Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)

amusingplanet.com

688 pointspmoriarty413 comments

Some additions:

Stores also cannot use their full façade for advertising. Branding colors and details are OK, but logos cannot be too large (don't know the exact rule). The law is picky.

Some stores cheat by having a glass façade, and using LEDs inside that glass. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/CLdUD1C

Since this law was adopted, there's been an increase in full building graffiti, which is not banned. Now 10 years later, it is more likely to see one of these nowadays than an empty outdoor frame https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sao+paulo+full+buil...

Finally someone who is not spitting things they have no clue about

Many of those full building graffiti are the beautiful work of renowned street artist Eduardo Kobra

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

I love SP street art but I think most of Kobra's stuff is terrible. I did see one recently that I liked. Is it art? Yeah. Is it fine art? Yeah probably. Just not my cup of tea.

Can you say more about what you don't like about Kobra's art vs. other street art? I'm curious, not familiar with the genre!

One of his signature motifs is to put a checkerboard in everything. Do an image search for "kobra checkerboard" and you'll see. I find it a bit cliché and it doesn't appeal to my asthetics.

The full building murals today are some of the most sought after attractions of SP, they look absolutely stunning https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/30/world/americas/brazil-sao...

> Since this law was adopted, there's been an increase in full building graffiti, which is not banned. Now 10 years later, it is more likely to see one of these nowadays than an empty outdoor frame

Nearly all of these look like murals, not graffiti (these are distinct forms of street art). Regardless, those photos are beautiful and I'd love to have those instead of billboards in my city.

Neither murals nor graffiti is art. None of those would have been accepted in any gallery some 30~40 years ago when standards were higher and the world didn't suffer from the high number of grown-up men who are hooked up on comic books and animated cartoons it suffers through today. A lot of it is just vandalism. None of it seems to be made by or for adults. 99% looks like it's made by some comic book fan on LSD. Always the same. Always the same. Always the same. Always the same. Always the same. That's just how shallow they are. I've heard stories of places being pressured or even threatened to cede their spaces to accommodate this form of "art." It's awful all around. Real art is deep, meaningful, timeless and doesn't need to be imposed.

I'm not sure if this kind of parody is against HN guidelines per se, but it's less common here than, say, Twitter, and as such is usually customary to add some indicator like "/s" or similar.

Just so you know, the exact same thing was said about pretty much every major art movement over the past century and beyond. When you say, "None of it seems to be made by or for adults", the same was basically said of Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol and Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. :)

Those examples have some similarities, but - while they had their contemporary detractors - they were, for the most part, formally educated participants in the art establishment of their times.

I'd liken it more to the works of Henri Rousseau or even maybe the French Decadent movement.

The funny thing is, the classical art of Greece, probably looked much different than how we think about it. It was much more colorful and vibrant, it's just that all the pigment washed away. https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/l...

Cities adding art back onto the walls, is probably closer to how the ancient Greek cities actually looked. Our classical architectural view of pristine white walls is wrong. https://exploringgreece.tv/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/parthe...

I refuse to believe that the people who made some of the best ancient statues had an artistic sense of a 5-year old when it came to color...

Obviously ancient status were colored but probably in a much nicer way. No way something like:

https://static.frieze.com/files/inline-images/web-cg-h-102-a...

could be even close to the original ( considering that the Romans generally managed to somehow get skin tones more or less right in the few paintings that survived)

The problem is they do careful analysis of statues and find evidence of pigmentation, but obviously they're only looking at the remnants of the base coat and don't see any of the careful detailing that almost certainly went towards making these statues look very lifelike (judging by the realistic quality of the sculpture itself.) And so the recreations look flat and uncanny because they're essentially unfinished.

I wonder if another problem might be fashion trends. Sometimes bright, contrasting, colours are in style and feel normal. https://www.apparelsearch.com/terms/images/cher-aerobics-leg...

I don't think the bright colors are the problem, just the opposite actually.

Particularly in this example: https://static.frieze.com/files/inline-images/web-cg-h-102-a...

The bright clothes are fine, but his skin is awful. It's flat and lifeless, like a cold corpse drained of blood. It looks like they put the primer coat on then left it unfinished; I think that's literally what they did. Maybe this look is what they were originally going for, but I don't think so. Look at the detail on that guy's knees, they look just like real knees. I don't believe the original artists went through so much trouble to sculpt hyper-realistic knees then let some intern half-ass the paint job.

I think it's also current museum aesthetics where they do enough to give you the idea but don't want to take any artistic license beyond what's provable. So the painting could have been more subtle especially for those close to the viewer

Maybe you should reevaluate where your own aesthetic comes from https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/04/27/whitewas...

I think the reproductions suffer a bit because the distance these statues were from a viewer varied -- but just like murals

> Maybe you should reevaluate where your own

No, I don’t think so.

The way some of these “reconstructions” look is just plain awful. And based on the surviving examples of frescoes and paintings they would look as just awful the the Romans.

> I think the reproductions suffer a bit because

They suffer because there is no shading for one thing. The skin and hair especially just look awful. It has nothing to do with the bright colors (I get that part).

Indeed, worse than that the myth of white statues as an aesthetic was created by racist euronationalists in the late 19th c. https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/04/27/whitewas...

That's not a very good argument. Putting aside the present topic, this argument doesn't address the substance and instead lazily falls back on an association fallacy: "if people said P about A in the past and we no longer think that, and you say P about B, then you must also be wrong". It's the same kind of progressive argument people use when they categorically dismiss any criticism of new music as just the same old hate old people always have for "new things". Boring, dismissive, unthinking, and refuses to consider that there might be valid criticism apart from the crankiness that does, in fact, exist. It assumes as a premise that art cannot be bad, or that it cannot be an expression of cultural decadence, whereas I claim that it can.

And I would actually claim that most Warhol is trash, good swaths of Dali worthless, and both Matisse and Gaugin mixed bags.

> It assumes the premise that art cannot be bad

The difference is that pieces of art can be bad, but you’re going to have to do a lot more work to dismiss an entire set of categories of art. Even the examples of Warhol, Dali, etc. are individual artists, not an entire medium.

Imagine arguing that there are exactly zero good pieces of software written in JavaScript bc JavaScript is a bad language.

When people say "it's bad so it's not art", they're challenging artistic value, essentially the same as what any art critic does. A cultured art critic who says "this is kitsch crap" and an unsophisticated man off the street who says "this crap isn't art" are both people expressing their dissatisfaction with the work. One expresses his thoughts in a way that is 'technically wrong' if taken literally and the other expresses his thoughts with jargon that is inaccessible to the general public.

> None of those would have been accepted in any gallery some 30~40 years ag

Graffiti started showing up in art galleries 30-40 years ago.

There is a Banksy one on now in Glasgow.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rare-banksy-solo-e...

You're uninformed about it all being the same. The graffiti in São Paulo has a vast range of styles. I have hundreds of photos I've taken myself. This fine art I can see outdoors is one of the most pleasurable things about living or visiting there.

I studied art in university, am an artist myself, and visit major exhibitions around the world on a regular basis. Much graffiti is indeed valid art.

Art that isn't made to make the lives of those around it better, is dead, or worse. As someone living in São Paulo, those murals are one of my favorite aspect of the city. I love them. Not that it really matters, but those large commissioned artworks are very much how Da Vinci or Michelangelo worked. I have little doubt they would be proud and amazed.

They also reflect the sensibilities and thoughts of the artist in relation to the city and its inhabitants. I love em' :)

Good art sucks. Interpret that however you want

Real art is deep, meaningful, largely in the eye of beholder, and far from timeless but always culturally interconnected.

I genuinely don't know if you're trolling, or actually believe what you wrote? If the latter, I'd love to hear more. I vehemently disagree with everything you said but that's no reason to downvote - we learn more from opposing viewpoints, especially if new and hard to comprehend.

As someone who graduated from an art school, let me be another voice here to say that you're absolutely wrong. Art is about intentionality and process. Duchamp and Wahrol are prime mainstream examples of that. The intervention in urban equipment is art. Making it yours, sharing it with the world, the dialectical dialogue between the mural and the surrounding cityscape, there is so much to unpack here.

Also, comic books are art as well. Sequential art has been recognised by everyone with an ounce of heart and one of the main mediums for storytelling. Some even been calling it the ninth art just like cinema is the seventh. It is a medium unlike painting, cinema, or photography, one in which you can do things you can't in any other medium.

I recommend checking out the following books if you want to move past your misconceptions:

- The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin. - Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud. - Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner.

All those books are quite approachable and engaging reads.

Why does it matter if we call it art or not?

Because many people will refuse to call an art piece art in an effort to dismiss that work as valid. Not calling it art is a form of gatekeeping.

Thou art irony

I think your example of Duchamp is incorrect (and I’m an engineer not an arts graduate) Attempting to cast yourself. as knowledgeable and then using Duchamp without understanding his history shows lack of taste IMHO.

Duchamp stole his signature artwork from Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven:

  a 1917 letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, Susanne, translated: “One of my female friends who had adopted the masculine pseudonym Richard Mutt sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.”
  R Mutt was identified as an artist living in Philadelphia, which is where she was living at the time. 
  Duchamp said he had purchased the urinal from JL Mott Ironworks Company, adapting Mutt from Mott, but the company did not manufacture the model in the photograph
  the handwriting on the urinal matches the handwriting Von Freytag-Loringhoven used for her poems.

I recommend you avoid presenting yourself as an expert on art : or at least try to become more knowledgeable. Second-hand information from experts is often misinformation. Of course: “great artists steal” just usually not quite so literally.

First: I never called myself an expert. I said I was an arts undergrad, there is a difference there.

Second, I never mentioned that urinal. I mentioned two artists that had intentionality and process tied to their work. Duchamp is not just that urinal, please check his other work and the movements he was associated with to learn a bit more about what mechanisms gives the art piece and aura of art. In my opinion, that understanding is quite essential to appreciate certain movements such as Dadaism.

Also, I never mentioned anything about "artists" and stealing.

All I did was name check two very well-known artists whose work is part of a larger artistic revolution, one that precipitated a discussion and a new understanding about "what is art".

I also offered some book references so that instead of accepting my opinion, the OP or anyone else can go read and form their own opinion. Because instead of being an expert, I gave references to the experts.

