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Comment by cracki | Hacker News Reader

Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.

I don't see ads, thanks to ad blocking tech in browsers and smartphones. Any time that happens to fail and I get to endure an ad, I am amazed that regular people without ad blocking tech can endure this onslaught.

The time to negotiate a "middle ground" is long past. Let's not even entertain that idea.

An acceptable middle ground could have been designated areas for ads, which you have to seek out to see them. Think of the Yellow Pages.

Ad companies need to be reined in. They cannot control themselves. They are lobbying against all limits and controls. The only solution is to eradicate ads entirely and to make sure that anyone who gets that idea will never get it again.

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There needs to be serious reform or just abolition altogether of advertising on things like Smart TVs

We bought a TV for my grandfather in his nursing home as he was dying from Alzheimers. All TVs available now are Smart TVs, which are already difficult to work for the elderly.

I'm visiting my grandmother now and watching the TV we had provided him, and it inserts ads into everything available to watch from the most accessible menu. The last ad block was 8 ads long, during which one of those was repeated twice, and had all the subtlety of a row of slot machines at a casino (I think it was for some silly tablet game which I assume has in-app purchases)

Straight up cruelty that should result in some serious fines or even arrests.

I pretty much make it standard practice to get an apple tv or whatever streaming device for all tvs and not allow internet access to the tvs. You have zero control over the tv, so why subject yourself or others to it instead of getting a $50 to $150 device.

> You have zero control over the tv,

This. This is the problem. TVs with user-hostile firmware are the only options available. Imagine if the only beds available were smart beds that wake you up with advertisements and project ads onto your ceiling while you try to sleep. Honestly it seems like we're almost there

If we had an effective government, this would have already been solved by a FTC issue of fraudulent sale.

If I sell a widget, but do not transfer full control to the buyer, that should be considered a fraudulent sale that was misclassified from a rental.

Same for a computer. Same for a phone. Or a refrigerator. Or a car.

(Old person comment incoming) I remember when working on hardware from the 70's and earlier, the manufacturers would glue in a full schematic on the back plate. Reparability was absolute. Now, its "how can we screw you over with cryptographic signing of individual hardware"

Reparability and ownership go hand in hand. And it also strongly goes towards sustainability and ecology, with not needing as much resources.

But the "Smart TV" in your comment, pcthrowaway, is that in 5 years, the 'Smart' OS will be either so slow to be unusable, die cause a $.10 part failed, or other really dumb ewaste reason.

Absolutely true. I bought a "dumb" Samsung around 2010. It still works to this day. In 2020, I bought a mid-range TV with Android. The computer in it died after 3 years, and I wasn't able to find a replacement at a reasonable cost. I sat on it for 2 years before finally ewasting it, because the wastefulness made me sick. I guess my main point is that it was the "smart" part that failed. If it was just a display, it would almost certainly still be trucking along.

> TVs with user-hostile firmware are the only options available.

There are "business TVs", which are pure displays. Sceptre sells a whole line of dumb TVs. They also sell widescreen computer monitors.

[1] https://www.sceptre.com/

The splash page on that website seems to be primarily AI-generated images. It looks cheap to say the least - such an obvious corner cut it's hard to have confidence in the product.

Because you used to be able to buy TVs that didn't spy on you, and we, as a society, have the power to make that the case again. It should be possible to have a fancy-pants 75-inch OLED TV that does not phone home and spy on you. Full stop.

I think it's pretty clear that voting with your dollar is a lie

I bought a Sony OLED a couple years ago. I was able to set it up in “dumb” mode and all the default apps could be manually removed. It acts like a monitor and shows nothing but our Apple TV at powerup.

The home screen’s just a nice static background with a settings app and nothing else. I never see it unless I press the appropriate button, but it’s nice to know there isn’t an onslaught of junk waiting for me if I do.

YMMV but other brands with Google TV may have similar “dumb” capabilities.

This is irrelevant to what OP said which is that it this should be the default. One anecdote of "with effort and technical expertise I returned the appliance to a workable state" doesn't mean things are ok.

edit: Im not trying to be snarky, I think your reply was genuinely trying to be helpful, but its not ok that we're being sold this crap

I agree it should be the default, but this TV was readily placed into dumb mode at first powerup. Set your country & language, select dumb mode ("Basic TV"), skip WiFi and most would be satisfied with the result.

Some effort's needed to clean up the homescreen, but you never need to see it. Hand your grandparents a basic programmable remote without extras like the home button. They should be good to go.

"Well, you have to jump through all these hoops and have a CS degree and de-solder the radio and then power the TV on carefully and then–"

Yes, it is technically possible to de-fang some TVs, but it should not be necessary.

Until you get a mandatory software update.

