy), or I'm already a purchaser of the
| product and I'm either a fan (Your ad didn't sell me: I was
| sold, beforehand) or I'm not (I'm not sold: I don't buy it
| anymore). It wasn't a statement about ads not working on me,
| it's a statement about a personal, practical response to ads
| that I am conciously aware of because I'm already looking for
| a skip button.
| grayhatter wrote:
| I think I was speaking equally to anyone else reading the
| thread, but also I should have pointed out that the longer
| you watch an ad, the more familiar you will become with
| accepting and expecting the product being sold. There's no
| way to get around the time spent. Just because the first 5
| seconds have the largest proportional impact, doesn't mean
| the last 25s won't also have an impact.
|
| But even if everything I said was incorrect, and you
| actually are immune, just like you describe... everyone
| else isn't, and they're being targeted as much as you are.
| catapart wrote:
| I didn't describe being immune. Again, 100% the opposite.
| rhplus wrote:
| > Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion.
|
| > But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule
| across the board.
|
| I genuinely don't know how you could get your wish without
| regulation. You can't expect all players in the ad game to
| follow self enforced rules if there's any possibility that
| _not_ following a self-imposed rule ("all ads must have a skip
| button") will bring a competitive advantage. As soon as one
| player decides to take that advantage, all will. Back to square
| one.
| aggregator-ios wrote:
| LOL, it's because they started with "regulations bad" and
| then went the usual technocrat/libertarian move of let the
| markets decide. And then rehashed the exact same arguments in
| favor of regulation.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Takes like this amaze me. It's like they've suddenly
| forgotten what the entire advertisement industry is like. Ads
| are designed to take advantage, manipulate, and even trick.
| Then this person comes along and suggests the industry should
| do the right thing.
|
| In what world would that ever be a possibility? It's like
| asking a dictator nicely that they relinquish some of their
| power!
| iuu666 wrote:
| Regulation is only a policeman. It doesn't innovate.
|
| Competitive markets do innovate. I watch YouTube live
| instead of Twitch (many streamers double stream) precisely
| because the former has skippable ads.
|
| I'm guessing you haven't taken even one semester of the
| relevant economics. Isn't it great to be an internet
| commenter?
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Both YouTube and Twitch have increased the amount of ads
| they serve over the last 5 years, not decreased. So, I'm
| not even sure if the "competition" between those two
| makes ads better for anyone. Imo, the objective of
| competition in adspace is "who can target better to
| increase click rate", not "who can make the experience
| better for the user".
| jason_s wrote:
| In case you wanted a more reputable source:
| https://theinvestor.vn/online-video-advertisements-in-vietna...
| glimshe wrote:
| They shouldn't be surprised if ads are shown more often.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| Yeah - it seems like this will cause a series of 5 second
| skippable ads that still sums up to >many seconds of
| unskippable ads (unless that's banned, in which case they will
| just see ads more often, as you say)
|
| I expect it will make the experience worse rather than better
| because the publishers will try to maintain their inventory
| (how many seconds of ads they show per minute watched)
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| You mean a regulation will cause unintended consequence?
| Color me shocked
| oldjim798 wrote:
| Then a new regulation is needed; one that caps the ratio of
| seconds of ads to minute watched.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| And what do you think the consequence of that new
| regulation will be?
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Just ban unrequested ads altogether
| hoherd wrote:
| This could turn into the online video equivalent of the Burma
| Shave road signs.
|
| > Typically, six consecutive small signs would be posted along
| the edge of highways, spaced for sequential reading by passing
| motorists. The last sign was almost always the name of the
| product.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave#Roadside_billboard...
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Requiring skip is good, but the part about focusing on illegal
| ads is better. If all ads were for soda, cars, and other
| legitimate products, that would be one thing, but so many ads are
| for straight up scams these days.
| xoxxala wrote:
| Considering how unhealthy soda is to consume, I'd ban those ads
| in a heartbeat right along side tobacco and alchohol. The UK
| just banned all TV and online junk food ads and I'm alright
| with that.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The UK just banned all TV and online junk food ads
|
| Unbelievable, when you consider the sheer volume of betting
| ads they have.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| or maybe we can let people think for themselves
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Soda ads are actually banned in some jurisdictions so it's not
| really a cleanly legit product. You can make the same argument
| for ICE cars.
| throwaway2056 wrote:
| - Google just needs to tell DJT
|
| - Vietnam get 50 % tariffs
|
| - Change the ban
|
| - Easy peasy for Tech bros.
| jason_s wrote:
| I just uninstalled a game from my mobile phone this morning that
| had heavy ad usage. It was interesting to note the different ad
| display strategies. From least to most annoying:
|
| - display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10
| seconds)
|
| - display an animated ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10
| seconds)
|
| - display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear after 20-30
| seconds
|
| - display an animated ad, have the "x" to close appear after
| 20-30 seconds
|
| - display several ads in succession, each short, but it
| automatically proceeds to the next; the net time after which the
| "x" to close appears after 20-30 seconds
|
| - display several ads in succession, each lasts for 3-10 seconds
| but you have to click on an "x" to close each one before the next
| one appears
|
| I live in the USA. The well-established consumer product brands
| (Clorox, McDonalds, etc.) almost all had short ads that were done
| in 3-5 seconds. The longest ads were for obscure games or
| websites, or for Temu, and they appeared over and over again,
| making me hate them with a flaming passion. The several-ads-in-
| succession were usually British newspaper websites (WHY???? I
| don't live there) or celebrity-interest websites (I have no
| interest in these).
|
| It seems like the monkey's-paw curse for this kind of legislation
| is to show several ads in a row, each allowing you to skip them
| after 5 seconds.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| My favorite most annoying ad tactic is the trick slowing down
| progress bar. It starts off fast making it seem like it's going
| to be, say, a ten-second ad so you decide to suffer through
| it... but progressively slows so you notice at like the 20
| second mark you're only 2/3 of the way through the progress
| bar, so probably less than halfway done. Murderous rage.
| xoxxala wrote:
| Mr. Beast on youtube is guilty of that. Matt Parker of
| Standup Maths fame did an in-depth look at how that works.
| Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate
| people in general.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c
| drcongo wrote:
| Not the only thing he's guilty of.
| x187463 wrote:
| A fantastic video from Matt, as usual.
|
| Yet another data point on why nobody should be wasting a
| second watching Mr Beast content. Complete algorithmically
| optimized garbage.
|
| I recall Mr Beast showing up in a Colin Furze video for a
| few minutes and Mr Beast was very clearly incapable of
| being a normal person. He was obviously out of place, being
| in full makeup and styled, and couldn't seem to be bothered
| to actually engage or express real interest in the subject.
| I think the guy has replaced his real persona with some
| manifestation of the YouTube algorithm. If he's not
| actively making money, he's just a shell.