As usual, gotta trust an engineer to arrive full of opinions and misconceptions about a field that they're clearly not well versed and attempt to put someone down.

Duchamp and not Basquiat in this context is rather dubious to say the least.

I don't want a neo-Duchamp putting a port-a-potty in my neighborhood and spitefully calling it art.

Good lord, there is so much more to Duchamp than that urinal. Also, it misses then point of my comment in its entirety. It is about what intention is behind the work, not about the piece themself (a bit more complex than that but that is enough for a small comment).

I don't care what the intention behind ugly art is, because ugly art isn't something I want to see regardless of the intention.

well, as long as you understand that ugly is not an absolute and that what you find ugly might actually be awesome for someone else.

So what was the intent behind the Urinal?

Your choice to smush intent and Duchamp is weird.

What intent is in a stolen piece of work presented fraudulently throughout Duchamp's life as his own, and still widely treated as iconic and used as an example of a movement. What value the criticism built upon a lie? There is plenty of unintentional art in this story!

> None of those would have been accepted in any gallery some 30~40 years ago when standards were higher

It's funny to see someone wax pretentious about standards in art when they obviously haven't heard of, say, Diego Rivera, and don't know that Haring's heyday was "30 to 40 years ago".

You should have kept your mouth shut instead of embarrassing yourself.

So there’s no art in comics or animation either? Pixar’s Best Picture-nominated “Up” is too lowbrow, shallow, and lacking of artistic quality?

> these are distinct forms of street art

Can you elaborate on this? I've always thought a mural was just a type of graffiti?

Yes grandparent is splitting hairs. Mural means wall, graffiti means tracing or drawing. There's probably a few taxonomies out there but they will be arbitrary and the whole point of street art is to get around gatekeepers.

ehh not really, throw ups are different from tags which are different from murals - muruals often aren’t graffiti because they require more time, which tends to require permission

Basically the difference is that the mural is bigger and probably has the building owners consent, but in terms of aesthetics it's a tossup. Most murals seem to be abstract visual noise that is scarcely better than average graffiti, and on the other hand some rare graffiti is far above average. And then there are the murals with a message, which often end up looking like Soviet propaganda posters (or in fact murals, since the Soviets were big on murals too). Huge images of some local leaders linking arms with workers to deliver symbolic world peace or some tacky saccharine sweet bs like that.

If I'm being honest, a lot of these Soviet murals actually demonstrate superior technical skill and aesthetic understanding than the murals in my town (many of which aren't worthy to hang on a mother's refrigerator): https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/10/the-forgotten-soviet-e...

Throw ups are different to tags but I still don't think that explains how graffiti is distinct from mural, unless you're trying to say all graffiti is unsanctioned, which... isn't really the case.

yeah not all graffiti is unsanctioned, but I think it’s often about style? I wouldn’t consider most murals in my area graffiti

> Can you elaborate on this? I've always thought a mural was just a type of graffiti?

According to Wikipedia it’s the opposite: a graffiti is a type of mural [1]. However at least in French and in Italian a graffiti is an inscription on a wall, often done as vandalism, while a mural(e) is more like a fresco which often takes the full wall.

As a French, for me this [2] is a mural and this [3] is a graffiti.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mural

[2]: https://www.parisenigmes.com/PICTURE/street-art-paris13.webp

[3]: https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/lep...

Weird, in Brazil is the other way! Graffiti in Brazil is art, for vandalism we call pixação.

Is graffiti always text? I know it's common but I didn't realise it was a rule.

What about something like this https://maps.app.goo.gl/oCbe2DZW1vqyXJ2h9?g_st=ic

This thread is showing how words have different meanings in different places. In my slice of the world, graffiti is not limited to text. A tag is though.

They're both graffiti. Graffiti can be beautiful or art to some people or not be. But if the person did not build the building with that mural/art on it to start, or did it at a later date as part of the same project, it is graffiti in the modern sense of the word (in English).

People thinking it is art, or thinking it is beautiful does not remove the aspect of it being graffiti. Even a large advertisement would be graffiti.

I would hate to live in a building that had a huge mural go up after I moved in personally, but that also doesn't make it graffiti or not.

In Germany, graffiti is the overarching category and the vandalism are called "tags"

That’s also how it’s referred to here in the Midwestern US

It's the same in France actually

My litmus test is "was it asked to be put there". I live in Denver and after we won the NBA finals a local artist put this up this[1] mural and it was coordinated with the business + building owner + local govt. I would call that a "mural" versus "graffiti". Now if you go out to our "warehouse district" you will often see "graffiti", that is stuff the owners never asked for, some kids just showed up and tagged the building in the middle of the night.

[1]: https://media1.westword.com/den/imager/u/magnum/17103041/ima...

Graffiti is usually tagging [1], but includes other forms of (non-sanctioned) random acts of art and, especially, writing.

Wall murals are usually sanctioned – either there is permission granted to paint a wall, or, often, they are commissioned. Usually there is only one artist or company that makes the "complete" mural, with much planning and coordination, and no intervention by casual passerby.

In the source below, you can see that though it is wall, it is being tagged (not a mural) with various ad-hoc contributors.

Some would argue that a wall that is purposefully provided as a space for passerby to add their contributions (to add "graffiti" to it) makes it not graffiti at all, since that goes against its anti-institutional spirit. In that view, commissioned wall murals by an artist are distinctly not grafitti.

1 – https://www.britannica.com/topic/tagging

This seems like a separation that's a little too clean to fit reality. Does that hard line of distinction really exist?

Certainly there are clear examples on both ends of the spectrum, but here's some closer to the boundaries of your definition from my own hometown - I wonder how you'd classify these:

1. This street of sanctioned individual pieces, mostly "tags" but elaborate full-wall pieces each by an individual tagger: https://maps.app.goo.gl/byceFqUQSaTeun2q6?g_st=ic

2. This unsanctioned (currently in court) full-building mural done by an ad agency: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/73/60/f6/7360f64042a71f241fe8...

---

(personally I'd call the sanctioned tags both murals and graffiti, and definitely classify them as art, but I'd only call the ad agency piece a mural; neither graffiti nor art - though I fully acknowledge that last judgement is a subjective one and not something universal)

I'd use my "especially writing" heuristic here to separate the two – graffiti comes from the Greek root "graph" (to write), right? So even though 1 contains elaborate and beautiful full wall pieces, I would still consider them "graffiti," especially because they seem spontaneous productions by citizens (taking back the architecture of the city into their own hands!) and not commissioned by an agency.

The involvement of the ad agency (i.e., an institution of some sort) and lack of writing would make 2 certainly not graffiti, despite the subversion of the law. We could call it vandalism, actually. Beautiful vandalism in the form of a wall mural!

The trickiest to define is something like the Berlin wall – if I'm not mistaken, the city gave permission for anyone to come draw/tag to their hearts' content all along portions of a wall. Does permission make it not graffiti? Some would say yes. Personally, I disagree – if it is writing rather than drawings, I still consider it graffiti, minus any perjorative associations of the word. Grafitti is an art form too.

Graffiti is done without permission, by definition.

Murals can be without permission as well - a work can be both things. And graffiti can be done with permission - in general, folks are wanting a "street art" style work.

Are building murals not associated with ghettos outside the US? Where I live you know if you start seeing big faces on walls you're in the bad part of town and need to be careful.

I live in NYC and I associate murals with mainly industrials districts. There are plenty of murals everywhere but if I hit a block that's covered in them I think industrial which I don't associate as a bad part of the city.

Not in Chicago. The murals throughout the city are beautiful and are very welcome art installations.

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/mural_re...

Most of those look quite a bit nicer than ours. I especially like the "lucky wall" one.

I suppose it's because residents in the nicer parts of town are very active about not changing the "neighbourhood character" and consequently murals are not permitted unless they're already there.

In Montreal they are celebrated: we have a mural festival!

And they mostly appear in or near the downtown area.

Where I live in the United States we have many on the sides of buildings, definitely not associated with "ghettos" here.

In Vancouver we have a mural festival and walking tours of murals with backgrounds on the works and artists. This happens in several neighbourhoods.

https://vanmuralfest.ca/mural-tours

In Houston there's enough for a website dedicated to them [0], and they aren't at all associated with "dangerous" parts of town. If anything, if you see one going up, you can bet your property taxes are, too.

[0] https://houstonmuralmap.com/

On the East Coast of the US, I associate large graffiti murals with gentrification, particularly of industrial/formerly industrial neighborhoods. In many (but not all) instances, murals are commissioned or otherwise encouraged as part of "beautifying" those areas.

In San Francisco there are building murals throughout the city. I quite like them!

I'm not sure if there are murals in the richest neighborhoods (Pacific Heights) or the less dense, more suburban neighborhoods (Sunset, Richmond), but there are murals throughout the dense neighborhoods near downtown. (SOMA, the Mission, Haight, etc.)

A lot of murals in some towns in North Carolina too ... here's a sampling from Winston-Salem ... https://www.verbalgoldblog.com/best-wall-murals-instagrammab...

A local store or library decorated with a mural of some idyllic park scene is almost cliche here in Canada. Typical is a giant yellow sun and, yes, the obligatory detached smiling heads. I've seen abstract geometric patterns more often lately. Often done by schoolchildren, or for some community social event. Sometimes commissioned with actual artists. Bridges and underpasses, particularly pedestrian ones, are also candidates for murals. Quite a few like that in Toronto.

It’s not associated with ghettos in the US, either, almost by definition. A mural implies a property owner has usually paid and maintains a piece of art for public consumption. For the mural to survive (no actual graffiti over it) means the community respects the investment and property, too. Ghettos are areas of abject poverty where that sort of community for structural reasons isn’t happening.

Just because the suburbs don’t have murals doesn’t mean that urban areas that do are dangerous.

I have lived in the US (on and off) for decades and have not made this association you describe. It's also common in many European cities, often in middle class neighborhoods.

Palo Alto has street murals scattered around the city in commercial districts and some private homes.

> Are building murals not associated with ghettos outside the US?

It's two things in the US. It's ghettos, as you say. But more and more it's whites who want to signal that they're "cool" with minority culture, and you see them in economically well off areas.

