A global movement to ban urban billboards | Hacker News Reader

A global movement to ban urban billboards

theguardian.com

399 pointsamelius192 comments

That is one nice thing about living around DC, there are no billboards around the highways around here. You don't notice it until you go to other states. Then it becomes obvious and it looks jarring -- "Hey, what is this crap everywhere? How can people tolerate this!?"

Kind of the same effect if you are used to watching Netflix and then at a relative's house and you see cable TV with commercials every 15 minutes. They probably don't even notice it, but to me it feels strange and annoying to have to put up with it.

There are a few littered along NY Ave when entering the city.

That's how I feel when I surf the web without ad blocking now.

Oh man, it's awful isn't it? I upgraded my phone the other day and it took me a little while to root the thing and reinstall AdAway.

After over six months of completely ad-free internet use it came as quite a shock as to how intrusive and distracting mobile advertising actually is.

Once I had it set up again, the relief was palpable, like finally being alone after being shouted at by a roomful of idiots.

You're not the only one I've heard this from. Do you mind if I ask what kind of sites you're getting this from? I can't tolerate TV or radio ads. I've never used any ad blockers on the web, and I don't find much objectionable advertising other than clickbait link farms.

I for years don't bothered with web ads, but sites got increasingly slow, sometimes some sites would time out after exchanging 10mb of data with ad servers, when the site itself had 300kb or something like that.

So I installed ad blocking to get rid of this issue...

The difference is DRASTIC, not only in performance (it feels like it felt when I switched from dial-up to DSL) but there are no more blinking and flashing stuff anymore, the browser crashes much less (because of badly coded flash ads) and some sites are much better to see the content (example: one of the most popular brazillian newspaper, Folha.com has some flash banner ads that when you mouseover they expand and cover the entire page, the problem it is really easy to unintentionally mouse over them, and then to get rid of them again is really obnoxious)

> to get rid of them again is really obnoxious

I've recently taking to switching off Javascript for just this reason. The Chrome extension "Quick Javascript Switcher" does it on a site-by-site basis. No more interstitials, cookie-warning crap, etc.

I'm using RequestPolicy for this. If a site doesn't load completely, just enable a couple of required sources, and you're done. It's an extra step sure, but usually needs to be done just once per site.

Yeah, I've been doing the same. It's not difficult to switch JS on for an individual site if it's something I actually want to use. For most sites, however, killing JS just makes life easier.

It's kind of like a noise you don't notice until it stops.

I don't mind ads when viewing sites on desktop - except for tracking, which I block unconditionally, and autoplay videos - but I can't stand mobile ads.

There's the battery life/bandwith problem, they take up precious screen space, especially popovers and sticky banners, but my real problem is that mobile is a much more personal, close up experience. I don't want things shouting in my face when I'm trying to read.

Publishers need to make money, but the cost of mobile advertising is too high.

If like many Washingtonians you never leave NW, sure. But there are plenty of billboards in NE and SE. There are definitely billboards when you get a little ways out on 66, also on 50E towards Annapolis. 95 in VA is non-stop billboards, I forget if 395 has them. The one I'm not certain about is the beltway ... but pretty sure I've seen billboards on the beltway in parts of MD. There are (were?) also what amount to billboards along H St in NW. So I have to disagree, and encourage you to explore the area more.

Never had visited DC I googled "billboards in DC" and got plenty of results. A billboard in support of Chelsea Manning, companies selling billboard space and companies selling mobile billboard space as well. Nothing to indicate there was a lack of billboards there.

Yeah I am mainly in NW and Northern VA. Billboards are not illegal, but they are just regulated better. I was mainly comparing with Pensilvania, Ohio and a few Midwest states I drive through sometimes.

Agreed, there are very few billboards in northern Virginia; I think Fairfax and Arlington Counties have stringent requirements for them, if not outright bans.

When I lived in Sacramento, on the Cap City Freeway there was a highly visible, gaudy billboard advertising liposuction, fat belly and all. I always wondered about that one ... there's no way the funds from renting that space justified the terrible light it cast on Sacramento for visitors passing through, and there must be other bidders. Also it's not as though this is the norm, I can't think of any similarly awful billboards in the Sacramento area, and the Cap City Freeway itself has few billboards.

If like many Washingtonians you never leave NW

At 7th and H NW there are three giant electronic billboards that play sound, not to mention the array of billboards plastered all over the Verizon center.

I mentioned those, but you're right that they're inconsistent with what I said about people not leaving NW. 2006-ish I think there was a big debate on if they'd be allowed ... they've always seemed like a special case, being part of the arena itself. In any case, billboards are few and far between in NW.

the bad ones are the super bright LED ones that, when suddenly changing to the next advertisement, make me think there's a cop behind me when it's humid [always] at night [half the time]

It's similar in Washington state. Signs on interstates are heavily regulated: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/653A31E9-ADE7-42CA-854E...

There are exceptions - the animated and ugly signs on the I-5 corridor are all on reservation land.

That's amazing, I live in MD near DC and I never thought about this until now. I frequently drive the Beltway and I-95 north to Baltimore and I can't think of any billboards off the top of my head. On the other hand, back in Arkansas (where I'm from) there are quite a few billboards on interstates, usually clustered near exits.

you kind of tune them out. however I have nothing against them provided they are maintained. as kids we used to play games by "collecting" them.

still if they don't require hacking down a trees I have no problem with people using their property this way

I think it says something about the region, about what is important there. A lot are neutral, but some are ridiculous -- liposuction, jesus saves, abortion will take you to hell, matress discounters, private investigator services for when your loved one is cheating on you, snake petting zoo next exit. One can argue, yeah it is free market, if you own the land next to the freeway, you can do whatever. But another argument is it make the whole area look bad.

they actually can take, parts at least, of the sky from me...