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| That Colin Furze cameo was so weird.
| duped wrote:
| They somehow got him doing a cameo on this upcoming
| Survivor season and it's going to be terrible.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| Luckily the recommendation system does work to some
| extent. I'm glad I don't get to see any of that stuff on
| my youtube. Opening the front page in a private view is a
| scary place of hyper-optimised drama and attention
| seeking.
|
| It's scary imagining people getting sucked into that :/
| cons0le wrote:
| MrBeast is a hack, but its worth pointing out that all
| "progress bars" are bad design. You could make the same
| complaint against most of the progress bars in MsDOS. There
| was never a consistency in timing so you can never really
| use them to gauge how much time is left.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| We're not talking about a measure of computational
| progress here. We're talking about visually representing
| how much time has elapsed out of a fixed duration. This
| is exactly where progress indicators shine, the total
| time for the thing to happen is perfectly specified in
| advance.
| dspillett wrote:
| The difference between a lot of OS/app progress bars for
| IO (and sometimes CPU) operations and these timers, is
| that the total length of time for a lot of IO operations
| is often unknown with any accuracy so you have to use a
| heuristic to guess the current % done.
|
| For instance: when reading/writing/both many files of
| differing sizes on traditional drives there is an amount
| of latency per file which is significant and not always
| predictable. Whether you base progress on total size or
| number of files or some more complicated calc based on
| both, it will be inaccurate in most cases, sometimes
| badly so. Even when copying a single large file on a
| shared drive, or just on a dedicated system with multiple
| tasks running, the progress is inherently a bit random,
| the same for any network transfer. Worse are many
| database requests: you don't get any progress often
| because there is no progress output until the query
| processing is complete, and the last byte of the result
| might arrive in the same fraction of a second the first
| does1. The same for network requests, though IE (at least
| as early as v3) and early versions of Edge _did_ outright
| lie2 there to try make themselves look faster than the
| competition.
|
| The progress bars in videos are a different beast (ahem):
| the total time is absolutely known, any inaccuracy is
| either a deliberate lie or gross incompetence.
|
| --------
|
| [1] I once worked on a system that kept logs of certain
| types of query so it could display a guess of how long
| things were going to take and a progress bar to go with
| it, but this was actually more irritating to the users
| than no progress display as it would sometime jump from a
| few % directly to done or sit at 99% for ages (in the end
| the overly complicated guessing method was replaced by a
| simple spinner).
|
| [2] It would creep up, getting as far as 80%, before the
| first byte of response is received. This also confused
| users who thought that something was actually happening
| when the action was in fact stalled and just going to
| time-out.
| andy99 wrote:
| Many progress bars or other indicators lie, and the
| incentive is always to make it look good at the
| beginning, so that's what we end up seeing most, whether
| it's these ad ones (which thankfully I've never seen) or
| installers or especially something like Uber that always
| lies about how quickly someone is coming to make it
| appealing and then stretches it out. Even the thing in
| your car that tells you how much range you have left
| before refuelling (except it starts showing more than you
| actually have). I think in all cases it's probably
| possible to give a more realistic estimate but it's
| counter to the goals of whoever designed it.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate
| people in general.
|
| My first thought is that the person has a strong grasp of
| their profession and they love money. A hack like that has
| to have a really high value/effort ratio.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| I was forced to do this as a developer of Flash websites
| in the early 00's.
|
| I loved making custom progress bars really fun so people
| didn't mind watching the huge sites download.
|
| I HATED when they had me mess with the time so that it
| got to 90% really fast and then spent AGES finishing the
| last 10%.
| transcriptase wrote:
| If you watch him on Joe Rogan's podcast he gives a full
| overview of how every single tiny detail down to colors,
| length of scene cuts, facial expressions, language, total
| length of videos, time of day for release, thumbnails,
| sound effects, music is extensively A/B tested to not only
| optimize for the algorithm but for hijacking people's
| attention as well. That weird creepy face with the outline
| and uncanny smoothing aren't by accident. Everything is
| intentional because he obsessively tests anything that
| might give him even the slightest edge in a sea of videos.
| The content itself barely matters.
| Tanoc wrote:
| This seems like innately hostile behaviour. Not to other
| video creators, but to his audience. Stripping as much as
| he can using data and mathematics is the kind of thing
| engineers do to pull more out of a machine, not something
| you do when you're creating informal communications to
| other humans.
| aembleton wrote:
| With enough humans, it starts to look like a machine
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| There's also the tactic of having different ad behaviours
| during the same video. The first will be a 30s unskippable
| ad, the second will be a single skippable one, the third will
| be 3 ads, one of which you can skip, etc. It's ok on a mobile
| or if you're at your desk, but if you're watching from a
| distance it gets really annoying...
| qwertox wrote:
| Kind of like a genius idea. Though there should be a special
| place in hell for app owners who want this in their app.
| Groxx wrote:
| I'm fond of the ones with a fake close button, so tapping it
| just launches the ad's site. Instant uninstall and 1-star.
|
| (Yes, I know it's mostly the ad's fault, but there's no
| practical way to punish them directly. So force apps to pick
| better-behaving networks.)
| immibis wrote:
| IME it's a real close button but the ad opens the thing
| when it closes, regardless of how it closes.
| jordwest wrote:
| A common trick is that the first click on the X will go
| to the ad, but if you return and click the X again it
| will close, gaslighting you into thinking you just
| misclicked the first time.
|
| Another trick that I've noticed on the Reddit app is that
| the tappable area is much larger for ads than normal
| posts. If you tap even _near_ the ad it will visit the ad
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Also making the hit area smaller than the close graphic
| itself is a popular one.
| Groxx wrote:
| No, I mean there are ads with a "close button" in the
| corner, and then a few seconds later the _real_ close
| button will appear and it 'll weirdly overlap it. Because
| the first one was fake, just part of the image asset of
| the ad.
|
| They're very very clearly click-fraud tricks, and most
| platforms will ban them if they're caught. But by
| clicking on the ad, it closes the ad, and there's no way
| to go back and report them, nor incentive for ad-viewers
| to do so. By design, IMO.
|
| The whole industry runs on scams like this, there's no
| incentive for large platforms to proactively block any of
| them because they lead to money moving through them,
| where they can extract their rent. They only move against
| the most egregious, to keep fraud at the same barely-
| acceptable level as all the others.
| mbirth wrote:
| > The whole industry runs on scams like this
|
| Wasn't there an article here a few days ago about
| Facebook specialising in hiding such malicious ads from
| testers and law enforcement to maximise gains?
| Groxx wrote:
| Yep: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-created-
| playbook...
| DrewADesign wrote:
| As a sometimes designer, i don't think there's any
| distinction between punishing the ad and the company. The
| company bought the ad, probably directed its creation, and
| decided what its criteria was for success. 1-star away as
| far as I'm concerned.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I think they mean they leave a 1 star review on the app
| that was displaying the ad, who probably didn't directly
| do any of that.
|
| They did work with a bad ad network though so it's a
| valid enough reason to complain imo.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| Yeah, good call, but I honestly have no problem with that
| 1-star either. They can't say "well we just opened the
| garbage conduit and pointed it at your face... we didn't
| actually MAKE the garbage." Those ads are part of their
| app experience, now. They published it, so they're 're
| responsible for it. If it sucks I give it a sucky rating.
| josephg wrote:
| I feel the same way about newsletters.
|
| "Hey you bought socks that one time! Want more socks??"
| -> Unsubscribe.
|
| "Hey it's your weekly sock news! What's new in socks!" ->
| But I unsubscribed! Haha no, you only unsubscribed from
| the "product releases" list. Not the "weekly news" list
| or our 10 other fabulous mailing lists!
|
| -> Report all emails from this domain as spam. May god
| have mercy on your soul, cute socks.
| rkomorn wrote:
| This is exactly something I hate about the current state
| of things.
|
| Interacting with a company/organization immediately turns
| into a lifelong "legitimate relationship" that supposedly
| entitles them to contact you forever and ever.
| mrbonner wrote:
| You mean like this:
|
| https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
| wumms wrote:
| Reminds me of Setup.exe
| btown wrote:
| As a full mea culpa, I once implemented this years ago for an
| open-source project (non-ad-related) that could have an
| unpredictable number of steps with unpredictable timing. We
| went with an algorithm that would add a % of the _remaining_
| progress on each status tick, so, while it would inevitably
| decelerate, at least users would know that the processing
| wasn 't just frozen.