Almost all of the city of São Paulo is covered in gang graffiti, buildings covered in these rune-like tags from top to bottom. It is extremely ugly, and of course also unsettling since it is a signal on who runs the city.

Actually it is the opposite, it is a scream from those who don't really have a voice in the city.

Really recommend watching the documentary PIXO, you can find the full doc in YouTube with english subtitles.

[edit: suggesting the documentary]

Having lived in São Paulo most of my life, I'd like to corroborate this. The groups tagging buildings generally have nothing to do with (other) crimes. The only unsettling part was the time I saw that that the wall below my 6th floor bedroom window had been tagged overnight

> Actually it is the opposite, it is a scream from those who don't really have a voice in the city.

It is most certainly not. This romanticizing of criminals and vandals is not any kind of compassion. Who would like their neighborhood or home turned into a hell scape?

Edit: To those who downvoted my comment, go look up some pictures of how these neighborhoods look when they are all covered in tags. Ask yourself if you would want to live there? But of course it's easy to be such a benevolent and tolerant hacker, when you don't have to live it yourself...

Well. "O buraco é mais embaixo". But by the tone of your message I can see there is no point in trying to develop this any further.

lá ele irmão

Personally I pretty much always prefer to see graffiti over plain grey concrete, even when it is just simple tags.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Sao_vito...

Would you like to look at only buildings and every surface around you looking like the picture above and worse for hours every day for your commute. Because that is the reality for millions of people. Desolation and decay might be a cool photo for traveling hackers to put on their Instagram, but I think it is different when you have to live in it.

I have never heard anybody from São Paulo talk about the delights of this grafitti covering the whole city. I guess they're just uncultured?

Honestly, does unsolicited ink even rank in the major issues faced by São Paulo, or any major city?

Murder is the major issue in São Paulo. Does that mean nothing else should be discussed or commented upon?

Those aren’t gang tags at all, they’re quick and easy graffiti (albeit illegal in most cases) that is done by people trying to either fit in or showcase themselves. Most of the murals shown in this thread that are considered “art” were painted by artists who started off doing the Pixo letters. While much loathed and a bit of an eyesore they’re the single most unique thing about the city, nowhere else in the world or even Brazil has anything like it.

The only gang graffiti you’ll see in São Paulo are written in plain letters or numbers (“PCC” or 1533), nothing like Pixo.

In Brazil, grafite means respectable street art such as murals. For vandalism we say pichação, or pixo.

Now I remember why I used to come here thank you

Full-building graphite are one of the hallmarks of downtown Belo Horizonte. I remember as a kid seeing some of those impressive, surrealistic images. They made a big impression on me, I wish I knew who the artist(s) was/were.

I particularly loved the art around Praça de Peixe and Carlos Prates. The stuff around Savassi was bigger and more impressive, but somehow more professional and generic.

Same! You are probably thinking about the murals by Hugues Desmaziéres (and Douglas Melo) [1][2]. Seeing those murals in the 90s really excited my imagination as a kid.

[1] https://repositorio.ufmg.br/handle/1843/35311

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQTui7ZdbJQ

Downtown BH and around Savassi iirc have very good murals. I like seeing them instead of the pixo tags we see at the top of the buildings. Honestly, I wouldn't mind pixo that much if it was colorful, like someone posted a picture from the Paris metro. It's still illegal, but at least it's not just a dick swinging contest seeing who's going higher, it looks nicer.

> Honestly, I wouldn't mind pixo that much if it was colorful, like someone posted a picture from the Paris metro.

Indeed. Most of the markings are low-effort territory marking. At least they aren't peeing on walls.

Maybe if we added arts to the basic school curriculum some aesthetic sensitivity could be imparted in them so they'd feel pressed to better consider what they are going to paint.

Those full building works are awesome. I question whether the lack of billboards is truly related to the rise of these murals. They are on MASSIVE canvases that surely were not previously covered in totality by an ad. If this rise in these works is a response/reaction to the lack of color, then the quote in the article that “Advertising is both an art form and, when you're in your car or alone on foot, a form of entertainment that helps relieve solitude and boredom” has some validity. I would much prefer a ban on ads, but I question that correlation on these two.

We have murals and billboards in our town. The mutual started showing up in force with the rise of instagram.

Ah, many of those builing façades that are now murals were in fact painted ads some 70 years ago.

https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2018/09/15/anuncio...

> Since this law was adopted, there's been an increase in full building graffiti

And good art makes people come inside. Not advertisement indeed.

And what about advertisement that is good art?

Some ads are artistically very good and only the context causes us to react negatively, we don't appreciate it fully because we know it is here to influence us.

It is the same idea with graffiti. Some of it is really good, but we won't appreciate it if we tie it to vandalism and criminality.

Most of those murals look much worse than advertisements to me. I guess there's less incentive to maintain them.

Well, good thing art is subjective. To me these are leagues better than ads and they bring social commentary and inspiration far more than any ad. It's one of the few things I am proud of as someone who lived in the state of Sao Paulo for a good chunk of my life.

No, they don't bring any social commentary, they only bring sycophancy. As soon as you criticize it you are moderated and silenced into oblivion. Your "social commentary" can only go in the way they demand that it go.

Can you give an example of good art and of valid artistic social commentary?

You have said what you think isn’t valid or good and seeing something you value would be interesting.

> they bring social commentary

In other words, they're propaganda. At least in the case of graffiti with social commentary, anybody can go out there and put their message up. Murals with social messages are propaganda sanctioned by the property owner, or even commissioned by the government, making it establishmentarian propaganda that pretends to be transgressive by adopting the superficial form of unsanctioned graffiti. Such murals are tacky and inauthentic; scrawled gang signs have more soul.

Right, art can only be anti-establishment...

Might as well cancel the law and put up Wal-mart signs.

I assert that establishmentarian propaganda is soulless trash, and you conclude that I want more corporate propaganda? You seem very confused.

So you've established yourself as the arbiter of what is both establishment and propaganda... Did you become the thing you hate?

This may be a case where you spend so much time trying to be contrarian and not asking "Would getting what I want actually improve anything in the world".

This really stretches the meaning of propaganda almost to the point where it's synonymous with individual speech. Propaganda is systematic opinion making where some group does things like call tons of people or distribute tons of leaflets, or astroturf internet forums. It's not the same thing as putting up a mural on a building you own, or a sign in your yard.

I think a mural could be part of a propaganda campaign, but I don't think by themselves they merit the categorization.

> it's synonymous with individual speech.

Graffiti is individual speech, murals commissioned by the local government to glorify itself are not.

Are these the majority of the murals and are they clearly Pro-government? I can't even find one example of what you might be talking about. This seems like a total non-issue.

Can't we replace ad banners on websites with free space to collectively draw on Q.Q

.. we probably can't, it is too easy to automate it, and too hard to prevent that. But would be fun.

That would create a new job market - drawing ads

A long time ago back when browsers supported Java applets you could include applets in your banner ads. I worked at a place that had a product that included a chat service. The chat client was in Java and would have been quick and easy to convert into an applet.

I tried to convince the person in charge of our advertising that we should include such a chat applet in one of our banner ads, which would put everyone currently viewing the banner into an anonymous chatroom. Unfortunately he wouldn't go for it.

Oh man... there was some extension or app or something way back when that turned every web page into its own dedicated chatroom/forum.

Does anyone remember this? It has to have been 20 years ago at this point (yikes!)

I'm reminded of Valparaiso, Chile. Beautiful place.

https://www.google.com/search?q=valparaiso+chile+street+art&...

that's one thing I love about living in Jersey City, NJ. there's a thriving street art program: https://www.jcmap.org/

Agree, having visited São Paulo a few weeks back, downtown seems awash in graffiti to replace the advertising ban. Perhaps the law of unintended consequences…..

I'm interested to know what city is at the other end of the spectrum.

From my own travels, one city I would submit as a candidate would be Bangkok. In fact, I control-F'd Bangkok and no one has mentioned it yet.

As soon as you leave Savarnabhumi Airport, you are bombarded with maybe 15 to 20 billboards within just a few metres from each other, back to back. It was truly a wild thing to experience at first. All the billboards had the same ad, too.

Truly a thing to behold.

Some stores also have just ignored the law and brough back gigantic signs (which I assume they get away with by bribing officials)

It's kinda interesting that you, a user, had to bring this to our attention. The article linked by OP only focused on the empty spaces left behind by billboards.

Of course art can take the place of billboards, but clearly that's not what this article aims to convey.

That's not the impression I got. Those empty billboards are, from my perspective, preferable to advertisements. The fact that some people took advantage of the space to draw art is a nice bonus, but even without that it's a positive change.

I lived until recently in Florianópolis, one of the state capitals of Brazil. It is a naturally beautiful island city, and it has an iconic bridge leading into it ("Ponte Hercilio Luz" if you want to search for photos).

For some god forsaken reason, someone got away with building a gigantic - and I mean GIGANTIC - screen billboard right in line of sight of this historic postcard. I don't recall when it was installed, but if you look at any photos of the bridge taken from the south since maybe 2015, it is there.

It is bright, it plays animated ads the entire day, and it is also perfectly aligned with the nearby major road Beira Mar Norte so that people driving south to the bridge see it just off to the side of their view where it won't be covered by transit.

Frankly just due to the animations I'm surprised it is not banned as an epilepsy hazard, but alas, money speaks louder than reason, and one of the most iconic and beloved sights in this city is now tainted with the most vapid disservice to humanity.

Here's a screenshot of Google Street View: https://i.imgur.com/OXeVkuq.jpg (annotated as their camera doesn't pick up on the brightness during the day due to sea haziness)

I'm from Florianópolis and everyone I know hates that stupid billboard - it goes against the natural vibe of the city. In person it's an eye sore from kilometers away.

Not directly related, but it's so cool that three different people from Florianópolis have commented! I don't think I'd ever meet someone from that part of Brazil in my normal life. That's a little bit of internet magic

I was also taken aback tbh. But it makes sense considering Florianópolis is one of Brazil's major tech hubs.

Yep, I always see a couple fellow manézinhos (or at least residents) whenever Florianópolis is mentioned.

Now four.

How is living in Florianópolis or in southern Brazil? Just out of curiosity. Lifestyle good?