There was a giant LCD billboard outside my window in Baltimore. Though it was quite some distance away, at night it shone into my window like a nighttime Sun. Destroyed the otherwise lovely view of Baltimore Penn Station, not to mention required pulling the blinds to be able to sleep.

There aren't many LCD billboards here (Dublin, Ireland). The few that I've seen are reasonably small and generally used for stuff like how many parking spaces are free in the city centre.

But I despise the things, especially if they change what they're displaying (ie movement or flicker). The number of of times that they switched from dark to blindingly-bright almost causing an accident is shocking. I'm surprised that nobody has been seriously injured because of this (that I know of).

I've always quite disliked advertising. I really think that it's a rather insidious force in western culture, and it has always bothered me that it's so aggressively forced into people's day to day lives. It nearly always preys on people's insecurities, is intentionally designed to distract you and is often just an eye sore.

I know it's a little goofy and "edgy", but this article reminded me of a quote by Banksy (a well known graffiti artists):

"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. FUCK THAT. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe then any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs." Banksy

It's overly angsty, but I like the idea that some cities are taking it upon themselves to rid themselves of ads, rather than street artists destroying personal property to accomplish it.

Banky's quote reminds me of the movie "99 francs" (2007), which is I think a brilliant take on the world of advertising.

I forget where I heard it, but I always liked "Advertising is someone taking a dump in your brain."

And the psychologists involved in creating it know exactly how to funnel that refuse into your brain despite all your efforts to the contrary. There is no such thing as “safe contact”.

First time i saw it was on the london underground: https://www.flickr.com/photos/litost/15113770968

http://strikemag.org/advertising-shits-in-your-head/

Yes, i do love Banksy's take on advertising, much as i do Bill Hick's (even more angsty) [1]. Though you do have to wonder, i thought i heard Chomsky say that 1/6 of the world is engaged in Marketing/PR and Advertising which for me boils down to 1/6 of the world playing zero-sum games with each other for your ever dwindling attention span (assuming you actually watch tv and don't install an ad-blocker).

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhjCrL40JIM

I block all ads on my devices, don't watch tv live, etc but I do like outdoor advertising. It's different. All the loathing here is a little surprising.

From guerilla stickers on the bus and posters on construction site fences to entire buildings wrapped, complete with props (like a car hanging from the side) it makes cities look alive. LED signs, especially the larger ones capable of showing graphics, and (my personal favourite) proper, old-school neons make cities look like cities. Billboards cover unfinished structures or designs from architects who should have never been licensed.

Maybe it's all the crappy communist architecture here but even places that evolved more naturally generally gain. Sure, there are some old towns, picturesque villages and so on but that is nowhere near the majority of the space inhabited by people.

In my city, I've only ever seen billboards mounted directly on building walls (there's probably some local law involved but I have no idea what), which means that they're usually covering up a big, drab windowless expanse of brick or concrete. I rather like the result compared to the alternative.

A blank wall is not the only alternative, that space could be used for public art which is much preferable to a visual designed specifically for corporate promulgation.

Depends on the public art: globally, much of that is government propagandizing its subject population (subtly or not) in a way which is no better -- and potentially much worse -- than typical corporate advertising.

Polarized sunglasses sometimes cut out advertisements displayed on screens. http://imgur.com/doze8mP Maybe we can legally enforce all large public ads to be polarized so that those who wish to not see them can put on a pair of glasses.

This reminds me of the movie They Live.

Do that the other way around and I think you have the right idea. Make ads only viewable when wearing special glasses.

Sao Paulo banned outdoor advertising a few years ago and most people there thought it was an improvement. Sorry for linking to Buzzfeed but this is the only link I could find with good before-and-after shots: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/sao-paulo-the-city-with-no-ou...

Thought I was going to like the ad-free, but it turns out I actually like the 'before' shots better. Maybe there's a happy medium?

It would be better if they actually took down the billboards and not just the ads that were hung on them.

I will go a step further: Advertisement in general should be banned.

Yes, I realize how unpopular this is. "Advertising has been around since the dawn of time!" and "Who will know what to buy? Economy would crash." To them I say the following: If you could choose to live your life and never see another advertisement, would you?

If the answer is yes, do you believe it is technologically feasible to live as a human being without ever seeing an advertisement?

If the answer is yes, then we agree.

By the way, if you want or need something, google it or watch a dedicated "ads about X" channel. When was the last time you saw an ad for anything and it changed your life more than marginally?

What is your exact definition of advertising for this universal ban?

Excellent question, and one I haven't thoroughly thought out. Here's a list of what to do in case of an over-advertising societal emergency ( hehe ):

1. No visible ads should ever be seen by someone not consuming media paid for by those ads. Billboards are the prime example. I wasn't watching TV, I was just driving, but suddenly billboards. 2. Next step is to eliminate ads bundled with media (at least in the traditional sense -- I am actually pro-product placement). In other words, you are not legally allowed to interrupt a media broadcast, or print article, with an ad that interrupts the consumer's experience.

This includes online banner ads, gmail text ads, commercials inside of TV shows and radio broadcasts, etc.