|
| It was a compromise that let us focus our limited attention
| on the things our project could uniquely do, without needing
| to refactor or do fast-and-slow-passes to provide subtask-
| count estimates to the UI. I'd make those same choices again,
| in that context. But in an ad context, it's inexcusable.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I've done something similar with a progress bar back in the
| early days. The task needed to do 10 things, so when each
| one completed the bar would move 10%. So the bar indicated
| completion in terms of things that needed to be done but
| not really in terms of time. It was quick and dirty and we
| had higher priorities but someone insisted on a "progress
| bar" so that was the easiest thing.
| layer8 wrote:
| That's perfectly acceptable, in particular if you also
| display "step x of 10", so the user knows the bar doesn't
| indicate time.
| layer8 wrote:
| If the only purpose is to show progress and you don't known
| the total number of steps in advance, it's better to show
| information about the current step and/or substep.
| Otherwise when your processing actually freezes, the UI
| would still happily show an advancing progress bar. That's
| worse than even just showing a spinner animation or
| similar.
| btown wrote:
| If it froze and ceased emitting ticks, it wouldn't
| advance any more - but the larger point is well taken!
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| The Windows file copying progress bar prepared me for that
| one. I don't trust progress bars anymore.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I have fallen asleep watching youtube many times. I swear i
| have woken up in the middle of 20+ _minute_ ads. I thought it
| was a news article about china when it was an ad. Who knows
| when the skip button appeared. The few times i have seen these,
| it has always been a literal fake news show about china.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| I've seen these advertisements too, also only when my phone
| had been playing unattended for some time.
|
| I have a (unsupported, unsubstantiated) theory that YT
| detects phones of "sleepers" and pushes more profitable
| content with the understanding it won't be skipped.
|
| I've got a few spare phones, maybe I'll run an experiment.
| ksaj wrote:
| With YT, it might be an account-specific metric. Ie:
| flagged as a frequent sleeper. This would not surprise me,
| since they track just about every other metric possible
| against your account.
|
| You can have multiple YT accounts on a single gmail acct,
| but I don't think that'll fool them. They know where you
| initially logged in from. So you will likely need multiple
| gmail accounts to do this kind of experiment.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| Good shout.
|
| They don't have SIMs, they'll be connected to a VPN
| router, and I'll create new Gmail accounts for each
| device, from each device.
| Gabrys1 wrote:
| I don't think they specifically target people who tend to
| go to sleep. But, having worked in the ad engineering, I
| can imagine they do know how often specific users skip ads
| and target ads based on that property.
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm not sure why it would specifically be targeting
| "sleepers"... there are a lot of reasons why someone might
| not skip ads... people who are sleeping are probably the
| _least_ valuable of them.
|
| It could just as well be something super valuable -- like
| an unattended kiosk device playing youtube to a crowd of
| people.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| Regarding the kiosk, I wholly expect that an unattended
| device with YT on auto play will ratchet up the
| length/frequency of ads as long as they're never skipped.
|
| Someone who falls asleep watching YouTube will skip ads,
| unless they're asleep.
|
| The idea is that if YT can infer that someone is asleep
| (location, no movement, no sound, low light, night) that
| they can show the longest, most skip-inducing ads that
| they've got since they know they won't be skipped.
|
| The difference between the kiosk and the sleeper is that
| if the sleeper gets a 20 minute ad at 2pm while they're
| eating lunch, they'll skip it. YT is incentivized to show
| the most profitable ad that someone won't skip.
|
| The value in identifying sleepers isnt showing a long ad,
| it's showing a long ad with the certainty that it won't
| be skipped.
| intrikate wrote:
| Sure, but why would I, as an entity buying advertising
| space, pay the same amount when YouTube is just going to
| try to show them to people who are asleep, that can't see
| the ads, and thus would have no effect anyway?
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| They also do this with kid's content on YT but they make it
| look like a show basically. Might not happen on YT Kids, I
| basically never use either, but the few times we pulled up YT
| proper I've seen it happen. Get a few videos deep and they
| slip them in
| titzer wrote:
| > I have fallen asleep watching youtube many times.
|
| Interesting new opportunity for YouTube here. Detect your
| usage patterns and near bed time show you increasingly boring
| content until you fall asleep, then fill your head with
| subliminal messages in these long ads.
| stavros wrote:
| Why would they help you sleep and take a gamble on
| subliminal anything working when they can just do it when
| you're awake?
| titzer wrote:
| I'm just spitballing sci-fi here, but maybe subliminal
| ads work better and their metric asston of computational
| models have told them so.
| rhdunn wrote:
| I suspect that they are already doing that (or something
| like it) as I've seen certain content appear at specific
| times/days.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| One of the smarter product decisions they made was to
| tweak the algorithm to show different types of content
| based on time (and device). If it's past 9:30pm and it's
| the bedroom tv it suggests vastly different stuff than
| 6:30am on the living room tv. And for good reason! I'm
| not watching some slow "adventures through the milky way
| at light speed" video when I'm waking up!
|
| It's very smart about that stuff!
| pests wrote:
| I'm a heavy YouTube watcher (My rewind said I watched
| 4500 different channels last year) and agree too. The
| content I get recommended is different day vs night. It's
| also device dependent (even when logged into same
| account) - my TV and phone definitely have a slightly
| different algo.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I fall asleep to YT sometimes watching speed runs when I
| have a hard time sleeping. When I wake up it is mostly
| running live streams of religious chants going in a loop.
| Hindu, muslim, orthodox christian. Or some strange genre of
| a Japanese anime girl making sounds.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Shortly before I started paying for YouTube, I remember
| seeing one of those ultra-long ads. The ad seemed
| interesting, so at first I didn't want to skip it. As soon as
| I saw that it was a looooong ad I got into the habit of
| checking the length of an ad before I even considered if it's
| worth watching.
|
| Now I just pay for Youtube. I'm a lot happier that way.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Time is money. Ten minutes of daily YouTube ads adds up to
| 5 hours a month. Premium costs $14, roughly an hour's work
| at minimum wage. Trade one hour of labor for four hours of
| free time. That's 48 hours back each year for $168. It's a
| no brainer. Even if your wage is half of 14 dollars, you
| would still gain 24 hours back and it would still be worth
| it.
| blibble wrote:
| or install ublock origin and keep your money and the
| time!
|
| while depriving google of revenue AND costing them money
|
| win, win, win and WIN
| Aerroon wrote:
| Also decreasing the likelihood of content that you like
| watching gets made? The creator is being paid from that
| ad revenue too.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Or maybe they will move to a platform that respects them.
| Gotta start somewhere.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I watch YouTube on many devices through the app. At the
| time, I was using YouTube music.
| pests wrote:
| I've seen bands release music in those long ads, a complete
| movie, a 2 hour podcast, and tons of the fake news stuff. I
| think for some its a unique way to advertise and get
| exposure, others is just YT farming adtime.
| shaftway wrote:
| I can tell you how the ad companies will implement this. For
| Rewarded ads (the longest ones, that are at least 30 seconds,
| and sometimes as high as 60 seconds), they'll move to that
| succession model, but the succession will take you at least 30
| seconds. Oh you skipped an ad after 5 seconds? No worries,
| here's another ad. You watched the first ad for the full 30
| seconds? No more ads for you.
|
| It'll probably be a win for them.
| lucianbr wrote:
| If it's a win they would do it already, no? There's no law
| _against_ it, is there.