Living in southern Brazil surpasses the rest of the country in terms of quality of life (especially safety) imo. As for living in Floripa, it's a pretty easy-going lifestyle, being that it's a capital that's also a subtropical island. Nightlife isn't as you'd expect compared to bigger cities, but the many beaches, beautiful landscapes and friendly people you meet here definitely make up for it. Honestly, I wouldn't live anywhere else for the time being.

Florianópolis is a peculiar little island. It has gotten much bigger and trendier in this millennium.[1] But it is still the island of witches and other supernatural creatures.[2] As a dinosaur from the 8-bit era, I appreciate and resent both worlds. As a first generation islander (manezinho), I am neither Little-Endian nor Big-Endian . I love it here.

On top of that, we are in the mullet season. [3]

1 - https://youtu.be/fEK53W3Y-vE

2 - https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=florianópolis+frank...

3 - https://youtu.be/9YftNiFyQ9E

Thought you meant mullet as in the hair style. Some kind of bizarre Brazilian version of Movember.

We don't look Brazilian when online ;-)

Now, seriousness, there is no such thing as "looking Brazilian". We come in all sizes and colors.

Far less offensive but the DC metro got screen ads & it just so cheapens the experience. Used to be a kind of impressive semi-brutalist feeling, which isn't super fancy or anything. But now just tacky.

I used to ride the red line when the Metro first opened and you're right. I miss that patterned concrete atmosphere.

Im surprised there hasnt been more efforts to hack these things MaxHeadroom style and do subversive propaganda...

I cant wait until someone hacks on of these screens and does deepfakes on them - either some politicians doing crazy things, or celebrities doing crazy things, or more subtle ads that seem real, but are taking the piss.

They're slowly ruining the vibe. Several stations raised the intensity of the lighting, painted the cement coffers, changed the warning lights from yellow to red, and some have even replaced the iconic floor tiles. The new trains in general are a travesty, too. The old ones had a warm 70s color scheme, warm lighting, and carpet that absorbed some of the track noise. The new ones are steel on the outside, white and blue on the inside, with cool lighting that clashes with the stations and hard surface floors that don't dampen noise at all (to say nothing of the redesigned seating, made uncomfortable to deal with a non-existent homeless rider situation). Oh, also, the first set of them were duds with major issues.

Walking into Metro stations and onto the trains used to be a calming experience, stepping out of the stress of the city or suburbs into a chill and welcoming atmosphere. Now, I can feel my blood pressure jump.

I live here and oh God I fucking that that billboard so much. It fills me with pure rage.

You fucking what?

The billboard.

Jokes aside, my guess is the missing word is "hate".

lol, yes, it was. As I plunged my fingers into the keyboard I was reminded of how much I hate that billboard, so much hate it couldn't even be typed out.

I think only the owners and the advertisers like it. Would a couple high power microwave transmitters pointed at it be able to increase maintenance cost enough for them to give up?

> I think only the owners and the advertisers like it.

Isn't that true of all advertisement? sigh.

Someone here on HN once floated the idea of someone taking a paintball gun and going to town on these obnoxious billboards. Truly the hero we need right now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969142

Extra points if they dress as a bat.

The mayor's newphew owns the billboard company

HA!

I KNEW IT - when I first read that comment, the only thing I could think of re: "how?" was some political shenanigans.

Philippines is so much like that - for example, the Ayala family... corrupt as sin, but have their fingers in every aspect of philippines business and politics.

It is kinda fitting in the sense of all the corruption that made the bridge repairs take longer than I've been alive, now that it's repaired (?) there's that horrendous screen. It's like the rotten cherry pit atop the pile of turd.

But nevertheless, it is a true shame.

I hate those with passion. I was recently in Panama City which is filled with ultra-bright, enormous screens. It made my hotel room fully lit at night! I have no idea how they're legal.

Y'all need to team up and figure out a way to get rid of the billboard.

Here's an ad for the screen:

https://floripasquare.com.br/megatela/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7sNpVCgdPs

> Seven years on, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and South America’s most important city remains free of visual clutter and eye sore that plagues the majority of cities around the world.

Unfortunately it suffers greatly - to a ridiculous level, in some places - from that ugliest kind of grafitti, convoluted "tags" made in single-stroke black ink

I'm not sure if that is the case everywhere but in Brazil people even have a separate name for that (pichação), to separate it from grafitti (which evokes some form of art)

It is truly staggering the amount of pichação you see in São Paulo. Google "pichação são paulo" to have some idea

Here's an example: https://jpimg.com.br/uploads/2017/04/3914518869-pichacao-em-...

pixo é arte

We can’t really legislate what is art and what isn’t. The previous government wanted to make Brazilian art “heroic” and we all know how it ended.

I'm not arguing for or against that - I'm just stating a fact (there's a lot of pichação in São Paulo) and an opinion (I find it extremely ugly, even if I do like grafitti, including the more artistic and colorful tags)

> to separate it from grafitti (which evokes some form of art)

You seemed to be implying pixo is not art tho. Funny thing is, American use of the world graffiti was precisely to deride stuff that they didn't consider 'urban/street art'. Just some youth made graffiti tags...

I guess its because in context I meant to separate Art (as is human search for meaning and expression not for the purposes of survival and reproduction) from art (as in technically developed and aesthetically pleasing)

Pixação may be Art, but it is ugly (which is subjective)

I don't see how the distinction adds any value to the conversation. Besides, if you think ugliness is subjective, you should say you consider pixo ugly, not that it is. This whole 'capitalized concept' is sounds very pretentious to me. Pixo is art, you may not like it, but there certainly is technical development built into it and some people find it pleasing or it wouldn't exist. Insisting in keeping it out of some definition of art just seems to me like a way to deride it in a way that you can justify intellectually. I don't like it. I find it very ugly. But I don't feel the need to create some art category it doesn't belong to in order to justify my opinion.

more like lixo am I right fellas

Western modern culture has this nihilistic stroke of loving everything that is ugly and decadent.

For some unknown reasons, a certain segment of the petit bourgeoisie became convinced that is some sort of being highly sophisticated and cultured to pretend to love this kind of garbage.

And the funniest thing is that the conservative right calls this "cultural-marxism", when it is obvious to everyone who has ever read Marx seriously that he would probably abhor this kind of stuff.

Living in the late stages of capitalism is funny like that.

does the amount of tagging/bombing influence the rent prices there?

You've likely got cause and effect reversed.

I’d take ugly street art over ugly advertisement. At least it’s not trying to manipulate you.

That's false dichotomy. We don't need to choose between two uglies.

I'd rather have none.

I’ll take beautiful street art over beautiful advertisements for the same reason, for what it’s worth.

at least advertisement is not made on the wall of your house without your consent

Yeah, but it's thrown inside my mailbox without my consent instead.

Do you think everyone who lives in a house with a billboard on it are asked to OK the ads?

Where do lit up displays fit in? Glaring, bright screens with moving images which are visible for miles.

Much of the graffiti in São Paulo is with the consent of the building owners. Some even pay for it.

"try to manipulate me"

Not sure if it's manipulation, but I certainly put my consideration for taggers between that of cockroaches and flatworms when I see one of those

I think the documentary about "pixo" is pertinent here, "pixo" is a political manifestation. It is meant to be ugly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skGyFowTzew

the building climbing graffiti is dope, you're 100% wrong

I kind of love pichação style. It looked really ugly to me at first, but then grew on me as I saw more of it. It feels alien and cryptic and uncomfortable to me as a Westerner. I understand being sick of it if you live there, but as a tourist, it felt special. Local graffiti styles have become so homogenized in the U.S. At one point, script styles were much more local. NY and Philly especially. Eventually, everyone sort of saw and bit off everyone else and it was no longer possibly to tell where a writer was from from their work. São Paulo has a definitely style. Not just the tags, but Batman Alley and the huge public murals. It was the best city I have ever been to for street art.

Graffiti can be beautiful, but it's a problem if it's on buildings that don't want it.

Where I live, stores are constantly fighting a battle against graffiti. They'll paint their walls, and people will graffiti them with ugly tags. People have graffitied over murals, which is just insane. One building had a huge piece of plywood on the wall as a spot where people could make street art. That worked for a few months until someone tagged the whole rest of the building too.

It's not like they're "fighting the man" or anything. These are all locally owned small businesses who are just trying to keep doing their thing.

Maybe I like it as a traveler, don't like as a resident.

These appear to be a worldwide phenomenon, except for places like Switzerland or Singapore.

I'm this close to putting some ethanol into a hand sprayer and just walking around and removing them from places where the medium is permanent marker on laminated surface (usually signs).

> Singapore

A caning and prison time for graffiti seems harsh. It would be interesting to know if the penalty or some other social pressure is what keeps the graffiti down.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31744029.amp

My bet is that it's the caning. There's something about the promise of physical pain that makes me shudder.

I've seen graffiti in Switzerland, but never on buildings where people lived, because that would inevitably result in multiple calls to authorities from eyewitnesses and swift justice. People have been fined for less in Switzerland.

Penalty plus ubiquitous CCTV: it's very hard to get away with it.

For what it's worth, my understanding the harsh punishments originated from the period in the 1960s when graffiti was mostly Communist propaganda, at a time when neighboring Malaysia was still fighting a very real Communist insurgency.

I don't mind the tags. It's just kids scribbling and it's neutral and ignorable to me. Neither ugly nor worth paying attention to.

I absolutely abhor advertising that pollutes outdoor spaces. So I guess it depends on your values.

I'm OK with that. Vandalizing buildings is obviously a crime but I'd rather look at street art and vandalism than ads. At least it has soul.

Dude from Sao Paulo here. I found this law a blessing. The picture in the articles make it look like the city is scattered with abandoned billboards but that's not the case. You won't see any one from SP complaining from this piece of law. City looks better, with intrusive, cheap-looking street advertising (mostly) gone. Businesses survided.

In the US, the state of Maine does not allow billboards. It's a thing I didn't notice until living elsewhere, and it's really nice.

Vermont too!

The state of Hawai'i also bans billboards and severely limits other outside signs and advertising.

Anytime I hear about outdoor advertising I think of a quote I saw in the book Civilized to Death.

A long time ago man saw Times Square and sat in silence. A few people asked him what he thought. He said this would be beautiful if I couldn't read.

How was that book? Looks interesting.