"But how will those artists/outlets make their living?" Hell if I know. That shouldn't be my problem.

I know, I know, ads are solving that problem, and you're right. A lot of creative media production/consumption might stop. And God knows I barely get my weekly fix of ingesting TV and radio -- I don't know what I'd do if that stream were suddenly lighter..

So, my gas station sign and blackboard telling what my restaurant is selling tonight are illegal? The movie theater marquee? The simple sign in the window of my store would fall under your rules.

Billboards could be seen as a driver's safety issue as well as landscaping goals, but what about resumes? Or web pages?

Advertising is a fundamental social skill. You advertise yourself to others when you dress up in the morning, so you're seen as superior compared to the slob that doesn't dress up. (or do you go out naked? who knows..) You post here to advertise your ideas.

None of these are free. All this marketing you do costs you one way or another. And you doing too much of some kind of promotion could be seen as excessive pollution.

Really, the only people that complain about advertising are people that are terrible at it. Everybody advertises in one form or another.

I think the opposite should be taught: how to be a better marketer. Everybody should know how to market properly, since everybody does it, but the vast majority just aren't good at it.

Always be closing.

> If you could choose to live your life and never see another advertisement, would you?

I don't particularly value advertising, I can take it or leave it, and mostly ignore it altogether.

>If the answer is yes, then we agree.

Not necessarily. The premise that no one should be allowed to advertise anything smacks a bit of thoughtcrime. How "general" does "advertisement in general" have to be? Only for-profit products and services, or would advertising by non-profit organizations be banned as well? Would no one running for office be allowed to communicate their platform with the public? Would stores have to remove the signs from their storefronts?

>When was the last time you saw an ad for anything and it changed your life more than marginally?

Who said the purpose of advertising was to change your life? If that's your margin for what should be allowed and what not, then most forms of human expression and art have only marginally changed most people's lives. We could dispense almost everything besides popular culture.

>smacks a bit of thoughtcrime

I hadn't considered this. I suppose if there are clear laws about what advertising is and what is banned, and you freely choose to join that group, then we can avoid the thoughtcrime fears.

To specifically address your points, it's hard to say whether storefronts can advertise or not, because they own the building (but someone owns the billboards too). If you twist my arm I'll probably say that "Advertising is okay in a storefront if you're directly able to walk into the store and capitalize on the advert content". Billboards fail this test.

>Would no one running for office be allowed...

Well, in my view, paid placement for those running for office is a horrible symptom of a money-controlled government and media combo. (Un)fortunately that means that "in a world without ads", things like political knowledge and elections would need to have a structure to allow and encourage people to engage with it, which is an entire problem unto itself.

>Who said the purpose of advertising was to change your life?

Let me rephrase: From my perspective, I never benefit from seeing an ad. I know what I want and how to get it already, so I'm hard pressed to give an example of an ad that I derive value from.

>From my perspective, I never benefit from seeing an ad.

Ads would at the very least have made you aware of what choices the market provided. If you have a preference for any one brand of anything over another, chances are advertising played some part in that decision making process. And anyway, even if you were completely brand agnostic, that doesn't mean advertising doesn't have any value for other people as well.

So how do you plan on enforcing this? Revoking the First Amendment?

Corporate speech is not protected under the 1st amendment.

"if you want or need something, google it.."

Ban advertisement and there goes Google.

Google's ads are practically its content. That's a significantly different situation, because Google doesn't really give you ads for things you didn't ask for ads for.

> That's a significantly different situation, because Google doesn't really give you ads for things you didn't ask for ads for.

Well, not really. Google will present ads that are relevant to me, but that doesn't mean that I asked for them.

They're still forced on me unless I start using Google Contributor.

He's referring to the ads on their search engine results page, not their ad network for publishers.

I agree. I already live my life with almost zero advertizing (adblocking + no tv), but I wouldn't mind going from "almost zero" to "absolute zero".

Not so long ago there used to be people here on HN arguing that people actually love ads (patio11 being one of them if I'm not mistaken); those people seem to have disappeared; I wonder what they think about the whole adblocking surge, esp. on iOS.

This is an absurd comment. If my grandma shows me the menu out the front of her favourite restaurant, she should be arrested for peddling advertising? She is doing unpaid advertising for the restaurant.

Advertising is an emotive subject for the HN crowd. Many of the start up can't really survive without resorting to advertising. Most of the ShowHN posts, blogs, tweets etc are some form of advertising. Should these be banned as well?

A personal recommendation isn't advertising.

An impersonal recommendation is.

As to the ShowHN posts, blogs, tweets etc, you actually choose to read the first two, and If I was on Twitter and someone I followed kept advertising at me, I'd stop following them.

The point being argued here is that advertising agencies have, for quite a while, felt that they can push ads at you without you choosing to be advertised at.

Ads are impersonal and unsolicited. I think the last point is key.

Someone flogging their site here is a grey area, of course, but HN is a community and there are guidelines and policies and ultimately it still feels like it belongs to the people who use it.

There are many places in my daily life where I have to go that feel more and more like they belong to advertisers (commerce) instead of the people who live there. At least on the web you can block the ads.

So, let me get this clear. You:

Would could choose to live your life and never see another advertisement.

You do believe it is technologically feasible to live as a human being without ever seeing an advertisement.

But you think the absurdity is due to the enforcement

The only chance of living as a human being without ever seeing/hearing/reading an advertisement is if I relocate to the middle of the Amazon jungle by myself. My point is the this type of enforcement is futile. Advertisement is part of our lives if we want to exchange what I have to what you have.