| shaftway wrote:
| I've worked for two companies that did mobile ads, and one
| other that did web ads.
|
| The web ad company was hampered by poor engineering and
| management that had big glory projects that were poorly
| conceived or too ambitious; they no longer exist.
|
| The first mobile ad company was constrained by ethics and
| prioritized a better experience over earning that last
| fraction of a percent (though most people on the outside
| would disagree on principle).
|
| The second mobile ad company had a decent API designer
| early, and managed to capture a specific role in
| advertising. That role gave them access to data that ended
| up being wildly useful for purposes other than it's
| original intention, and they've done well based on that.
| But they are completely mired in in-fighting, executives
| who only bother to come in and be seen for quarterly
| results, and they don't do * _anything*_ unless someone
| else does it first. They don 't have a functional legal
| department and engineers are afraid that their head will be
| on the block if something goes wrong, and everyone is
| afraid of killing the golden goose.
|
| So no, I suspect it hasn't happened because almost nobody
| thought of it, and the people that did are too afraid to be
| a trailblazer.
|
| And we've already seen the precursors for it. Chaining
| multiple short ads together to add enough value to be worth
| it for an in-game reward is the beginning of it. It's not a
| very far leap.
| ksaj wrote:
| Some "news" sites are so annoying about their ads, I just close
| the tab and google for someone else's version of the story. I
| block sites that show up in my news feed often but display more
| nag than content.
|
| I'm sure in their mind, they don't care about _me_ leaving.
| Apparently more than enough people put up with it to keep the
| site viable.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| lite.cnn.com is the best lightweight news site I know of,
| though it is still CNN and probably more US-focused.
| zie wrote:
| There is also https://text.npr.org
| unleaded wrote:
| impressive... let's see the page source
| UltraSane wrote:
| I discovered that the samsung good lock sound assistant lets
| you mute all sound from specific apps and allow specific apps
| to never have their sound be interrupted. So it mute games and
| have audiobook players to always play audio and this lets me
| listen to audiobooks while playing games and never have the
| adds interrupt audio.
| inglor wrote:
| You likely turned off any privacy invading feature and didn't
| let the app track across apps.
|
| The fact you are getting irrelevant ads is a good thing that
| indicates that is probably working.
| immibis wrote:
| What about the ones that automatically open the Play Store to
| the app they're advertising after the ad? I would've thought
| it's against Play Store ToS to manipulate view count, but
| clearly Google has a conflict of interest.
| wvenable wrote:
| I have a turn-based game that I play with remote family and
| after I play my turn, I swipe the app off (force close) so I
| don't have to see the ads. It used to be that I could just
| switch away to skip the ads but they must have gotten wise to
| that because one day it stopped working.
| pluralmonad wrote:
| I know plenty of folks here make lots of money off it, but ad
| tech is straight up malware. I got lucky and found uBlock
| Origin many years ago so I did not get slowly boiled in
| worsening ad tech. I can't believe what people put up with
| just to not pay a few dollars for software they use daily.
| Not to even mention that the worst part of it all is ad tech
| has ruined the internet beyond repair.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Because a few dollars here and there very quickly adds up,
| especially for people in poorer countries. It's also much
| harder to get people to spend money online. I bet if you
| could physically buy the suffrage for $1-5 people would be
| far more likely to pay for it.
| lloeki wrote:
| You missed one of the worst: mandatory interactive ones.
|
| My wife is a sucker for these horribly generic flashy F2P
| puzzle-ish games. There are these ads that pop up every N
| action or something; some of these look like a mini-game and
| are actually an ad for another of those F2P games, and you have
| to play the mini-game that showcases some dumb simple mechanic
| of the game it advertises for a little bit before you can
| dismiss the ad.
|
| Some come complete with two trivially easy levels ONLY 20% OF
| PLAYERS CAN PASS SOLVE THIS that glorify you OMG YOU HAVE SUCH
| HIGH IQ then one impossible that taunts you into installing the
| game.
|
| The predatory dark patterns are so obvious they should be
| trialed to oblivion but no apparently this kind of abuse is
| legal.
| jason_s wrote:
| whoa -- I've never run into these. I've seen interactive
| puzzle ads, but the "X" to close always pops up in 20-30
| seconds.
| Melonai wrote:
| I noticed an interesting hybrid - you get an interactive
| ad, if you interact with it, complete the level, engage
| with the ad etc. you get the close button immediately, if
| you idle you have to wait ~30 seconds. Feels very
| deplorable to me.
| shaftway wrote:
| Google's AdMob has been doing these. Often it's something
| simple like completing a puzzle. I hate that I prefer
| these ads because it shortens the time until I get back
| to my game.
| georgefrowny wrote:
| I don't think I'm especially stupid and I try very hard not
| to interact with ads more then I have to, but I have often
| found it impossible to escape those ads without ending up
| being delivered to the app store page.
|
| Maybe I didn't notice the X in some part of the display or
| whatever, but even if by making a concerted effort to not do
| it, you still "convert", their click though stats must be
| crazy.
| pc86 wrote:
| Some of these ads are annoying, almost all of the them are
| dumb, but if you think they're _abusive_ , I don't think you
| know what the word abuse means.
| vunderba wrote:
| My absolute favorite is the smaller _"picture in picture ad"_
| that gives you a way to immediately dismiss it with a "X" that
| looks like microfiche - the cynic in me assumes that this is so
| the average user will fat-finger it by mistake making it look
| like a conversion.
| gtowey wrote:
| This is why instead of specific legislation that winds up being
| a cat-and-mouse game with companies, the practice of creating
| specialized agencies with a general charter and delegating the
| specifics to them is often employed.
|
| But it's also why this administration is dismantling those
| agencies as fast as it can -- without them the legislature will
| always be hopelessly behind on proper regulation.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| "This administration" being the US, I assume. Note that the
| article is about Vietnam.
| jonplackett wrote:
| The funny thing is that any company that has their ad displayed
| to me like this makes me just hate them.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| If are using Android, it's easy to block these ads with apps
| like Netguard or even PCAPDroid
|
| Then can use the game without annoyance of ads
|
| As it happens, the data collection, surveillance and ad serving
| strategies of the mobile OS vendors and their unpaid "app
| developer" independent contractors are still subservient to
| application firewalls and/or user-controlled DNS
|
| This could change one day, it's within the control of the
| mobile OS vendors, but I have been waiting over 15 years and it
| still hasn't
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I uninstall all games with any ad usage.
|
| The latest was "I Love Hue". It let me play 10 levels (nice)
| and then put ads in. If they had just asked for $1 before
| showing the first ad I might have paid but as soon as I saw the
| ads I just uninstalled.
|
| Note: IMO "I Love Hue" is a $1 game. I'm happy to pay $$ for
| bigger games and often do though on Switch/Steam, less on
| mobile.
| mbirth wrote:
| My wife played one of those unscrew games which showed lots
| of ads in between runs. I convinced her to buy the ad-free
| package for $5, so she doesn't have to endure those ads.
|
| While the game indeed was ad-free after that, there was no
| progress possible anymore as everything suddenly cost 3x the
| virtual coins than before. Basically forcing you to shell out
| even more money to buy their stupid coins.
|
| We've refunded the IAP and that was that.
| drewg123 wrote:
| _they appeared over and over again, making me hate them with a
| flaming passion_
|
| I wonder how much risk there is to brands due to this sort of
| thing? I tend to feel the same way; are we just uncommon?