I really liked quite a bit of it. There are some points I wasn't too sure of however, it gives a great counterpoint to the endless conveniences that modern society provides.

I would recommend it, I still run I to thi is that I end up thinking back to the book.

I believe everything people enjoy goes back to something primal. It also shows how far we have come from what we use to live like, both good and bad.

Ha I was just thinking a similar thing. I'm much more immune to adverts in a foreign country especially if they use a different alphabet all together.

I'm not quite sure I'd consider it beautiful, but it's mildly freeing nonetheless.

This is a big part of why people go gaga over the neon in Tokyo. It's less sexy when you can actually read all the MEIJI LIFE INSURANCE, ALL YOU CAN EAT BBQ, YODOBASHI CAMERA, [prostitution] INFORMATION CENTER ads it's composed of.

The Times square was the first place I visited in the US, Imagine a bright TV on four walls in a room playing unskippable YouTube ads. That was my feeling, I have no idea why people go crazy about watching ads. To each their own.

The novelty of Times Square wears off real fast. I work in NYC and everybody I know avoids the area if at all possible. I think even tourists realize how disgusting it is. It's an attack on the senses, a pure monument to capitalism.

In a messed up way I almost think of Times Square as a piece of art representing capitalism. It's one of the few places on earth where the ads are part of the architecture, that is Times Square wouldn't be what it is without those massive ads. It's also just such a hilarious tourist trap because it carries pretty much all the hallmarks of a "tourist trap".

Fun to go there once for the novelty and to see the ridiculousness, but like other commenters have said, wouldn't go back there again.

I went there as a kid from France and it was magical. Remember going to the Coca Cola store and buying a bunch of merch.

There is something special about it. I remember seeing it for the first time and it seemed like a movie set because I had watched so many scenes in so many films that were shot there but, never actually laid eyes on it.

Boca Raton doesn't allow billboards, car dealerships, or Walmarts. We don't normally notice it, but these things jar us as soon as we go to neighboring towns. It's a subtle improvement of outdoor experience (more architecture and green spaces) that percolates into quality of life. A good analogy of this may be browsing the web with ad blockers--pages with ads are busier, noisier, and load more slowly; yes, if the page content is bland, removing the ads will make it blander.

> A good analogy of this may be browsing the web with ad blockers--pages with ads are busier, noisier, and load more slowly; yes, if the page content is bland, removing the ads will make it blander.

A great example. If there were no ads, the web, and this site, wouldn't exist. Moderation in general is key. This site for example has a single advert which is the top banner, as well as job postings. Subtle and allows the site to fulfill its purpose commercially and create a venue for discussion.

Banning this site (which is really an ad, by the way) would benefit no one.

> If there were no ads, the web, and this site, wouldn't exist.

This is quite untrue. There was a useful web long before advertisers got their grubby hooks in it.

It'd be smaller, more focused, and far less profitable.

I'd say it'd be a huge plus in terms of real utility.

The Web analogy is good to remind us that advertising has become some kind of war on the population. I remember when ads were relegated to the sides and corners of any Web page. Now they are inserted in between the paragraphs of what you're reading, some of them blink and there are also pop-ups. Some have an "x" to let you close them, but they come back just seconds later. More and more sites now will show you nothing at all if you disable ads or Javascript or even cookies. People use ad blockers because they don't want to see the ads, so it's reasonable to assume that they are not going to buy anything or if they do it's not abusive advertising that will determine their shopping decisions. But that doesn't seem to matter at all. You just have to look at the damn ad. Just look at the damn ad. Look at the ad or we will send an assassin over to your house! VIEW THE AD, DAMN IT! It's just insane.

>Boca Raton doesn't allow billboards, car dealerships, or Walmarts How does the Walmart prohibition work? Is there a law that prohibits Walmart specifically? How about Sam's Club?

I don't know how it works exactly but assume it's in the city's zoning code. Thinking more about it, there's not a single superstore in the city. A Costco and several Targets are immediately outside of city limits. It's not even that small of a city--around 100k pop.

There is a Walmart Supercenter close to where West Palmetto Park crosses US 441. I don't know it that is outside the city limits.

Yes, the city limits are approximately at Powerline, with deviations here and there. Area to the west is unincorporated.

This is awesome. Discovering this kind of post is exactly why I read HN and not other "news" sources. Agree with others that the "empty" billboard frames look off. But much better than attention-seeking adverts.

Wish more cities would pass this kind of law. Billboards are such an eyesore especially the pointless political ads we are forced to see.

> Agree with others that the "empty" billboard frames look off

This is also a temporary cost. Yes, the existing relics are unattractive but over time they will be removed and not replaced.

Totally! Removed or made into art or something practical. Love it.

> and not other "news" sources

I mean I really enjoyed this piece too, but it's not really news. HN really shouldn't be relied upon as a singular news source. There's plenty of things you should know that aren't the intellect candy that HN promotes

Totally Agree that there are plenty of things most people need to know about that do not surface on HN. But being a time poor parent means I personally don't spend much time reading long form articles anymore and visiting "news" sites full of ads & trackers is just lame as the signal to noise ratio is way off. Visit the BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news once a day to see what's going on in the world. But beyond that only got time for HN twice a day for 5 mins and Twitter once a week also for 5 mins ...

If you know of a similar text-based (or low image count) site like HN that has high quality news and no fluff/click-bait please share. Thanks.

You might try NPR news site https://www.npr.org/sections/news/

They do have some ads but it is mostly just a right rail ad that is pretty easy to ignore and not as infested as most news sites.

São Paulo’s Outdoor Advertising Ban (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20725409 - Aug 2019 (94 comments)

A global movement to ban urban billboards - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10370576 - Oct 2015 (192 comments)

Canberra, Australia (the capital) also has banned outdoor advertising since the 1930s (except near the airport): https://www.abc.net.au/canberra/programs/breakfast/should-ad...

Canberran here! It’s bloody lovely. You don’t appreciate it until you go somewhere else.

Worth noting that ‘since the 1930s’ ≈ ‘since the city was founded’.

It says that many businesses opposed the change, this could be beneficial for them too. Advertising can be a prisoners dilemma, where all parties end up paying for it and getting the same result as if they all stopped paying for it

Interesting from someone that leaves in SP for 2 years and just spend about 40 days in Berlin and 21 in NY last year, this doesn’t seem to resonate as such a big difference.

Berlin almost doesn’t have any billboards and NY I didn’t saw it bothered me, at least in Brooklyn.

Curious on how SP was in the past.

Unfortunately the city has way worst problems then billboards.

I've been in São Paulo for a week, and the city feels depressing. The architecture is horrible, boring, and not well-maintained, especially when compared to the architecture of old European cities where at least the buildings are aesthetically pleasing. The excessive advertising only worsens the situation. I've also visited Berlin, and unfortunately, it too felt quite dull.

What city doesn't feel dull? Where do you live or rather what is city that isn't dull and depressing? Without a comparison it seems strange to compare two completely different cities, in two completely different continents.

Barcelona, Madrid, Vitoria, Girona, Rome, Lisbon, Porto. Many european cities are really pleasant.

Barcelona we agree, Rome not. My pleasant not the same as yours.

Full disclosure, I happen to enjoy Berlin and find it everything but dull!

Berlin sure loves their concrete.

(I kind of agree. I have family in Berlin so I have visited them quite a bit during the past 20 years or so.)

For the past couple years, COVID and economic collapse took a huge toll. I grew up in São Paulo and I've never seen so many homeless people living on the streets than between 2016 and 2023. It was not always that depressing, of course. The past couple mayors also had some crazy ideas that certainly didn't improve the urban experience.

When I left there was a push for more cycle lanes everywhere, with large avenues closing off lanes for car traffic to increase space for bicycles. It was a great time.

And the restaurants continue to be superb.

Meanwhile, I find NYS's inundation of billboards downright depressing. It's just ugly, even in places that ought to be beautiful upstate. When I cross the border into Vermont, which bans ads on roads except for simple business signage, the difference is tangible.

NY City is an interesting case where the billboards almost don't even matter because it's already an unnatural high-stimulus environment. As for the rest of the state, I agree.

> an unnatural high-stimulus environment

I really can't stay in NYC for long. It just makes me angry all the time.

In Germany, outdoor advertising seems to be quite restricted in general, compared to the UK, for example. As a result, in cities and towns rich in post-WWII buildings one mostly sees similarly-looking walls, windows, and roofs everywhere.

I worked in São Paulo before and after this law was enacted. The difference was honestly massive, there used to be billboards plastered all over the city: across any walls or free space around major avenues (imagine the whole perimeter of Congonhas airport with Av. dos Bandeirantes covered by giant billboards floating over the walls), on the visible sides of tall buildings towards major streets, there were billboards stacked on top of others around avenues overpassing other roads (seeing 2 or 3-stack wasn't uncommon). With technological advances then came the massive displays, blinking with lights, completely littering your sight with moving images, flashes, etc.

After those were torn down, and signs around commercial spaces were restricted to a maximum allowed diagonal, it felt like your eyes had at least some rest, even though the city is still an eye sore for most of it, you didn't feel eye fatigued just by driving around some 30 minutes. It's hard to describe the difference, a constant, loud background noise seemed to disappear, at least for me.

They were dangerous too. Huge and bright moving ads on the side of high speed highways. I don't know if any accident was ever caused by them, but they were really begging for it.

I think it's all a question of finding the right measure: in Germany there are strict rules for advertisement (for example you won't see giant billboards like in the US anywhere, flashing/animated ads are also strictly limited etc.), but a complete ban like in Sao Paulo might be overshooting the target. I grew up in socialist Romania, and the Sao Paulo photos from the article remind me of how a typical Romanian city used to look back then - still an eyesore, but a very drab one...

Love the idea, but the execution can be better. The photos show empty billboard frames, remnants of old ads against walls, etc., making things look dilapidated but not in an Anthens-ancient-ruin kind of way.

Sao Paulo is not a beautiful city by any means, but the law has been around for long enough that these remnants are very far in between.

Good to know. I haven't been back to Sao Paulo since 2004, so wasn't sure how widespread the remnants are.

Would be cool if these spaces (or some of them) were given to local artists to use.

Today they actually are, São Paulo is famous for it's street art. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/30/world/americas/brazil-sao...