Goodbye to the entertainment industry, I guess. No more seeing a billboard about an upcoming gig for a standup comedian or a band, teasers for movies, reminders about game time...

So, back to the article. What has happened to those cities?

Well, perhaps event promotion is fine. But I wouldn't shed a tear if product advertising was banned in practically all its forms.

You could argue that movies are products but at least movies have a short lifespan so their promotion is time-limited. I guess you could argue that bands and sporting events and such-like are products too. But I'm okay with "music_performance_x/sporting_event_y/movie_z/theatrical_performance_w is coming to venue_v from time_t1 to time_t2" type promotions :)

There's an advertising hoarding/billboard on top of the opera house in the city where I'm from. For a car company. Been like this for as long as I remember. Permanent blot on the city-scape. Permanent eye-sore. Makes me dislike the opera house as a venue because of it. Yuck.

I disapprove of billboards in general and most forms of outdoor advertising. I'm not against personal recommendations and location-based promotion.

I'm sick of having my attention grabbed while consuming media, while browsing the web, while walking or driving. I install ad-blockers on whichever device I can. I keep TV viewing to a minimum and am continually put off by the sheer volume of ads and their vacuity.

I do listen to the radio a lot, I hate the ads on radio less, you can sort of tune them out. Visual ads I guess I hate the most.

I remember reading once that back in the days of medieval guilds it was illegal to advertise which also included saying “hello” to passersby. This engagement was illegal because the casual conversation could lead to a, “Why don’t you come inside to see what we have to offer.” It seems a bit ridiculous but where would you draw the line of what is considered advertisement?

looking for source

Given the intrusive intensity of the touting that goes on in a Moroccan medina, I can see where such a rule might have come from.

I would say that a ban on all advertising is not possible to implement in reality.

Its probably not the best option either, given some utility of advertising, such as general awareness of products and services, as other posters have stated.

I'd be eager to see much more limitation/regulation on advertising. In many countries (other than the US) there is tremendous regulation around medical devices, services and products - I would welcome the same sorts of regulation being applied to all products and services.

I would love to ban the audiovisual advertising in some Sydney train stations. You used to be able to avoid the static paper billboards but these days they have giant video screens and very loud speakers spread all around the platform so you can't escape hearing the constant pollution from advertisers.

I've started blocking ads on my devices again just so I can have a break from advertising in my life.

Do you make a complaint? That is the only way this stuff will get changed.

I sure did and they responded with "blah blah tickets only cover 30% of the cost of public transport". I've noticed the most obnoxious advertising in public seems to be provided by the company "APN".

Wow. I've always assumed that the US would have the most aggressive and terrible ads, but real-life auto-play videos are a level of evil I hadn't even imagined. I can almost imagine the IAB's explanation of how blocking inter-uterine advertising is "stealing" from someone.

We have some like that in italy as well and they are not that bad. They are not on public spaces so they might be at least regulated. Milano train station has some

However there also are bans on billboard along highways for safety reasons and on some old buildings for decency. That didn't stop renovators working on the Duomo side to make an huge billboard out of their scaffolding, however.

Australians will slap an ad on anything. For example, in the US, football has a ton of advertising all over the place, but the pitch is relatively neutral and there are severe limits on the advertising a player can wear. Not so here in Australia - shove advertising on the hoardings (unsuprising) on the goal posts, on the players, on the grass... and while we're at it, shove advertising on the damn football itself...

I noticed this in Bangkok. They have a nice sky train system that is cheap as shit and seemed to run well (on time, clean, not too crowded at rush times). However, all the cars have constantly looping video ads with audio. I don't know Thai so it was easy for me to tune out, but if I did and had a daily commute on those trains I think it would drive me nuts.

This type of advertising is starting to get traction in Cologne, especially at bus stops and train station. Captive audience, right? It is mostly visual at the moment, however I think the level of consumer backlash will increase once audio starts to appear.

The company I work for rents office space in a tower downtown. The elevators have video screens running advertisement loops. There's no audio, at least, but it's still incredibly irritating to have advertising pushed in my face when I'm just trying to get in or out of the office.

I bought a roll of translucent contact paper which has a diffusing texture and cut it into squares. When I leave work, I take a square with me and cover the screen in the elevator on the way down. The advertisement video becomes unrecognizable under the soft kaleidoscope effect. The building staff is pretty quick about taking them down again, but it still makes me feel good to fight back.

I grew up in Davis, CA, right dab in the middle of the Central Valley in CA. From a purely visual standpoint, billboard ads along those freeways were far more ugly to me. The ugliness of billboard advertising in cities can at least be mitigated by the visual "white noise" around it, whereas billboards in farmland stick out like a sore thumb.

Entire state of Hawaii bans all forms of outdoor ads. Some company tried to sell ads on bikes but were banned. Another company tried to sell aerial ads (banner pulled by small planes) in Hawaii. The company insisted only FAA can ban such ads, even AFTER FAA announced the state can ban aerial ads.

The pilot was actually arrested.

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/26075222/pilot-for-aerial...

I can't imagine Tokyo or Taipei without large billboards and other signage draping over whole buildings.

As others have said, I neither miss them nor dislike them. The one thing I will say is that some do cover over otherwise useful windows --which since covered by advertising become useless and wonder how the inhabitants deal with diminished sunlight --but on the other hand you have places like France where you are (were?) taxed on window count on your flat and so people would board them up, so as not to count as "windows".