|
| The only place I see ads is Amazon Prime Video (b/c I'm still
| irked they changed the deal and added ads). I've come to hate
| those companies whose ads I see over and over and over again
| and I've resolved to never buy anything from them. I even used
| one of their products regularly and switched to a competitor
| due to their ads.
| elinear wrote:
| A particularly egregious offender is Kalshi ads. They regularly
| play for a minute, sometimes up to two minutes before they can
| be closed.
|
| I would not be surprised if the incentives are in place for ad
| networks to push for longer ads and for advertisers to create
| longer ads.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| > It seems like the monkey's-paw curse for this kind of
| legislation is to show several ads in a row, each allowing you
| to skip them after 5 seconds.
|
| As is often the case I think that means the restrictions should
| just get even more strict, e.g., "no ad may ever be longer than
| X seconds and no app may ever show more than Y seconds of total
| ads within any 24-hour period". Then add some extra clause like
| "any attempt to circumvent or subvert these rules is punishable
| by fines up to 10x the company's gross annual revenue, plus
| asset forfeiture and prison for executives". People at
| companies should be deathly afraid of ever accidentally
| crossing the line into abusive behavior.
| abustamam wrote:
| I'm OK with a unobtrusive banner ad. I hate forced ads that get
| in the way of my flow (whether it's gaming or reading or work).
| I hate forced ads that can't be skipped.
|
| I understand the reason for these (they often have an IAP that
| will remove ads, so the more annoying the ads the more likely
| folks will be tempted to buy it). But doesn't make it ok. I
| usually just leave a one star review and uninstall.
| begueradj wrote:
| Both here and on the source post there is a typo in the title
| (Vietnam instead of Vienam).
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| How does television work in Vietnam? Is it all adfree?
| DooMMasteR wrote:
| nope but freeTV is limited to 10% total ad time, and payTV
| limited to 5%. Maximum ad time per hour is 4 times 5 minutes
| and a single movie cannot be interrupted more than two times, a
| show not more than 4 times. News cannot be interrupted at all
| and programs shorter than I think 10 minutes neither.
| srean wrote:
| And then I thought the poster skipped a t
| secondcoming wrote:
| I not too long ago received an ad on YouTube that was an entire
| episode of the UK reality TV program 'Made In Chelsea'. I think
| it was skippable but I couldn't believe that a) someone set up an
| ad campaign to do this, and b) YouTube didn't detect it.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Title should be "Vietnam", not "Vienam". I would downvote the
| submitter just for the reason that he posted this without
| correting it first.
| marzell wrote:
| "correting" lol
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Ironic. But mine is just a dumb comment, not the title of the
| post.
| stevewodil wrote:
| The article title reflects the typo, it's an issue with the
| original publication.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| So what? If something is obviously wrong it should be fixed.
| 833 wrote:
| This will push CPMs down, and therefore companies will make up
| for the lower earnings-per-ad by showing more ads.
|
| You can rearrange the deck chairs, sure, but more ads might be
| more annoying than fewer longer ones.
| larodi wrote:
| Was this posted automatically or why it reads Vienam? Without the
| T! And the title also reads so?
| hoherd wrote:
| I posted it with the original article title. I'm not sure who
| changed it, but yeah, there is a typo which also exists in the
| linked article.
| lifetimerubyist wrote:
| I always wondered about traditional television. People like my
| dad still have it. It still has a shitload of ads. They're
| unskippable. People don't really seam to care about those for
| some reason though.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| A television commercial hasn't been unskippable since the
| advent of the DVR in 1999. If you do care about avoiding
| commercials, that's where you have the most power to avoid it.
| It's streaming where the service has full power to restrict
| control of navigation through the video stream.
| metabagel wrote:
| At some point, I would imagine we will be able to request
| content and have an agent skip or otherwise remove
| advertisements, right? We'll have to wait for that, just like
| with a DVR, but it seems worth it to me.
| rjh29 wrote:
| My mum has a DVR so she tends to watch things later and skip
| the ads. For this reason our TV provider is pushing a new box
| which has no DVR capability and can only access things from
| streaming... they bill this as an advantage since you don't
| have to explicitly record anything. But it's all about adverts.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| So instead of one minute-long ad, I'm going to get 12 I have to
| manually skip? Thanks, Vietnam.
| ryandrake wrote:
| No, "thanks, company that is pushing 12 ads at you." The law is
| not forcing companies to treat you badly.
| gip wrote:
| I'm just wondering why governments think it's a good idea to
| regulate ads. IMO that is something the market (e.g. the users)
| should take care of.
| miltonlost wrote:
| How, as a user, do I avoid getting ads shoved in front of my
| eyes on buses? on billboards? on subways? on tv channels? at
| movies? in my mail? in my email? in my search results? in my
| map app?
|
| i'm just wondering what you want the "market" to do and how.
| porcoda wrote:
| Ad driven internet content is at least 25 years old, so it's
| had time to settle into the equilibrium the market will
| converge to. The current state of things is precisely where the
| market drove it to, so it seems pretty clear that the
| "invisible hand" isn't going to make it better and appears to
| favor making it worse. This seems like an obvious case where an
| external force is required to push the market in a direction it
| doesn't naturally want to land at.
| oldjim798 wrote:
| Beyond the ad driven internet, ad driven content has been at
| least 150 years old. Ever seen a photo of a pre-WW1 baseball
| stadium? Or soccer stand? Covered in ads. Old newspapers are
| awash in ads. Day time TV soap operas are so named because
| they were sponsored by soap companies.
|
| All a giant waste. Just propaganda blasted at our eyes and
| ears all day, a drum beat of distraction attacks on our
| attention. Almost all forms of advertising should be banned
| or regulated till they are as quiet and unobtrusive as
| possible.
| platevoltage wrote:
| Best argument I can think of is the fact that half of ads on
| American TV have the words "ask your doctor about ___" in them.
| Drugs ads should be banned.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The market inevitably trends toward the lowest common
| denominator. We deserve better.
| xvector wrote:
| You can make better. But there's a reason non-ad-supported
| businesses barely ever work out.
| xp84 wrote:
| They aren't even regulating the ads, they're mandating that
| video platforms show content without monetization.
|
| Live TV had unskippable ads for like the last 80 years, and
| somehow YouTube is different? Why?
|
| I hate ads, I block ads, and even I think this is stupid. Idk
| what Vietnam's constitution is like, but I think it's absurd
| from a free country perspective. If I'm paying to serve you
| videos, why don't I get to set the terms of that deal? Nobody
| is forcing you to go to a specific website. If you think
| they're crap because of all the ads, I likely would agree with
| you. I think blocking them can't be criminalized, because after
| all it is your device you're using to remove the ads. But how
| can you fine or punish a company for not explicitly _letting_
| you take the content without complying with their terms?
| blauditore wrote:
| Pet peeve: Skip/close button appears after a few seconds - bht it
| only leads to another view whose close button is hidden for a few
| seconds too, and sometimes in a different corner.
| haritha-j wrote:
| Interesting coming from a developing nation. One thing I've
| always thought is, it may be vible to replace ad-funded free
| services with paid services in developed nations where residents
| may be able to afford it, but developing nations may be much more
| reliant on such free services and could get priced out.
| kfarr wrote:
| As much as this may have unintended consequences, I can
| appreciate the motivation. I can't let my kids play iPhone games
| unless I turn the device into Airplane mode. Almost all these pay
| to play mobile games have 60 second interstitials after each
| level that can't be skipped. It's insane. I've taught my kids how
| to force kill the game and reload to get out. Definitely
| depressing compared to the PC shareware days I grew up with.