Through what means? It’s not on the internet, nor was a connection required for setup.

Cars come with cellular radios now. It’s conceivable that other electronics could start to ship that way.

I think in cases of people with Alzheimer’s or other elderly people who can’t really operate things besides play/stop/next dumb screen isn’t going to work. Mostly because you have to hook up something else that will require additional steps to operate.

My father doesn’t have any serious dementia or signs of Alzheimer’s - he is 65 but typing in anything on keyboard is still a major hassle for him. If he could have play/stop/next button it would work for him.

All TVs?

or just all of the TVs you can pop over to Best Buy or Walmart and toss in your car?

Plenty of non-smart displays out there.

And they cost an arm and a leg. Yes, all TVs. You ought to be able to go to Best Buy or Walmart and buy a TV that doesn't spy on you. That should not be controversial.

Nobody said it was.

At least, not in this subthread.

Can you link me to a "non-smart" TV that can be ordered on the Walmart website? Curious cause I didn't think this was a thing any more, and I wasn't able to find one.

You’re making my point.

Take a half-step beyond the easy-reach (Walmart, BB), and they’re not impossible to find (as you made it seem).

Just…unnecessarily difficult.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-50-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-U5...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46243655

Maybe not plenty, but Sceptre works great for me.

https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...

The fundamental problem here is a little broader than ads, but "ads" mostly cover it. The problem is the commoditization of human attention. The incentive to catch and sell attention is poisonous to all human endeavors. Some things need to grab your attention to fulfill their purpose, I'm not against the idea of something directing a person's attention. Where it becomes a problem is the murky line of that direction of attention being something that is bottled and sold, or otherwise used in the interest of the distracter rather than the distracted.

So ads that someone seeks out of their own volition? Fine. That's just marketing material, and falls in the same category as every product announcement, press release, etc. What if a product catalog is mixed in with coupons or other rewards? Not fine anymore, you've mixed up reward-seeking and information-seeking.

If someone means to direct their attention and gets distracted by an important notice, like "I mean to drive down this road, and the stop sign grabbed my attention," that's also fine. The information is relevant to the human and important for augmenting their intention. But if you download an app and try to do something, only to be met with a banner/popup/whatever informing you of other products on offer by the company? Well, they're not selling your attention to third parties, but they are monetizing it by taking your intention to use one product and attempting to redirect it into a potential purchase of another, so that's out. If you want, you can include a clearly-labelled "our other offerings" section in the app, out of the way, somewhere it would only be encountered by someone seeking it out.

Distracting people cannot be allowed to be one of the main drivers of our economy.

> Distracting people cannot be allowed to be one of the main drivers of our economy.

Sure it can. Apple, Google and Microsoft get millions of impressions every day and everyone accepts it. Just because it's uncomfortable for you to think about doesn't mean that it's not happening, at-scale, this very minute.

"Cannot be allowed" means "We need to stop this" in context, not that they don't believe it's happening.

Well, they cannot stop it. We're already in a post-advertising world and the US has no consumer protection laws to protect your attention.

If your OEM decides to serve you ads, you don't get to complain. The alternative is to buy a device with adblock or Airplane Mode and supposedly this represents a healthy, competitive economy.

Every once in a while we need a general strike which achieves financial destruction of the corrupt who have taken the seat of power.

Okay, go strike. Stop buying iPhones and smart-devices and let me know how many people follow your righteous warpath.

I don't disagree with your thesis. But the time for revolution has long since passed, this admin won't do anything about the ads. Nor will it's constituents.

> But the time for revolution has long since passed

Oh?

Commoditization of human attention is a great explanation

> the commoditization of human attention

It isn’t commoditised. It’s priced to a tee. If you can afford to keep your attention, you do.

The problem is we’ve let sociopaths like Zuckerberg and Mosseri convince us that we’re born into their servitude. That the natural order for our kids is for their attention to be stolen. That their parents have to then pay and work to buy it back.

One that is really insane to me is Ads when driving on the highway. I can’t recall seeing that in Europe, but now in Canada when I take the highway there’s Ads everywhere. Some of them rotate.

Ironically they also have a sign that changes, one of the updates is “don’t drive distracted”… and like, I wasn’t distracted until the sign flashed at me lol.

Honestly. Premier Ford you listening?

As someone who is not Canadian, pretty much the only thing I know about Doug Ford is how actively against road safety Doug Ford is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Ford#Bike_infrastructure

What you are observing is the trick the industry used to get approval for changing LED billboards— they “donate” say fifteen hours per month to public service announcements. This kind of concession is gold to an ambitious public servant, the old prohibitions never stood a chance. The PSA could be “stop electronic billboards” but that was the way they got through high-friction public processes.