Hearing that somewhere there's a tax on how many windows a housing has, I was confused and immediately rushed to search more about this weirdness.

Don't know about correctness, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax says France got this until 1926, so it must be somewhat before the age of modern omnipresent advertising.

I lived with a family there over a summer, not sure if they were just telling me stories or not, but my impression from their story is they boarded up some of their windows to avoid taxes. Maybe it was an excuse, i don't know. A nice tale they liked to tell a foreigner.

In the UK it's fairly common to see windows that have been bricked up on old buildings because of window tax. E.g. http://www.davidwallphoto.com/gallery/Other/London_England/I...

Interesting. Reminds me of Montreal's external stairs[]; oddly I still haven't found a historically backed (citations, research) account of why it has them.

[] e.g. https://chicagomontreal.wordpress.com/2007/05/19/les-escalie...

Around here the ads are printed on scrim, so you still get light.

Picadilly Circus without ads? They're part of the legend now.

Billboard i'm mixed on but I like ads on the subways and was disappointed that some subways don't have them. I've found out about all kinds of events and other things going on from ads on Tokyo subways. And I mean inside the trains, not just in the stations.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but fuck it.

I'd replace billboards with graffiti in Portland any day. I can't stand that billboards are plastered all over the place, but one streak of paint on a building left unscrubbed will result in the person owning that building getting fines from the city. I miss the feel of an real urban environment and having real graffiti on walls and over passes.

I always thought that instituting a similar policy as was done at Five Points in Long Island City in Queens in New York City (a curator who allowed talentedt artists to contiually refresh the walls of an abandoned warehouse with beautiful pieces of art and graffiti) would be awesome for the subways here in NYC.

They're just silver boxes with a tiny US flag as it stands now. They're pretty clean which is nice, they feature advertising although unless a company like Pepsi or Google buys the entire train's advertising and remakes their outsides as well it's generally not particularly intrusive (and to be fair, I found the Fanta train kind of neat).

I'd like to see more art in general although in neighborhoods like Bushwick there is generally a fair amount, and if you keep your eyes peeled there's still quite a fair amount of illicit street art as well. I'm all for it and think there should be a concerted effort to provide and encourage those who'd like to try with places to practice and eventually when they're very good rotating spots around the city.

In a city of 8.5 million in the five boroughs alone how could we not make use of our artists more effectively?

The subway trains used to be covered in graffiti. This changed in the mid 80s.

I suspect the ridership would prefer them blank.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_in_New_York_City#Cl...

I don't know about NYC, but in Paris most of the graffity are ugly, uninspired scribblings like this:

http://iyftc1oqf704bytwz45ub151.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...

http://www.theworldisnotflat.com/files/includes/images/112-2... (at least this one is mildly colorful)

Similar things are scratched on subway windows. It's hard not to wish them gone.

The window etchings are definitely the worst. Thanks for making the window basically unusable, taggers.

edit: here's an example of an nyc subway car from the 70s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City...

For reference, I did not mean unregulated graffiti but, as I mentioned, more along the regulated nature of Five Points NYC which looked like this before it was pointed over a few months ago. [0]

[0] - http://inhabitat.com/nyc/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2012/0...

The two aren't mutually exclusive if both are allowed. See Berlin.

When you say graffiti, do you include the 90% of it that is basically shitty tags?

Um, a lot of advertising is basically shitty tags as well.

I never said one is better than the other. Although I'd prefer shitty 'tags' with content that may be relevant to someone in 0.0001% of the cases over a shitty squiggle on the wall.

Graffiti tags are relevant to someone other than the "tagger" as well.

"Tags can contain subtle and sometimes cryptic messages, and may incorporate the artist's crew initials or other letters."[1]

Just because you and I don't get it, doesn't mean it's content free.

I'm not defending tagging, I'm just decrying most advertising as being equally bad, or worse.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti#Tagging

It makes sense. Advertising is inefficient, wasting people's time and attention for the gain of the advertiser.

Advertisements have long been used as a form of micropayment, to fund first TV shows and now websites, where a monetary payment would be infeasible.

There is no such reason to allow advertising in public property (private property is more complicated, but generally the outward appearance of buildings is considered a public good, and highly regulated). The person viewing the building or billboard is not a party to a transaction, so there is no reason to charge that person a hidden fee for viewing that space. In a way it is the ultimate hidden tax.

Billboards are illegal in four states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont. I would love to form a SuperPAC to work on outlawing them in the other 46 states.

I can't really imagine Tokyo without the billboards. It's too wrapped up in the aesthetic for me. (Not that I think that should override the preferences of whatever people in tokyo want to do.)

Yes... I find the "global movement" label sort of annoying, because it's very much a local issue.

Some places suffer from excessive advertising, other places are energized by it, and the actual contents, presentation, placement, and other details, all of which are intimately tied in with the local culture, matter a great deal as well.

A city like Tokyo would be very, very, different without outdoor advertising, and it's not at all clear that it would be better...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/snogglethorpe/9503120600

> Some places suffer from excessive advertising, other places are energized by it, and the actual contents, presentation, placement, and other details, all of which are intimately tied in with the local culture, matter a great deal as well.

São Paulo was very much like that. Billboards were all over, some were captivating and cool and there were even innovative moving billboards people talked about. Small businesses got creative with theirs and changed their façades in ways that were immediately recognizable. Brazilians are very connected to advertising, so much so that it seeps its way into popular lexicon and shape colloquial language.