| xp84 wrote:
| As a fellow parent, I cannot recommend Apple Arcade enough. My
| son is only allowed to play games that come from AA. These
| games aren't allowed to have any ads or in-app purchase. In
| return, you pay seven measly bucks a month (though I have it
| included as part of a package since we use iCloud and Apple
| Music and Apple TV+ anyway).
|
| The games in AA are either made for Apple Arcade (some great
| indie type games) or, very commonly, they are basically 'de-
| fanged' ones from the regular App Store, with all the IAPs and
| ads ripped out. Where there is an in-game currency that
| normally is scarce without paying, they'll either just give you
| a bunch of it to start with, or you will earn it naturally
| while playing.
|
| I agree with you that the number of ads and purchase-pushing
| mechanics in all regular App Store/Play Store games is insane.
| It's all because a few whales who do buy these purchases are
| what pays for the whole thing.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Know of an equivalent for Android?
|
| I'm leaning towards letting the kid play games _only_ on an
| XBox and never on the phone. Even if I get rid of the ads, I
| don 't want the games to be accessible wherever they are.
| Whereas with a TV, they need to situate themselves in a
| dedicated place to play games.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Could consider getting them one of those retro handheld
| emulators and giving them real games.
| Aachen wrote:
| Translated source: https://thuvienphapluat-
| vn.translate.goog/phap-luat/ho-tro-p...
|
| Online advertisements only. I was curious how they were going to
| implement that on TV!
|
| It doesn't mention how much time must be in between ads
|
| The law also prohibits advertisements that harm "national
| security" or "negatively affects the dignity of the Party Flag,
| leaders, national heroes [etc.]". Wonder if that's the real
| purpose here
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| An aside: One of the best uses for AR that I can imagine is real
| life ad-block. I'd wear AR glasses all the time if it would
| automatically replace billboards and other ads with landscapes.
| barbazoo wrote:
| What a shit world but hey I'd probably buy that if I had to
| live there.
|
| I can't stop thinking about this rental apartment building in
| my city that's on indigenous land so regulation around
| advertising doesn't apply (BC) and they have a huge electronic
| billboard right in front facing probably couple dozen windows.
|
| I feel bad for the people living there, negatively about anyone
| advertising there and negatively about otherwise very
| environmentally conscious land owners for allowing this.
| bArray wrote:
| I love the picture of politicians sitting by themselves, annoyed
| by something as all other people are, and thinking "there's
| nothing I can do about it". Good on _Vietnam_ for actually doing
| something about it.
|
| I got a taste of this from an EU MEP that I proposed something
| to, and they replied "it can't be done because of the law". I
| then replied "but you make the law, it's literally your job!" -
| and they looked at me, blank faced. Imagine large rooms filled
| with people who mindlessly act within a framework they dislike,
| whilst being the only people who could actually change it, and
| not having the will to do so. It sounds like some special type of
| hell.
|
| I shudder to think how many people sitting in positions of power
| just mindlessly continue doing a thing because of some form of
| complacency. Madness.
| stodor89 wrote:
| "Hurr durr we're monitoring the situation."
| timwalz wrote:
| 'Vienam'? 'this like "Quality Learing Center"?
| tgtweak wrote:
| I saw one where it was 20 seconds before the skip/x appeared,
| then when you hit X it pushes you to the app store, then when you
| hit back the x button moves to a new location, then when you hit
| it, it puts you into a 5 second "hey we're not done yet" ad
| cta... combine that with the fact the ad is showing soap opera
| gameplay that doesn't exist in the game - how is this even
| allowed?
| noAnswer wrote:
| Time for a military intervention by the US.
| elashri wrote:
| I hate ads with all my heart. And I go out of my way to
| religiously block them. I employ DNS blocking (through my own
| adguard home server) on my whole network (I use this DNS server
| connected to unbound to act as recursive DNS on all devices even
| when I am outside home). I use ublock origin on Firefox browser
| (one of the forks that guts Firefox ads and privacy settings by
| default) and on my iPhone I use wipr + uBlock Origin lite. I have
| several userscripts to block ads one some websites (i.e I block
| HN jobs posts).
|
| I have a mental view that gets disrupted by ads and sometimes
| even angry. In the rare moments which I use a computer or phone
| of a friend or family without those, I really can't tolerate the
| suffering they go through. My single best advice to people about
| using ublock origin and Firefox resonated with everyone of them.
| I use it on my parents devices as the best security measure that
| could be used.
|
| Am I overreacting, maybe but I find my level of tolerance for ads
| is zero no matter how much I agree that some of them are good or
| not. Maybe this is the result of decades of self imposing dark
| patterns and intrusive ads do to some people. I really feel sorry
| for majority of internet users that do not use adblockers.
| xvector wrote:
| Companies are not obligated to provide you with services for
| free. You are free to solely use non ad supported services.
| elashri wrote:
| They are free to block me if they detect I am using
| adblocker. It is on by default. And for most services paying
| does not guarantee that I do not get ads.
|
| I am not under any obligation to let my client serve their
| ads which is usually the number one malware vector.
| tintor wrote:
| And he is free to use free ad-supported services and not
| watch ads.
| tracker1 wrote:
| And this is why I run an ad blocker in my browser on top of a
| pihole for my home. The whole situation sucks, and I'm often
| willing to pay for an ad-free experience.
|
| I still would never buy an X10 camera or any other of their
| products given how they abused pop-over/under ads. Same for Sony
| for other reasons... I can carry a product grudge for decades.
| amatecha wrote:
| Obligatory "We Must Destroy X10" moment!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF8NK6eruUs :D
| jonplackett wrote:
| VPN use via Vietnam is about to go global.
| crims0n wrote:
| Not sure it will be worth the 300ms latency penalty.
| jonplackett wrote:
| 300ms is a lot less latency than an ad
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Is this just a really ubiquitous typo (google finds multiple
| headlines with the same spelling), or is the rendering of
| "Vietnam" into English spelling somewhat unstable?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Never seen it before today...
| Fernicia wrote:
| The only real results on Google are the article and this
| HackerNews post...
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Did you search "vienam" with the quotes? duck duck go turns
| up a number of articles (albeit in at least one case the typo
| is in the metadata, not the article itself)
| spullara wrote:
| It is just this article.
| wild_pointer wrote:
| ubiquitous? "Vienam" (with quotes) shows this page as the first
| result.
| acureau wrote:
| Definitely a typo, see "vietnam-news" in the same URL.
| itsafarqueue wrote:
| Vie(t)nam
| Zanfa wrote:
| About a decade ago, a mobile gaming company I was at,
| accidentally shipped a full-screen ad without the art asset for
| the close button, so the button was invisible. The ad basically
| forced users to visit the in-app store for a moment before they
| could close it.
|
| The sad part is that day we broke all previous daily revenue
| records.
| gretch wrote:
| Pretty sure this is a form of ad fraud and the people who paid
| for those ads would be really mad at you e.g. if it were a CPC
| campaign
| mmh0000 wrote:
| I am shaken to my core (sorry, wife hates that phrase, so I have
| to use it everywhere) at how many posters here see ads.
|
| I'm of the opinion that if you're seeing ads on your hardware,
| which you paid for, your computer is broken. That advertisements
| are always evil, always wrong, and never morally just. And
| everything possible should be done to avoid, remove, or deface
| them.
|
| To that end:
|
| Andriod: - Root your damn phone! And install
| AdAway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdAway) - Firefox +
| uBlock - Don't install malware/spyware (Arguably, Android
| is spyware, but custom ROMs fix it.)