There’s way more ugly graffiti scribbles than street art there, sadly.

That's basically what happened, just google São Paulo street art.

The article and photos are from 2011....

There is certainly a beauty in those remnants being left behind.

Yes, the place would look objectively tidier without them. But, given the context of what they used to be, I would enjoy the daily reminder that there used to be ads and now they're gone

It was for a brief period that the photographer (who happens to be a friend of the family) recorded. I find those photos brilliant in recording non-subjects - they are photos of something that is no longer there.

As the city adapted to the new rules, the frames were torn down, you could see the architecture behind them (sometimes veritable architectural treasures worth of preservation), and murals covered lots of the empty space in monumental art installations. Where the space is empty, you sometimes see art (and political protests) being projected on the walls.

Makes it look abandoned to me. Probably because my mind is used to seeing advertising everywhere that people are or transit so when I see no ads, I think no people.

I'm not sure ugly gray concrete is better than a big colorful billboard though. I'd like to see it in-person.

The photos in the article are from 2011, I believe, when the Clean City Law was introduced. There are no more empty billboards or advertising structures, many facades have been renovated, including works of art by Kobra and other graffiti artists.

Nah it's not, it makes it look abandoned like you said; they should put in some color, art, character, etc. But not graffitti art, while I don't hate it, I'm sure there's good alternatives to spruce up a city.

Perhaps its revealing of the true nature of way cities really are - huge concrete, brick and mortar landscapes. Maybe the revulsion is a natural reaction and humans are inclined towards a more earthly aesthetic which advertising simulates through color

This is a great policy for the city but this killed half of Liberdade's soul, because our little Tokyo had to also pull down all our their Japan-evoking signage. See a sample of the neighborhood in the 80s: https://quandoacidade.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/238.jpg

Architecture, Art, Cuisine... whatever is part of the culture, can be utilized to evoke another country. Obviously signage will work, but it's sort of a cheap way to do it.

At first glance this may be perceived as a good thing. But as someone who lived my whole life in Sao Paulo i dare to disagree.

Not only it killed part of advertising industry, and for me made the city uglier, it was a faccade to destroy small businness, shops and buildings and replace them with condos for the mayor friends. Who "surprisingly" used to be a civil engineer.

Funnily enough, the only thing allowed to have huge billboards and outdoors is the Estate, public buses, subway wagons, subway stations. They are all full of advertisements. Huge ones, and guess what. Much more expensive cause they have the monopoly of it. Hypocritical to say the least.

This law, together with the PSIU law which forbid loud noises, were used to close down small business, demolish them and build useless lifeless new buildings. Where there were life, shops, bars, restaurants, lights, its now full of huge buildings, more crime and the corpse of a once alive and blooming city.

Articles about São Paulo outdoor law comes back from time to time on HN. Maybe because people here have a hard on for central city planning? I don’t know but you should look elsewhere for your fix. This law ruined the beautiful Bairro da Liberdade, a neighborhood that used to have influences of japanese culture.

This is literally a dream for me. I think of it often, what if all form of advertisement was banned? For me it is one of the two big cancers of the 21st century and contributes to an overall massive feeling of restlessness.

I've been visiting sp since 2005, i eventually moved there '09 and lived there till '23. I remember the pre-06 cityscape. You were bombarded by visual ads in the 100s every half hour. It was absurd. Most of the buildings were absolutely covered in low-effort graffiti, callef pixação or pixo (pronounced peeshu). Since then there really has been a flourishing of murals and street art. The quality and quantity are flabberghasting. It added a lot to the sense of discovery while out exploring a new corner of the city and sense of place for places one returns to. Many of the artists like veracidade became close to household names. Overall it was a wonderful change whose impacts subtly changed the atmosphere of the city, making it much more livable. The only problem was in the liberdade neighborhood, home to the japanese disapora of the early 20th century: their local business depended on kanji signs hanging off the facades of the buildings. After the law change the neighborhood's economy sorta collapsed for a while, but is now recovering.

Ironically, I had to locate the X and close two video ad overlays in order to calm the screen enough to enjoy the article. And even then, the right part of my screen was flashing ads, and every few paragraphs an ad was shoehorned into the text.

And yeah, don't have adblock on my work PC which is probably why it's so insufferable.

Advertising the kind of industry that you'd really like to shove into a plywood submarine and set its bearings for the Titanic.

I stopped reading pretty quickly but scrolling down those pictures aren’t exactly sellin it

I am all for cleaning up the advertisement everywhere. That said, I am not sure the article convinced me with the conclusions drawn.

> Despite the forebodings, São Paulo’s economy didn’t run aground ...

All those advertising business are now defunct. That is a significant impact to those companies and 20,000 employees. It is disingenuous to write "20,000 people would lose jobs", then flip and say the entire city "economy didn't run aground".

> Unexpectedly, the removal of logos and slogans exposed previously overlooked architecture, revealing a rich urban beauty that had been long hidden.

Personally I am not seeing that much "rich urban beauty". Definitely there are some buildings of architectural significance, but vast majority of the buildings are not.

Again, I like the idea of advertisement reduced to a minimum, but let's be honest of the outcomes.

> That is a significant impact to those companies and 20,000 employees.

I would rather that we don't pay people to perform harmful activities.

I understand that it is awful to lose your job but I think we should target that rather than keep them working harmful jobs just so that they can live an acceptable live. If we had high quality social safety nets than it would be an inconvenience but manageable. I would rather pay these people to have a comfortable life or find a new job.

That is a significant impact to those companies and 20,000 employees.

Good, they were making money off information pollution and psychological manipulation.

No disrespect to any citizen, but it remains the ugliest city I've ever seen. Pure random concrete chaos.

I often find myself coming back to this piece from Sean Tejaratchi which was partly stolen by Banksy – https://web.archive.org/web/20120314093434/http://www.readin...

Minor anecdote: During the pandemic a lot of the billboards and bus stops around me suddenly didn't have advertisements plastered on them any more, and it made my daily commute a lot calmer. No longer were sudden blobs of highly saturated colours and popping text dragging my attention away from me, and I'd do a lot of things to have that back. At least AdBlock is a thing in the digital domain.

That is a minor thing, but I would love if people spelled our words right. The city is called "São Paulo", not "Sao Paulo", which makes for a completely different pronunciation. I get that they may not know how to type it, but anyone can copy and paste from Wikipedia.

Remember that they are not typing in Portuguese, and in other languages places have other names/spellings.

I say this as a Brazilian myself, who is fond of the original spelling.

I live in Scandinavia, and do you feel it is fair for me to criticize you for writing Gotemburgo and not Göteborg, or Copenhague and not København?

The article is in English, the conversation is in English, and like it or not places like São Paulo are spelled without diacritics in English.

Or should an article in Portuguese in a Brazilian newspaper write Deutschland instead of Alemanha?

> Or should an article in Portuguese in a Brazilian newspaper write Deutschland instead of Alemanha?

What bizarre examples, those are entirely different words, I'm talking about a minor difference in acentuation. And I don't care what the rule is, it's disrespectful, it's an article, and copy and paste exists.

They even do it with proper names. You don't change proper names. The name is "Pelé", not "skin". So disrespectful.

Let is keep it to South America then.

Do you think you're disrespectful when you write "Peru" (Portuguese dropped the diacritic from "Perú") or "Colômbia" (now we added a diacritic that is not in the original "Colombia")? What about "Paraguai": why is "Paraguay" so hard to type that we had to change it?

And this is coming from a sister language, Spanish.

I think you're not paying attention to how languages work.

I don't think you understand how copy and paste works... if the English Wikipedia can do it, I think article writers can do as well.

I recently learned Kyoto has rules about signage and specifically color saturation. Some of the rules seem too detailed, but the end result looks very nice. https://youtu.be/KuX3nu4jdo0

THIS. High saturation colors are loud and tacky. Kyoto look wonderful.

I've applied a desaturation filter to a number of websites. The Register for example:

  body {
      /* A little less bloody red, eh? */
      filter: saturate(33%);
  }

(Via the Stylus CSS manager extension.)

I also browse extensively on an e-ink (monochrome) tablet, and find that the lack of high-saturation colour is very welcome. I suspect that even colour-based e-ink displays, given their muted pastel palette, might also be an improvement in general.

Edit: That's Stylus, not Stylish, as I'd initially written, Which has Gone To The Dark Side.

Interesting. Stylish looks like malware tho.

Good catch. I'd meant Stylus, though I keep getting the two confused as I'd initially relied on Stylish.

Corrected above.

Slightly ironically given the gist of this discussion, the ad shown before that video was actually one I wanted to see and watched till the end (trailer for latest Indiana Jones movie).

As an American moving to SP, this was one of the most striking things when I first arrived by air. It's buildings, as far as the eye can see, and it looks different somehow: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

Then you realize later that it's all architecture, free of advertising. Sadly, it's not completely clean - on the way from GRU there's still a decent amount of high-standing billboards and generic crap.

Because GRU is in Guarulhos, a neighbouring city

The law really changed the way people look at the city. Since the article is from 2013, I think the percentage of approval has increased to more than 70% or, for younger people, the city is just like that, they have no reference of the city with billboard and all.

In Zurich, the ban against billboards was recently introduced as well.

It reminds me of the discussion of ad blockers on websites like Youtube and Co. After all, advertising is actually a fundamental part of the economy.

How are things in Sao Paolo 10 years later?

> After all, advertising is actually a fundamental part of the economy.

Ridiculous claim. Product discovery happens regardless of street advertisement.

It very much is visual pollution.

Do you have any sources on that? The only thing I could find was that some parties want to ban digital billboard in the city of Zurich (not the whole canton).

Sorry, I had to clarify that the final decision has not yet been made. The city still approves digital billboards [0].

In Geneva, the debate has been going on for some time. There, I think since 2021, digital billboards should be banned, but in the latest votes there is the counter-movement to keep the billboards [1].

[0]: https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/hbd/de/index/bewilligungen_und_...

[1]: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/geneva-throws-out-ban-...

I live in Zurich and there are several billboards on my residential street.

This unexpectedly reminded me of what East Berlin looked like in 1988. It looked gray and dull compared to West Berlin. I've told this story for years without realizing that lack of outdoor advertising made the difference.