Yet, no one misses them now. No one has asked for them to come back. No one will.

Ads are much less an intrinsic cultural phenomenon than you think. We think they matter to culture simply because they exist, but their absence has no important effect on it.

> Ads are much less an intrinsic cultural phenomenon than you think. We think they matter to culture simply because they exist, but their absence has no important effect on it.

The thing is, though, every culture, every city, is different, and you just don't know what the effect will be until you've done it. Maybe Tokyo and other Asian cities would turn out to be the same as São Paulo, but ... maybe they wouldn't.

Because of this, and because it would be a major change, it's not something you want to do unless there's a lot of local support for it; it's something that needs to be locally driven.

Maybe in São Paulo, there was such support, and in the end things worked out, which is great.

But if nobody actually cares, it would be pretty silly to do it simply because of a "global movement."

Billboards are already banned in my state. I'm always struck by how ugly the roads and highways are when I travel to other states.

What state is that?

Unsure where the OP lives, but I know that Vermont doesn't have billboards. I've always wondered how they got around the 1st Amendment.

Not all forms of expression are considered free speech under the protection of the First Amendment. Political speech is the most protected (i.e. "Vote for Bob") and commercial speech, particularly advertising, is some of the least protected.

TFA says "...several US states including Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, and Alaska are billboard-free."

Can we get this on the ballot for California?

I don't mind billboards it's whats on them that's horrible.

I Williamsburg where I live as far as I understand it's not legal to put up posters or billboard posters. Instead people paint the billboards.

Which is pretty cool.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SneJtEDliUk/hqdefault.jpg

Meh... I actually somewhat like billboards, at least when I'm making long drives on the Interstate. They're something to look at that's more interesting than farm combines, cows, empty fields, old barns, etc. I especially like the ones that mark off "landmarks" on certain trips... like when I drive down I-40 from Raleigh towards Wilmington, I know when I start seeing the billboards for boat dealerships and coastal golf plantations, that I'm nearly to Wilmington. They help remind me that I am actually getting somewhere. (Of course, so do mile markers, but counting those gets boring, and they're too frequent).

To be fair, I suppose none of this has much to do with "urban" billboards in particular though... other than to say that outdoor advertising, in general, really doesn't bother me. If anything, cities seem like they ought to have plenty of outside advertising.

I'd much rather they ban obnoxious high powered LED animated displays. At least billboards don't blind you.

Arizona recently outlawed that specific type of billboard.

Driving down the road with a calm green billboard beside you, then BAM it changes to pure white and your night vision is gone.

People dislike pervasive advertising because it becomes clear that you are a pawn in the game. This grates, consciously or subconsciously. The dissonant suspicion that you're a bit-player in a game from which you derive no benefit (while others gain massively) underpins sentiment in a number of recent threads: the role of universities [1], the influence of money on research [2], motor vehicle emissions [3].

We don't like being played for fools, and some of us feel that pervasive advertising does exactly that.

But what of the "benefits" of advertising? Free access to content, for instance.

Well that's only "free as in beer". Ad-funded content on the internet, or in print, confuses "free as in beer" with "free as in speech". It assumes that if I can get something for free, then I'm happy to exchange it for something else; that I'm happy to accept content in exchange for my attention being drawn to goods and services that want my money.

Personally, I'm not happy with that. I never opted-in, and I can't (easily) opt out.

Billboard advertising is irritating because of exactly this reason: no opt out.

People who disagree (or simply don't sympathise) with my sentiments probably feel happy to exchange their liberty for advertising. Fair enough -- I don't wish to persuade or disuade. I would, however, like the capacity to make my own choice.

People who think we do have a choice -- it's very, very limited. It seems that every square inch of publicly-visible surface in major cities could be scooped up by advertisers. Risers on staircases; LED billboards on top of taxis; it's getting ridiculous.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372181

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372446

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10354127

A ban is pretty harsh, how about taxing them heavily enough that they almost disappear? $1MM/billboard/year might be about right.

The reason people are asking for a ban of billboards is that they impose heavy externalities: they're distracting, ugly, et cetera. Capture those externalities rather than ban them.

That's dangerously close to Citizen's United (with unlimited money buying "speech"). No, I prefer an outright ban to an economic hack.

So only the ultra-rich can advertise through them?

Yeah, if we're to be allowing advertising like this then at least smaller businesses should be able to capitalize on it.

99% of billboards are commercial in nature, and are quite expensive even before heavy taxation.

Non-commercial speech is much better served by a human standing by the side of the road holding a placard.

what about a tax of incometimenumber * k ? (Oh wait, what does it mean to talk about a company or collective's income? What if you pay someone else to pay for the billboard? ok nevermind this is probably a terrible idea.)

Ha, as opposed to all the poor people using them now, to talk about what they had for lunch?

The externalities you cite are not anything that causes a financial burden on society. Taxing them to recoup costs would be without basis.

Why do you value attention at $0?

I don't care about the presence of visual advertising, nor do I think cities would be nicer if it was all replaced with reproductions of Renaissance painting. It's not that I think I'm unaffected by advertising, it's just that I don't think my quality of life is affected by it in the least.

But I do care about (actual) environmental pollution, poor economic opportunities in the inner city, overly militaristic and authoritarian policing, mass government surveillance, and the deteriorating public transit infrastructure.