|
| iOS: - AdGuard (free, works well, but not
| perfect, enable the "extra" filters) - Don't install
| malware/spyware (Arguably, iOS is spyware, but Apple thinks
| you're a simp, so Good Luck.)
|
| Windows (note, I don't actively use Windows, so these are the
| things I've collected and used in the past, no idea of their
| current state): - Seriously, you probably
| shouldn't be using Windows, but I "get it" sometimes you have to.
| - Don't install malware/spyware -
| https://christitus.com/windows-tool/ -
| https://old.reddit.com/r/WindowsLTSC/wiki/index -
| https://windhawk.net/ - https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-
| Shell-Menu - https://wpd.app/ - https://www.oo-
| software.com/en/shutup10
|
| Linux: - Firefox + uBlock and done. -
| OpenSnitch if you run random executables from the Internet.
|
| Firefox as a whole: - https://github.com/arkenfox
| suriya-ganesh wrote:
| I used to think this. and I do run some of your suggestions.
|
| But how is the internet economy supposed to function without
| these micro transactions, in the form of ads. A lot of the
| abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past
| decade is possible only through this mechanism.
| crims0n wrote:
| I too struggle with this. It's not like people can't publish
| things on the web without ads. If the author/artist wanted it
| to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. So people who use ad
| blockers are either making a moral choice to consume a paid
| service for free, or are ignorant of how the internet economy
| works.
|
| There is an argument to be made that advertisements are so
| detrimental to the user experience and mental health of the
| recipient that they are morally justified in blocking them.
| However, that is debatable when you consider the alternative,
| which is that the medium you are consuming may not exist at
| all if not for the advertisements published along with it.
| deckard1 wrote:
| The day I stopped giving half a fraction of a shit was the
| day Google served me malware in an ad. It was one of those
| fake "Download" buttons on a very popular open source tool.
| I wonder how many people have been harmed by that.
|
| > medium you are consuming may not exist at all
|
| I've realized that's not my problem. It's not like most of
| the internet is healthy anyway. It's psychologically
| manipulative and designed to keep you fearful, angry,
| spiteful, jealous, and above all, depressed.
|
| Fuck Google. Fuck Meta. And fuck every single last person
| working for them.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| If a medium doesn't exist because of the lack of ads and
| you think it's a loss, you should have paid for it (which
| overall is cheaper than paying though ads).
| godelski wrote:
| I struggle with this too. I struggle less when I remind
| myself of how much the tech sector has grown in the past 20
| years. Not even just in power and control over critical
| infrastructure, but in wealth.
| Market Cap by Year Year 0 1
| 2 3 4 2025 Nvidia
| (4.6T) Apple (3.9T) Google (3.8T) Microsoft (3.5T)
| Amazon (2.6T) 2020 Apple (2.3T) Microsoft (1.7T)
| Amazon (1.6T) Google (1.2T) Meta (777M) 2015
| Apple (598M) Google (534M) Microsoft (440M) Berkshire
| (324M) Exxon (325M) 2010 Exxon (369M)
| PetroChina (303M) Apple (296M) BHP (244M)
| Microsoft (239M) Some Billionaires...
| Year Musk Page Bezos Ellison Zuck Buffett
| Current 714B 257B 251B 244B 227B 148B
| 2024 195B 114B 194B 141B 177B 133B
| 2023 180B 79B 114B 107B 64B 106B
| 2022 219B 111B 171B 106B 67B 118B
| 2021 151B 92B 177B 93B 97B 96B
| 2020 25B 51B 113B 59B 55B 68B
| 2016 11B 35B 45B 44B 45B 61B
| - There are currently 19 people worth more than $100bn!
| - 4 of them are not American (Arnault, Ortega, Ambani, Helu)
| - 27 of the top 50 richest are non-Americans - 57 of
| the top 100 are non-Americans - Bill Gates was first
| worth $100bn in 1999, becoming the first centibillionaire
|
| It is hard to feel bad when we've seen such an explosion of
| wealth, especially over the last 5 years. I mean we had a
| fucking pandemic and all the big players doubled (or nearly)
| their market caps. We constantly hear about how these
| companies are having "money issues" but then keep announcing
| record profits and record bonuses to CEOs. >
| A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen
| in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.
|
| So I don't agree that it is * _ONLY*_ through this mechanism.
| Or that if it is that it needs to be done to this degree. It
| is hard for me personally to take pity when we 're on the
| verge of having the first trillionaire. Honestly, I don't
| care about a wealth cap and I don't think there should be. It
| isn't a zero-sum game. But I do care about the wealth floor.
| It is hard to think of that floor when just the top 5 richest
| made $887B last year and $1.47T in the last 5 (2024 was a
| "good" year. Musk is 519B/689B so 368B/781B excluding) and
| average people are feeling the pressure.
|
| If times were good for the rest of us I honestly couldn't
| care less if Musk became a trillionaire. Good for him
| -\\_(tsu)_/-. But while wages are stagnant, while the job
| market is very competitive, we have major layoffs, while
| inflation is hitting average people hard, and while they keep
| pretending they can replace us all with AI; then hell fucking
| yeah I do care.
|
| It ends up being a question about what is _more_ right, than
| what _is_ right. I 'd feel more conflicted if we all, or the
| majority of us, were benefiting from the advancements. But
| sympathy is difficult when we look at those numbers.
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by.
| ..
|
| https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/
|
| P.S. here's a fun game for understanding how much a billion
| dollars is. It's difficult because that level of money
| generates so much interest.
|
| Imagine you have a billion dollars. You put it in an
| investment account that earns 10% yearly interest, compounded
| daily. On day 1 you need funds, so sit on your ass and do
| nothing. After than, on each weekday you hire a new employee
| at the cost of $250k/yr and is also paid daily.
|
| How many employees can you hire before you have less than a
| billion dollars?
|
| There's a lot of variants you can run on this kind of thought
| experiment and I think they're helpful for understanding that
| level of wealth.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> But how is the internet economy supposed to function_
|
| If the existence of a given industry requires the
| annihilation of individual privacy and the elimination of
| free thought, then that industry does not deserve to exist.
| Kill the ad industry.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Other types of micro transactions and payments are possible
| godelski wrote:
| > iOS: - uBlock Origin now exists - Settings
| > Apps > Safari > (General) Extensions > uBlock Origin Lite
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id6745342698
| - Alternatively, use Orion Browser (Kagi) - Pros: a bit
| better ad blocking - Cons: more buggy
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-
| kagi/id1484498200
|
| I'd also recommend installing Firefox, logging in, but use
| Safari. That way you can export a tab to Firefox where you can
| still get the send tabs feature. > Firefox as
| a whole: Also check out BetterFox -
| https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox
|
| Side Note:
|
| Phones are also general computer systems. Fuck this bullshit of
| pretending they're anything less. If you don't have control
| over your computer, your computer is broken. You don't have to
| be forced to adhere to Big Tech's short comings.
| > Andriod: - Install Termux (from F-droid, not
| Playstore) - It is trivial to write scripts to handle a
| lot of things that work through third parties. Less than 100
| lines. I find these scripts *better* than many app alternatives
| and infinitely more trustworthy. We're on HN, everyone here
| should be able to write basic scripts. Hell, the AI could
| probably do these things easily (make it use functions! Bash
| needs functions!) Some ideas to show scope of what
| you can do: - Automated backups: just a fucking rsync
| to your folders (god fuck Apple, why can't I rsync my pictures
| on an iPhone!!!!) - I have my script check for
| WiFi. If on my SSID I rsync locally. If not, I go through
| Tailscale. If not on WiFi I don't backup, minimizing my data
| usage. I'm lazy and just set the cron job to run once a day,
| making each backup usually pretty small but can cause larger
| backups when traveling - rsync can also remove
| files from your phone if you're concerned about storage.