And the lack of investment in housing. East Berlin was simply rundown and could not afford renovating old houses. Those they built on the outskirts were also grey concrete blocks.

No amount of advertising would have helped.

This might also motivate people to demand better buildings and facades. Without advertising concealing the mediocrity and distracting from the ugliness, there is greater pressure to make buildings beautiful.

I disagree with this move. Though advertising is certainly excessive in many cities. They should've kept it, restrict what can be advertised (e.g. no alcohol, drugs, or things that the city deems 'bad') and used the revenue to beautify the city. In any case, Sao Paulo did have too many ads which restricted the view. At the very least that should've been resolved.

Though I suppose given HN people will applaud this move which is ironic given that we all are basically on a marketing forum for Y Combinator.

I lived there. The adverts were making the city ugly. It was a massive improvement when we got rid of them.

Luckily there is something in between "ugly advertisements" and "no advertisements at all"

None at all is still better. When you allow some, you’ll have people gaming the rules and finding loopholes. A clear ban is easier to enforce.

As for making the city ugly, I grew up there and I’m the first to say it’s an acquired taste. You get used to the grit, to the harshness and the layers of architectural history. Visiting the city centre is always some sort of a discovery.

None is not necessarily or inherently better because advertising generates revenue. You would need to weigh the revenue vs. the nebulous value of "no advertising". Given that there exists stores in Sao Paulo, you still see "advertisements", just not on billboards.

You speak of the grit - said grit could be improved with government efforts funded by... advertisements in part.

I suppose this lack of nuanced thinking is why the war on drugs is still a thing. There are many bad things that you can try to unliterally ban. There are tradeoffs.

Luckily this is just an article explaining one side of the law, and it's from 2001. Obviously, there are advertisements, but not on large billboards across the city. Sometimes, I feel like this site is no different from a Twitter thread. There are so many uninformed people making comments about things they have no clue about.

I'm talking about the billboards and other outdoor ads as referenced in the article. What are you talking about?

> In September 2006, the mayor of São Paulo passed the so-called “Clean City Law" that outlawed the use of all outdoor advertisements, including on billboards, transit, and in front of stores. Within a year, 15,000 billboards were taken down and store signs had to be shrunk so as not to violate the new law. Outdoor video screens and ads on buses were stripped. Even pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal. Nearly $8 million in fines were issued to cleanse São Paulo of the blight on its landscape. Seven years on, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and South America’s most important city remains free of visual clutter and eye sore that plagues the majority of cities around the world.

You're right though. Uninformed people who don't read the article are annoying. I'm not even for ads. It's simply that there's a way to do outdoor ads that doesn't ruin the city.

I still live here. I remember how it was before 2007 and the city is now uglier than ever. Seoul has outdoor ads everywhere and looks much nicer.

Ads could have been a source of revenue for the city. Crazy to waste time and effort on stuff like this when the city has much bigger problems.

> used the revenue

While a 100% tax on advertising revenue is certainly a good start, I don't think the city was seeing any of that money.

this is how every city should be. you cna advertise your own business on your own property but that is where it ends. real life is no the internet with popup crap all over it.

This should be a standard.

Great, I've not been to Sao Paulo but can understand what it's like without ads.

I went to Prague before Communism fell and I was truly amazed at how beautiful the city looked without an ad to be seen anywhere. It was like being in a time warp back to the 18th Century.

I believe I wasn't alone in having this view because I'm told the movie Amadeus (about Mozart) was made there, as Vienna, where the movie was set, had too many ads.

Tragically, when I went back a few years after Communism fell ads were rampant everywhere.

Damn shame really.

I grew up in a socialist country before the fall of communism. Us kids of my generation were envious of the flashy lights and billboards that we saw in the movies from the west.

The architecture of pre 20-th century was as flashy and kitschy as the people of the day could make it with the technology at their disposal. Look at the façade ornamentation and ostentatious spires of the old churches. Or the imposing architecture of 19th century government buildings, with the government often being the king or a bunch of wealthy landowners.

Anyway, I prefer the architecture reflecting the hustle of today’s commerce to the one made to glorify the past authorities.

"The architecture of pre 20-th century was as flashy and kitschy as the people of the day could make it with the technology at their disposal."

That's somewhat of an overstatement. I understand why people like modernist architecture but that's a different matter altogether to plastering over any architecture—modern or ancient—with a mishmash of billboards and ad posters. Modern architects don't want their works defaced either.

On the matter of façades and ornamentation of pre 20th Century architecture, no doubt some were ostentatious by the standards of the day, as are many buildings of the modern era, but many were not. Moreover, what passed for 'ostentatiousness' in one era would be matter-of-fact in another. For example, if you took late Victorian architecture back a hundred years say to Georgian era (ca ≈1720—1820), it'd be considered scandalous.

That said, there were and still are longstanding rules about ornamentation on buildings such as friezes and moldings. These conventions have stood the test of time and go right back to Ancient Greece and Rome. For instance, curves such ovolo, ogee and cyma just to name a few haven't changed one iota since those days several millennia ago (I have woodworking tools that cut those shapes precisely right to the correct mathematical curves—that's how fussy many people still are even these days—much more so than I am).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molding_(decorative)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieze

They've stood the test of time because people of every age—ancient and modern—consider them beautiful and harmonious.

Of course, that doesn't mean modern stuff is bad, the objection is that ads screw up both ancient and modern architecture because they don't pay credence to the existing architecture, they are there solely to distract for the purpose of selling, that is that they are purposely disruptive and break the harmony of the landscape whether it be modern or ancient.

I hate billboards, but I also think they're fascinating. They immediately show you what a city is about. I live in San Francisco these days and it's always funny to me driving around seeing billboards for cloud services, financial services, investment banks, SaaS, Napa wineries ... I grew up in Texas and it was always megachurch, porn store, strip club, megachurch ... I lived in Hawaii for a few years and the complete lack of billboards was so very nice.

Honestly, this is true of most creative activities. Playing an instrument? Singing? Painting? Drawing? Almost everyone has some sort of creative activity they enjoy.

The enjoyment comes in part from the lack of pressure. The activity doesn't have to pay the rent - at most, it's beer money.

Perhaps more negatively: expecting to make a living with something that millions do for fun? Hubris. Very few really are that good, but only very few.

For the rest of us? Enjoy your hobby for what it is.

I think you commented on the wrong link

Yeah haha they meant to comment on the hobby link

I was some weeks ago and Sao Paulo and I'm pretty sure I saw a lot of outdoor advertisements.. btw I wasnt there since 2019 and was sad to see how the city went down by the corona lockdowns. Sao Paulo a real cyberpunk city, a dystopian mega city: https://www.instagram.com/spcyberpunk/?hl=en

> Others predicted that the city would look like a bland concrete jungle with the ads removed.

lol. only advertising folks are going to pitch ads are a that make a city beautiful.

The LED ad billboards on Times Square obviously look cool (obviously a bad counterexample), which is a walking only/primary area. Thus, if there’s ever a law to outlaw outdoor advertisements, that the focus could be on parts of a city/town/area which are more car/roads focused, or near tranquil places like parks, and otherwise (thus to spare squares-like exceptional places like Times Square).

I feel like this kind of strategy would work for cities with buildings that have artistic facade but would backfire immensely for those that dont.

It might also encourage adoption of more decorative facades amongst the latter.

I agree that in many cities, advertising is a blight.

São Paulo is not one of those cities, and has much bigger problems than outdoor advertising.

The first time I visited São Paulo I was pretty horrified at the some parts of the city. So many buildings that looked like they were falling apart.

I'm all for the no advertising though, wish that was the norm everywhere.

Agree, São Paulo is as bad as most 3rd world big cities.

But one less problem is one less problem, even if it isn't a big one. You get better when you eliminate problems.

Advertising is not definitely a problem to begin with, though. Advertising helps with a robust commercial industry and generates revenue for municipalities. Can it be done wrong? Of course. Nuance is lost on folks I suppose.

There is no net positive to advertising. Period.

Let me convince you that my product is better than the others by spending money to keep the information abundant and flowing.

The funny thing is that if the outdoor advertisements are not in your native language they're affecting you much less! I sort of noticed this when I've moved to a different country; I am sort of blind for these because my brain is not reading them automatically!

No outdoor advertising which is acknowledged as such, perhaps.

Advertisers always find ways to ply their trade.

Tangential, but I highly recommend the documentary Pixo (2009). It talks about the story of "pixação", an artform typical of São Paulo, which has been called vandalism by some people in this post - and it's not that simple.

This sounds incredibly relaxing

Beautiful.

One of the reasons advertisements are frequently so annoying is that they're designed to be noticed by motorists at speed, so they're very large.

One of the noticeable things when visiting Cuba is the lack of advertising boards. There are political slogans instead, certainly gives a different feel.

I'm being alerted of my ad blocker on this news site, on an article related to there being almost zero ads on a city. A bit ironic.

Advertising is devouring the world, but in the meantime, there have been some great tech startups that have enriched Bay Area landlords.

The idea, that the public, in violent surges, could reject the most outrageous violations of the almende, it seems to be to alien to comprehend for some market liberals. The beast of burden just has to take it and thats the end of the story.

I'm in São Paulo right now and I didn't even notice that. I guess everywhere else is just flooded with billboards then?

Ironically, the article is an ad nightmare

Alternative script for Carpenter's They Live: He put the sunglasses on and went about his day.

Look at street view instead of the articles pictures. It's not a big deal at all.

There are a number of areas in the US that ban billboards, including Hawaii and Vermont.

Bring this to Vancouver, BC

How do consumers know what products to buy? How do they find alimento?

Presumably in a few years all billboards will be virtual, painted over top of reality by AR?

And San Paulo will be bedecked again, at least as experienced by normal people with whatever comes after mobile phones.

As will Rome and your local park?

Ain't gonna happen

What makes you think normal people, such as myself, would have any reason to willingly use advertisement-laden AR rather than enjoy good old ad-free R?

In the same way that today everyone is dependent on phones. When I grew up, the phone hung in the kitchen with a long curly lead. Nowadays everyone (including adults) seems to have their head in their mobile phones at any and every lull in conversation.

My car projects traffic info and directions straight onto the windscreen. A fancy feature now, but surely ubiquitous in just a few years.