There are passive printed ones. Ugly, but often tolerable and often useful.

Then there are those active ones. Blinking lights, bright to the point of light pollution. I hate those things and they are everywhere now too with more sprouting up all the time.

Count me in for the latter. I'll gladly continue to tolerate the former to get some relief from the active ugly everywhere...

Why is this a negotiation? We don't have to have passive ads to get rid of active ads, we can get rid of both.

Advertisers never asked before barging obnoxiously into our collective consciousness. We don't need to pre-emptively make concessions.

Probably just being pragmatic. The passive ones have been around so long that they will be harder to remove.

I call BS on the ground that things being around longer doesn't necessarily make them harder to remove.

At a minimum it takes $20 worth of paint and an hour to make a passive billboard less obnoxious. This objection is silly.

I bet people would volunteer to do it. :)

My guess is that he more means that they have become entrenched in everyday life and that somehow that will make them harder to get rid of. It's always been this way ...

He also means that not all outdoor advertising is actually a problem. some of it's pleasing some of it is acceptable some of its aesthetic....

Can't say the same for the active ones

Ugh, the act isn't difficult. I mean passing the law in the first place.

Consider what it would actually mean to ban billboards. If they were on government-owned land near a highway, placed at the pleasure of the city or state, then sure, they can (and should) decide to retract that permission; no issue there. On the other hand, if they're on private land, then this suggests that a local government can ban you from posting a sign on your own property that's visible to others. Where does that stop, and on what basis could it occur at all?

Within cities, I've seen signs posted on the sides of buildings, presumably with the full permission of the building owner, because the building happened to provide a convenient space visible to a fair bit of roadway. In residential areas, I've seen people post large signs on the sides or roofs of their houses, easily visible to the road. And that leaves aside the numerous small picket or A-frame signs placed in non-highway areas, again on private property: houses for sale, garage sales, lost pets, etc.

As much as I hate advertising, how exactly would you reconcile such a ban with the first amendment in the US?

With the long-standing understanding that commercial speech is not protected to the same degree as non-commercial speech.

That's a horrible precedent. Most noncommercial advertising is popitical advertising, which is funded by the special interests who will commercially profit from the advertised politicians.

> As much as I hate advertising, how exactly would you reconcile such a ban with the first amendment in the US?

This is a solved problem; SCOTUS has already ruled on various aspects of this[1].

[1] http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/billboards

The U.S. Supreme Court reconciles it by allowing "time, place, and manner" restrictions.

There are many times, places and manners available to speak, other than billboards.

In the city I live they just have a maximum sign size. I forget how big it is, but billboards are definitely not allowed.

>As much as I hate advertising, how exactly would you reconcile such a ban with the first amendment in the US?

This article has a nice explanation about that: http://nsglc.olemiss.edu/SandBar/SandBar5/5.2advertising.htm

Fine by me, but if there does end up being policy, it won't be blanket policy.

Leaf blowers next, please.

Are leaf blowers loud on purpose?

Leaf blowers aka. gasoline is free, infinite and burning it doesn't pollute at all.

What is better, billboards and a bike scheme, or no billboards? We shouldn't ignore that there are real tradeoffs at stake here (even if they don't involve bikes). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vélib%27

I don't understand. I'm sure there are tradeoffs (as with all things) but what do the bikes have to do with it? Was the Véli program funded by billboards?

Yep - details in the wiki link :-)

In fact, we even get a quantification of the potential 'value' of the billboards (to the advertisers, at least) :

JCDecaux paid the scheme's start-up costs, totalling about $140 million, and employs around 285 people full-time to operate the system and repair the bikes on a ten-year contract. The city receives all revenue from the programme, as well as a fee of about $4.3 million a year. In return, JCDecaux receives exclusive control over 1,628 city-owned billboards; the city receives about half of that advertising space at no charge for public-interest advertising

My city doesn't allow billboards in town. Billboards on the highways are also banned in my half of the county. I really appreciate it. Less visually assaulting and you can appreciate the natural and built beauty better.

I was just thinking about this today. My proposal was to replace them with behavioral nudges[0]. Things like "Traveling the speed limit saves X lives and gets you home faster[1]." Basically, they'd be gentle ways of making people more conscious and aware of the road and themselves.

But of course, who gets to pick what the billboards say? And I'm sure nobody would go for it if it were slogans from the State Dept. of Nudges...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)

[1] Real data of course. Citations needed.

Sounds like the BRO (Border Roads Organisation) signs you can see in the Indian Himalayas. These are some of the scariest (and most dangerous) roads in the world, so it's a special sort of relief whenever you come across their subtle life-saving jokes:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=bro+signs

Wow, those are awesome!

The humorous "be careful or you could die" poems are also a feature of some bike events I've done, like the Marin Century. They particularly urge people not to descend mountainous curves faster than they can keep control. Which I guess is exactly what BRO is doing with its signs.

What is "MR" in those signs.

Tangent: Mozilla just changed the name of its new brotli feature tag, because the "BRO" abbreviation was deemed sexist.

(My assumption being that English is a 2nd language for you...) If you're referring to the "Mr. Late" and "late Mr.", it's a play on words. "Mr." being a male title in English, and the dead are sometimes referred to as "the late Mr. Smith" (why is a lifelong mystery to me). So it's better to be the guy that's late ("Mr. Late") rather than speed down a dangerous road and be dead ("the late Mr. Smith").