| - You can backup to multiple locations! Even if you use google
| drive or whatever you should still rsync to your local machine.
| Remember, Google photos doesn't save full resolution.
| - Loss Prevention: Your phone hasn't accessed a set of
| predetermined WIFI SSIDs in a set time period? Send a file to a
| known computer (Tailscale), email yourself, or something else
| with the device's coordinates. Add an easing function, check
| battery health, and whatever info you want. Hell, even take
| pictures. You can also make it play music or whatever to help
| find it. - Replicate Apple's Check In:
| - You can read GPS coordinates, SSIDs, and send SMS messages.
| This is a lot easier than you think - Enforce
| the actual WIFI SSID you want! - Phone sometimes
| jumping on the wrong SSID? Have no fear a few lines of code can
| tell it to fuck off! - I had this issue living
| in graduate housing where a university AP was near my unit. My
| phone would randomly decide to join the uni's connection
| despite sitting a few feet from my router and having better
| signal strength... - Install Tailscale and get
| access to your local machines remotely - Setup a
| raspberry pi at home and make an exit node that uses pihole
| (suggestion: check out systemd-nspawn)
| nexawave-ai wrote:
| Oh, thank God, there's someone with common sense who hates ads
| and is in a position of power to push this law through. Even if
| it's only in Vietnam, it sets a precedent for other countries to
| follow. There's absolutely nothing wrong with ads themselves; the
| problem lies with the platform owners. YouTube, Disney Plus,
| Amazon Prime Video, HBO, etc., use dark patterns to force users
| to upgrade to ad free plans. These manipulation tactics are
| designed to push people into more expensive subscriptions. My
| prediction is that once platform owners can no longer make money
| from unskippable ads, they'll simply get rid of ad supported
| subscription tiers altogether, like we had before.
| Cort3z wrote:
| Are there a total ad time percentage metric in this law too, or
| will they simply be watching many more smaller ads?
| amatecha wrote:
| Interesting, the link title was revised, but "Vienam" spelling
| remains? What?
| just-working wrote:
| I <3 Vienam
| mbix77 wrote:
| Refreshing to see. Makes you wonder what we could achieve if we
| all just started to say no to enshitification of the world.
| dwa3592 wrote:
| It's Vietnam.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| And just like that, millions of disillusioned youth embraced
| communism ...
| Babkock wrote:
| This "Vienam" sounds like a nice place!
| apparent wrote:
| When I was traveling in Asia I was sometimes on VPN and sometimes
| not. I noticed that when I was not on VPN I got a lot more
| unskippable youtube ads than when I was, even though I was using
| the same browser and adblockers.
|
| Apparently Google knows how to circumvent adblockers, and they're
| testing these tools in certain markets.
| FuturisticLover wrote:
| I like how the country is taking bold steps. This is a great
| move.
| alex_young wrote:
| Where is Vienam? Probably next to Camboia?
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| On the South Chia Sea
| aaronday wrote:
| Another step towards Blipverts from Max Headroom.
| batrat wrote:
| So I have only one subscription: Youtube because of family/kids
| and bonus YT music.
|
| For the rest: adguard phone/pihole home, frosty instead of
| twitch, newpipe instead of youtube(I hate the interface),
| infinity instead of reddit and a lot more alternatives for social
| media. Also using xmanager for some apps ;). I have zero ads on
| my phone or my pc. I disabled the ads once for my wife, she
| instantly yelled at me to enable it again :).
| nicbou wrote:
| So I really hate ads and either block them or avoid the product
| altogether. My tolerance is very close to zero.
|
| But is it the government's job to regulate good user experience?
| Are unskippable ads a social problem that must be regulated away?
| I am the polar opposite of a libertarian, but to me ads are the
| alternative to other means of monetisation. They support things
| that are free to use but not free to operate. The transaction is
| consensual and not unavoidable.
| xp84 wrote:
| If you were giving out free cookies at the front of your store
| intended to thank shoppers for coming in, and someone reaches in
| and grabs one while running past, that's an ad-blocker. Not the
| most ethically justifiable[1], but legal. This law though is
| saying that if you have a person at the door who makes sure you
| are at least browsing the store before giving you a free cookie,
| that practice is now _illegal._ This is utterly nonsense to me.
| Does the Vietnam constitution contain a right to free VOD? How do
| TV broadcasters get away with it, given they 're riddled with
| "non-skippable ads" -- about 17 minutes per hour of them!
|
| [1] if you want to dispute this, is it just because you're
| thinking the store is run by a big company you don't like and
| that you feel rips people off? Does it change though if your mom
| baked those cookies to give out to try to get people to shop in
| her little boutique that barely makes enough money to cover rent?
| The point is just that it's not universally justifiable. I don't
| care if you block ads (I block them too) or take free samples
| from stores.
| explosion-s wrote:
| vie*t*nam?
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Any advance in JavaScript and outrageous browser complexity is
| cheered at here on HN, but waking up to the fact that their
| actual purpose is unskippable ads and browser monopolies is not
| so funny.
| archon810 wrote:
| What's with the weird duck that flies out from the top right into
| the bottom left of the screen when you first open the article?
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| This is slightly off topic, but something I find myself wondering
| pretty regularly: if ads are pretty much universally hated by
| every human on earth, why do companies continue running them?
|
| I get the obvious answer: "they work"
|
| But do they? Do big companies have a real data-driven model to
| demonstrate annoying ads leading to sales?
|
| While anecdotal, I can think of a number of specific times ads
| slipped through my ad blocker and I went out of my way to avoid
| buying anything from those companies.
| aldousd666 wrote:
| I recently read about 'in thread' ads, like on Twitter, as
| being not as effective unless they are 'brand recognition' ads.
| Like, they will help you decide which one to pick when you are
| staring at two fungible brands on the shelf, but they will not
| convince you to buy something you have never heard about
| before, especially not from a direct click through. So while
| Ads work is true, in many ways, they don't in many others. The
| brand damage you can get from having those in-thread ads is
| also real: Ads target the user, not the thread, but by showing
| up, users associate advertisers with the thread. If you were in
| some argument about dictators taking over, and suddenly a
| product pops up, you may assign the negative energy you have
| toward dictators to that brand as well.
| maelito wrote:
| 5 seconds... too slow. Ublock's better.
| aldousd666 wrote:
| AdGuard as a local VPN also bans unskippable Ads without the
| pesky legal enforcement baggage.
| knowitnone3 wrote:
| US companies respond with 100 skippable ads per minute
| knowitnone3 wrote:
| 2 words. adblock
| unglaublich wrote:
| I live an ad-free lifestyle and it is very serene.
| bambax wrote:
| Original title was
|
| > _Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appear
| After 5 Seconds_
|
| If we need to edit titles, could we at least take the opportunity
| to correct obvious typos? (Missing the t in Vietnam)
| sedatk wrote:
| Paging @dang
|
| Also submission titles can be edited in the first 5 minutes of
| posting or so.
| dang wrote:
| Yikes! not sure how we missed tha.
|
| Fixed now.
| henearkr wrote:
| Running ads unskippably: unspeakably sad.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| *Vietnam mandates 5 second ads
| fHr wrote:
| fuck yes, fuck APPLOVIN
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Vietnam, not "Vienam"
| canxerian wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269
|
| Feels appropriate: What if we made advertising illegal?
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(page generated 2026-01-06 23:01 UTC)