My windows computer, an Operating system which I paid for, has started injecting ads and promoted content into the start menu.

And so it’s easy to imagine that everyone is going to be bombarded by injected ads in a future world whether we like it or not?

Interesting content for a site filled with taboola crap.

Ironically, this joke of a website is full of spam…

Constant billboards ruins scenery.

How much energy did this reduce?

Never thought I would miss ads

What a nuclear waste of a website. What a shame.

Not all advertising is for capitalist GDP maximisation − as a member of a political party, our biggest challenge is informing people that we exist, and that they don't have to vote for the incumbent parties that have kicked problems along the road, for decades.

If you ban advertising, be careful what you wish for.

As an individual, I'd welcome no advertisements everywhere. I think ads were abused long enough. It's just a leech on the human life.

That's considered a radical stance, but I +1.

Ads should just be banned anywhere in general.

They concentrate power to those who already have it, because you can make more ads if you have more money. The local burger joint cannot compete against macdonals on advertising, the local soda against coca cola.

It's ugly, eat attention, and interrupt.

It creates business models with terrible incentives, which leads to censorship in medias, quantity over quality, attention driven content, etc.

It encourages mass surveillance, and is used to influence society in the worse ways, making it dangerous to democracy.

Finally, if you remove ads, suddenly you get a much better filter for things: if people don't think it's worth even a little bit of money, let it die. It was not worth it.

Besides, even if you pay, you still see ads. You see submarine articles in paid newspaper, ads before your movies in the theater, ads in your bus ride...

Can you imagine, all this ads money, now free to be invested in something else?

> That’s considered a radical stance

I don’t think so. I think business wants us to feel that way, while the average person would choose to not hear/watch/see ads given the choice. I’m not necessarily against advertising, and regardless it’s a fact that advertising drives our economy and as a whole we generally don’t know how to create and conduct business without advertising. But I am against the notion that not wanting ads is a radical stance. I think we do need to prevent that notion from being normalized. Business doesn’t get to expect me to watch ads or make me feel guilty or like a freak for not wanting them. They have to work for it.

I say this as someone who has run a business and had to do advertising, and as someone who has never worked for a company or organization that doesn’t advertise.

> it’s a fact that advertising drives our economy

Is it really though? I could believe that advertising does incentivize people to buy things that they otherwise might not. But OTOH, if there were no advertising, people would still spend money, just differently. It's not as though people are going to start lighting money on fire in the absence of advertising.

I think so, in part. To be clear I’m not claiming it’s the only driver, nor the largest, but it’s undeniably large nonetheless. Consider that Google’s entire search existence is funded by ads, and there’s loads of competition. Basically all of TV and a lot of online streaming is ad funded. Magazines and radio and print media all get large portions of revenue via ads.

I agree people would still spend money in a world without ads, but we don’t currently have that world, right?

The things you mention are media, and that world is heavily loaded with advertising.

Other industries have it but it isn’t attention whoring trash, it’s more subtle. The free coffee at a conference, the rep dropping by to say hello. The brand name on the pens.

The strong views against advertising are a very logical reaction to the obnoxious methods used.

Yep totally agree. This is part of why I’m not against all advertising, and you’re also highlighting reasons why we shouldn’t allow being against the invasive media ads to be framed as or considered to be a radical stance.

> They concentrate power to those who already have it

Isn't ads exactly the opposite. A big company could preserve its brand even without ads, while a small company can't build a brand without ads.

But I completely agree on removing wall ads. Its ugly.

I think big companies do constantly need to remind people of their brand with ads to preserve it. That's why you see Coca-Cola ads everywhere, despite everyone already knowing who they are and what they sell.

Absolutely, it is all about maintaining mind share rather than letting the product speak for itself.

If you remove the ads, suddenly, it evens the playing field. They have to compete with the product, not the brand. With what they bring to people, not the image they can create with money. With producing for society, not rent seeking.

Plenty of businesses would die without ads, they would be naturally selected out of people lives because without the brain washing, they are just not that important enough.

>If you remove the ads, suddenly, it evens the playing field. They have to compete with the product, not the brand.

Well, you at least levelled one of the playing fields (while also removing a huge eyesore, which I really like!). I think the business deals in the background play a very large role too, if not bigger than the advertisements themselves. By business deals I mean that many restaurants exclusively serve the coke or pepsi family of drinks. This won't change if we remove the ads, only strengthen, and the larger players have a bigger weight, so the field is still very tilted.

That plenty of businesses would die without ads, I completely agree. There's an entire business model of running a bunch of ads, selling a bunch of crap, then disappearing. I would say good riddance to these.

I think you're right, ads can be the opposite! For example the way Facebook does its targeting, smaller businesses seem to have a real chance to target their niche. So it's not all just like a sporting event, where the big dogs will buy up all available ad space.

You used the keyword, "niche".

But most businesses are not niche, that's why it's called a niche.

People sell food, clothes, accommodations, services.

You can't fight wall-mart on general food or nike on shoes, or any big player on phones.

If you create a new tech product, your only chance is to go reddit, HN, etc, like the pine phone. Because you can't advertise it like apple with the iphone.

You can't buy product placement in movies and video games, you can't be at every bus stop.

So sure, if you sell biodegradable bamboo socks, your ads can do something.

But that's not 99% of what are sold in the world.

What is really sold is transparent to people, because they are so used to it. They don't realize they have maybe 3 choices of providers because all those brands belong to the same big super company. And each of them have their own dedicated marketing department.

I am very much against advertisements in media. If a service doesn’t come with an ad-free option then I don’t subscribe at all. I am not as radical when it comes to advertisements in the cities. 100% no to billboards. But if a local restaurant wants to advertise pictures of their dishes at their location (not across the town), that’s fine with me. As long as ads are local to the business, tasteful and in limited size/quantity I’d be ok with that.

I think I'd be happy with innocent things like your example as well. One could even argue that ads are useful even, in the right context. But I have no idea how to go about regulating that.

Exactly. Any any kind of written rules (or laws) will just immediately become a subject to interpretation, pushing the limits and exploiting loopholes. As usual, a few ruin it for everyone.

Not everyone has $$$ to spend on a subscription service and they would locked out of content. Ads are necessary to promote accessibility of content in my opinion.

I agree with ad-sponsored or subsidized content, I just want there to be an ad-free option for those who put value in not having to see them.

They could just pirate content, as many have always done. But I see your point, ads can be an acceptable form of payment. I have seen this in a mobile game for example, where you can buy the in-game currency with real money, and you can also get some if you watch ads, fill surveys etc. I'm sure it's abused to hell and back, with telemetry and so on, but I could get on top that right after I ban all other ads.

I don't see how money spent on advertising billboards improves anyone's lives. The money is just going to leave owners. At least with media the advertising dollars are funding media creators.

I think it's good to learn about marketing in general. I initially thought that it has one purpose: they put up an ad for X, to make people buy more of X. But that's not it at all. Advertisements can be used to shape public opinion of a thing, for example. To make the public associate a set of feelings, attitudes, values with the product, brand, or person. I'm sure I also leave a lot out of this simple explanation and example. So, at the end of the day, this all strengthens the entity that advertises. That's the goal of the advertising billboards.

Never forget that the whole ad industry is ultimately paid with your money, as a consumer.

I don't think 0 advertisements is feasible - some level of advertising is necessary for businesses to communicate. Shops ought to be able to have signs.

I think banning outdoor advertisements is a great idea, though, because people don't opt in to seeing billboards.

Sure it's feasible. For one, if I were to ban everything, I'm sure people with come up with something, it would be a never-ending cat and mouse game. And one of the somethings could be that there could be catalogs, or assistants, who you can turn to for "help" to get something.

Most public advertisement is for consumption goods - food, clothes, tech gadgets etc.

1. People have mostly fixed amounts of money for these products. So the role of ads is to influence which brands/products people spend their money on. 10-20% of the cost of coke/pepsi cans is just the cost of ads that are used to influence you buy one of two almost identical products.

2. Ads total waste of society's productive power as ad spend has little correlation with the actual quality of the product. It is not helping you find the "best" product, only make products attractive to you.

> 10-20% of the cost of coke/pepsi cans is just the cost of ads

I think this is an important point. If coke and pepsi were not allowed to advertise, they could only compete on price and quality.

This is clearly a win for consumers. For coke and pepsi, maybe a small to moderate loss of revenue? But then their costs would definitely go down (no advertising spend), so it wouldn't necessarily be a net loss even for them.

And you have 20% spare budget to pay digital services, which are now full of ads.

>they could only compete on price and quality

They can (and do) also compete on exclusive deals with places who sell soda. I'd wager it's more important than competing on ads, because what are people gonna do at a pepsi or coke exclusive place, not drink soda?

I'm sorry but the free market idea that's lurking in the argument is naive, when contrasted to our current (and past, and projected future) reality.

I am almost the opposite. The busy signage is one of my favorite things about Hong Kong. I wish more cities were like that.

It's certainly something that made Tokyo stand out among other cities even 20 years ago, before huge digital billboards ads became commonplace everywhere. I'm not super bothered by most advertising, it's only shouty/ cringeworthy TV ads and online ads that block content and are for products I have no interest in (often products that I've just bought, but logically aren't going to need again for a long while) that I'd love to see banished.

I can live with ads but living in the city the billboards with leds or spotlights on them are hell. Who doesn’t love being forced to buy blackout curtains so you can sleep.

City life has undoubtedly taken a tole on my mental and physical health in the form of noise and light pollution combined with having zero control over it.

I agree to some degree. A local business that says “bakery” is fine in my eyes. It’s the crazy billboard and flashy signs that should go away.

Funny enough, I agree with you in every context but this one. I don't want ads on tv or the internet, but I love Asian mega cities and think they'd look likely worse without the huge ads, especially the animated ones. Cyberpunk needs ads and I want cyberpunk dialed up to 11.

>they'd look likely worse without the huge ads

I agree with this one. Those flashy things really do cover up the ugly reality, in more ways than one, but they literally do too. But people need incentive to get things done. Broken that are covered up are not gonna get fixed, but if they are one the surface, they might.

Cyberpunk, as much as I love it, I'd treat it like other horror stories. Leave it in the fantasy world.

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