Anti-speeding PSA billboards are actually a thing on motorways in most(?) of Europe. Not so much in cities but most people speeding in cities are either driving at much lower speeds or criminally negligent (e.g. illegal street racing) in the first place.

Seattle has these signs everywhere. Not on billboards, but on ground signs around bike trails.

Sounds good to me. The amount of visual pollution created by advertising is mind boggling in some places.

Another movement I'd like to see in the US is to take telephone poles down and put all that wiring under the ground. Would generate jobs and make the country much prettier.

Telephone wires are already largely underground. What you see are power transmission lines. That's why the transformers are up there, too.

I can only imagine it would be rather hazardous to have power transmission lines buried underground, especially in a region prone to any kind of flooding or even heavy, ground-saturating rains.

Unlikely. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergrounding:

"All low and medium voltage electrical power (<50 kV) in the Netherlands is now supplied underground."

That is a country where, in half the country, with way over half the population, you hit water year round after digging less than a meter.

No, it is just that overhead wires are older and cheaper. New wiring is underground.

It would be crazy expensive to do it all at once in the US. I'm from the north east and almost everywhere is above ground on poles. Only the newer developments are moving to underground.

They don't have to it all at once, they can spread it over a year or two.

it provides little gain, and a year or two is very ambitious. more like 10 or 20. plus we don't have the resources to replace the stuff that needs replaced. let alone to move it all underground.

Obviously art is subjective, though in my opinion the mural that Foster The People commissioned in LA last year to promote their new album managed to strike a fantastic balance between art and commerce:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermodel_%28album%29#/media/...

If you want to know what such a world is like, go to Cuba. It's a beautiful thing.

If you don't mind the endemic poverty and lack of basic human rights, of course.

I'm not sure if you only visited the touristic areas or are being sarcastic.

I assumed he was being sarcastic and trying to imply that banning advertising will suddenly make us all communists.

A more serious and relevant example would be São Paulo. They completely banned outdoor advertising and the world didn't fall apart. Seems like they new relaxed the ban enough to allow art.

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681353/advertising-comes-back-t...

What about how, by design, billboards distract drivers' eyes from the road? The article (and comments here so far) have not mentioned this.

And then if an accident occurs because a driver was distracted by a billboard, we blame the driver for not paying attention? The odds are increasingly stacked against them.

PIRC and WWF produced an interesting report on this topic a few years ago: http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/think_of_me_as_evil.pdf

I live in L.A. and Sunset Blvd would be so very dull without oversized billboards featuring super models, new albums and the latest movies.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-11/west-holly...

Los Angeles: Boring without advertising.™

sunset blvd is sort of like the west coast equivalent of times square, which would also be pretty boring without the ads.

It feels like most the billboards here are for movies and tv shows, so they don't seem so bad somehow.

I suspect there are more people who sell and use web-ads than billboard ads here.

In fact, I'm bet a few people are wondering when they can all be replaced with giant QR codes, so they can automatically be replaced by something a little more "targeted".

I wonder what impact self driving cars will have on billboards in the future...

I do often see PSA's from, say, the Ad Council, on billboards. I don't really think these should go away, even perhaps if it means living with the obnoxiousness of commercial billboards.

How interesting that people within the afk space are beginning to dislike advertisements, while people in the digital space have been actively removing it for a while.

Does u-block allow for extensions?

I am living in Bangalore, India. Good to know its already implemented in Chennai. I hope its soon implemented in Bangalore and other cities.

I live in a capital city with only one billboard. The cancel has a firm policy against any visual pollution. On one hand I hate that graffiti rarely lasts more than 24 hrs anywhere in this town. On the other, the lack of advertising is really nice. Once I saw a mcdeath logo go up on the back of a traffic sign so I called it in and it was gone the next day.

I'm all for it. Imagine Times Square illuminated by art instead of ads.

I want billboards. Possibly more than now. However, like in Sao Paulo and France in the article, I would like to have them show arts, culture, interesting information. Not car ads.

Microsoft HoloLens and adblocking. Hmmmm....

Where do I sign?

often, billboards are ugly, but all them give "life" to our streets, so, I don't agree with the ban kapipal.com/newspace

I am seriously confused by all the good news recently.

First U.S. decides to let nearly 6,000 drug offenders out of federal prison early. [1]

Then I hear CNN (!) was apparently talking about the rise of city-states. [2]

And now this about cities considering or already actively banning billboard ads??

So much sanity and good news in a short time period makes me almost suspicious.

[1] https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-is-going-to-let-nearly-...

[2] https://twitter.com/digitsu/status/653221388249993216

Downvoted, that's more like it. :)

Next up: the US announces it will give refuge to the inhabitants of Gitmo ... drumroll... themselves!

São Paulo is filled with graffiti instead of ads. Not art, just tags, as most major Brazilian cities. It's not visually clean by any standards.

That said, the article is an ad in itself - "began to suffocate under a smog of signage", gimme a break. I find it funny how anti-ad folk often advertise massively against ads.

> Safe for eyeballs ... in a single year, São Paulo removed 15,000 billboards, many of which were replaced by street art.

so they replaced commercial crap by street art shite that never changes, and that is supposed to be an improvement for the eyes ? Seriously ?

I dunno, I'll take mediocre street art over high quality "Buy Samsung!" posters any day, but that is just me.

City ads represent fashion, ongoing trends and so on. Without it, it looks like a dying place to me, a museum.

Of course, it depends how bad ads are in your country.

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