Vietnam bans unskippable ads (opens in new tab)

The fact you are getting irrelevant ads is a good thing that indicates that is probably working.

It'll probably be a win for them.

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.

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.

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.

We should just ban all online ads then. I honestly think we would be better off. Yes, some things that used to be completely free would start costing a little bit, but I don't think we would lose much of value, really. And there would still be lots of different ways that consumers could discover goods and services if we didn't have online ads, it would just be via directories where consumers could go and search for products instead of consumers being bombarded with information noise all the time.

The freemium ad-revenue model is a local maximum which results in a whole lot of shittiness.

The only way I've found to do it so far is to manually exclude yourself from every individual app category. IIRC there are over a hundred categories and you need to manually go through and select every category to exclude your ads from mobile apps.

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.

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.

My second favorite was for some pirate game, but the ads were basically the setup for an adult movie, with tons of hammy overacting. I thought they were so funny, I was really sad when they stopped.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

What needs to be regulated is ads that you can't avoid. You can avoid online ads by paying ad free versions or not browsing certain sites(eg: instagram, FB). Billboards need to go away, and some cities have outlawed them.

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.

And it's not that impractical : just make a consumer-run search engine for products and services.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQh50UKkt10/?igsh=MWx6ZW41ZHV...

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.

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!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

What if we made advertising illegal? (simone.org)

1975 points by smnrg 9 months ago | 1409 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269

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

[0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...

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.

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!

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?

> 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?

- Improved incentive for the IT and medias industry. Users and viewers are the customers again.

- Removal of the culture of normalized lying that infects everyone to the point people don't see it anymore.

- Natural selection of product by actually asking people for money. Can't pay 2 euros / month for facebook? It deserves to die.

- Redirection of resources from marketing to useful things. Billions going back to R&D, quality control, etc.

- Brand forced to rely on quality and word of mouth again. No more temporary product trick. No more "one month brand lifetime" hack. No more "PR will save this disaster".

- Improved skin in the game. And you will see less reputation-damaging behavior because of this. Think twice about doing A/B testing, fake sales, use too many notifications. You need those saavy power users to spread the word now.

- Disappearance of old and new artificial social norms solely created by marketing firms to sell stuff that parasites our reality. No need for everybody to look the same, no need for diamonds for engagement rings, no "whole white family having breakfirst in a big house and everything is clean and they are all happy and hot" to sell coffee, no "big red guy with a beard" created by coca cola.

- Getting back on specs. You can't sell perfume and cars on an vague idea anymore.

- Children won't get conditioned from a young age to want stuff they don't need, think ideas they don't really have, and adopt behaviors that are harmful for them just so that a marketer can get 3% more engagement.

- Creating massive volume of bad content will not be a successful strategies anymore, since it's not about displaying ads. So content quality go up.

- Streets get nicer, with no more ads display. Clothes as well, with no more big logo making you look like a billboard.

- No more ads in your mail box! And you can redirect the money from the gov marketing budget to actually find email spammers as well.

- Removal of a huge means of accumulation and centralization of power. Right now, it's pay to win, and the more money you have, the more you can run ads, the more you can sell. Which means a small local shop cannot easily compete with a big one. But without ads, it's actually close to its own clients, and has an advantage to get their attention organically.

- People get back some part of their attention span.

The benefits are not superficial; they are immense!

Ads are a plague on our societies.

Evolving as humans requires us to find a way to ban them.

I doubt I will see it in my lifestyle, but we need to get rid of this parasite if we want to go to the next level.

- 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.

> 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.

Why?

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.

You don't see how these are conflicting viewpoints? What do you think would compel a company to act in some way that is not in line with its short term financial interests? Sheer luck?

When it comes up the 10th time though there’s no way I’ll be watching the film it advertises, no matter how much I might have done after the first time.

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.

Stardew Valley cost me $15 on iPhone a few years ago, which is a lot for an iPhone game, but I don't regret it at all. It's a direct port of the PC version, meaning it's a complete experience, but also not a single ad. No attempts to get me to spam my friends, no prompts for me to buy gems to make my crops grow faster, no need to watch an ad to unlock fighting in the mines. It's a game that I paid some money for and then I got to play. What a concept!

I have a borderline-irrational hatred for ads and will very actively go out of the way to avoid them. I understand the whole "no free lunch" economic theory, so you could argue that they're a necessity in some cases, but at this point I'm in a stable enough position to justify paying a few bucks to play games uninterrupted.

Outside of Stardew Valley, I play Binding of Isaac and Organ Trail. Both of them cost a few bucks but both also give you a complete, ad-free experience.

No hunting for tiny X's. No shifting DOM to dodge clicks. Hit Esc and it stops. For iOS and Android force it as part of the UI, like the volume buttons, back/home buttons.

It seems that quite a few mobile gaming companies make this mistake. Or they "accidentally" set the click area of the button offset from the graphic, or very very small.

I don't think so. Vietnam has been making great progress with privacy and digital rights laws, at least in paper. I haven't been following how well they actually enforce them though.

More likely there's a split in the government between a progressive faction who created this law and the old school side, and they probably had to add that text to get it into law.

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.

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)

> 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...

I did for many years, and finally gave up. With recent Androids, life in the rooted world is much more difficult:

Netflix automatically drops to a lower quality tier.

Many apps now just refuse to work on a rooted phone.

But the worst thing: If I want to update the ROM to get the latest security benefits, I have to wipe my data.

Surprised you didn't mention something like PiHole.

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.

If not, how do you think they should make money?

(I don't like ads myself).

I'm beginning to wonder if many people are not comfortable with simply being content. They actually want someone to come and tell them why they aren't happy. Ads do that for them.

  > 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

  >  Firefox as a whole:

  Also check out BetterFox
  - https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox

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)

I don't get it. Could you please elaborate? Thanks in advance!

Source: I used to live there.

Blokada 5 is free. It blocks ads and trackers system wide. It works in all games and apps I checked for the last 4-5 years.

Used to work with YouTube as well, but not any more. I use New Pipe for that.

You're experience may vary depending on block lists you subscribe to, but vanilla set up is already quite good.

Running ads unskippably: unspeakably sad earning.