Good org on the other side of the issue: Scenic America: https://www.scenic.org/why-scenic-conservation/billboards-an...

My state has a neat legal trick that applies to most major highways: You can set up a big tall sign to advertise but it has to be for a product or service drivers can stop and buy on the premises.

This removes much of the incentive for spamming enormous signs and renting them out to the highest bidder. That may change if it becomes really cheap to put a functional vending machine below.

Europe has billboards too. Perhaps not everywhere, and not as bad as some other places, but it does exist, and it is infuriating. I don't think I've seen them flash intentionally, but nobody seems to be too interested in fixing broken LED bulbs.

I even saw a "you should be looking at the road" ad on one of those billboards.

I saw many billboard ads on Portugal (Europe) highways. As a Canadian, it seemed like a lot.

Legal ads in product catalogues only. Product catalogues are actually useful and nobody is subjected to them unless they chose to seek one out and pick it up willingly.

I'm glad to hear someone else come to this as the solution for ads.

Wait, what? I'm confused. Is the entire product catalogue considered an ad? Or do you mean parts of a product catalogue can contain adverts? I'd argue a product catalogue is not advertising at all.

I consider each product listing in a catalogues to be ads, or perhaps the whole catalogues is one big aggregate ad. Either way, I'm fine with them. Product catalogues are mostly innocuous and usually provide more empirical product information than other forms of advertisement.

Cool, I'm fine with them too. As long as they're not mailed out without consent.

Anderton's (a music retailer in the UK) has an enormously popular YouTube channel (1M subs) which is basically just them demoing their stock while shooting the breeze. It's 100% an advertisement, but it's the sort that most people (including myself, who otherwise hates ads) is fine with because you have to seek it out.

This is the type of advertising I actually like.

I'm a huge buff for music gear/tech. I love seeing the newest plugins, pedals, software. I actively seek it out. I know demos of products are effectively advertisements, but they are the right type of ads and aimed at a crowd that seeks info the right way and likely is a higher probability of making a purchase.

Of course it's advertising. It's telling you about products you can buy, pushed by people who want you to buy those products, and they can pay money to be on an earlier page (we should probably ban that). But the general idea of a product catalogue shouldn't be illegal even if ads are illegal, because it's actually useful and non-invasive.

I need people to give this sort of idea more serious thought.

I honestly don't think it's an insane proposition and we've let ad companies go too far. Anything they stick their hands in gets worse, full stop.

The main arguments I hear against banning all ads is that it will hurt small businesses, a better solution might be to ban all adds for companies making above X amount per year, or even better: create systems where users pay for ads themselves, then the incentives would switch to be in favor of consumers.

In any case, totally agree, ad companies are out of control, I'm hoping more Kagi like services start appearing soon.

Banning companies above a size still allows a unhappy medium where only "small businesses" BUY the same horrible ads and we drop one or two Army or IBM ads from the lineup.

No because small businesses arent hiring ad agencies who spent years studying psychology in order to manipulate people into doing what the company wants, not what the person wants. This is very much an issue of scale

That market is made when you ban "large companies" from making ads.

Not everything has to be black and white, there is middle ground for improvement. I'm not sure anyone loves the same MegaCorp™ ad plastered all over buildings, highways and stoplights.

The size, depth, and reach of the advertising industry is a direct result of the amount of money injected into it. The current ad industry is effective, awful, anti-competitive and resembles more of a cancer at this point than it's intended purpose to provide useful information.

I thought you were being sarcastic at the start.

Vermont bans billboards on high ways. It's so nice.

My parents were architects and my sister and I lived our first few years in Honolulu before moving to the SF Bay Area. There were no billboards in Hawaii, and I recall distinctly the first drive from SFO the the East Bay. I was unable to avoid reading and staring at every billboard next to the freeway and it literally made me throw up. I didn't understand what was happening.

Of course, I was quickly conditioned off of that response to billboards, which I consider natural.

I think a decent middle ground would be to allow contextual advertising and ban personalized advertising. That is, it would be fine to show you ads based on where you are, what you are doing or what you are searching on the internet, but not based on what you did on another website or where you had lunch yesterday.

Of course this would add friction for finding the appropriate targets but it would still allow pretty decent business for adtech. it just would be a bit different.

(I'm pretty sure that the line between contextual and personalized ads is blurry, but I leave that to be solved by lawmakers and judges. Its kind of their core competence. And to be clear, what I personally think should be done would be much, much stricter ban, but this is a compromise proposal I think should be agreeable by all parties who are the slightest interested in the harm current adtech is doing)

> Time to ban all adverts everywhere.

Taxing them is an option. Disallow advertising and marketing as a deductible business expense. You can still advertise, but it comes out of the bottom line. This encourages putting more money into product value and less into promotion.

The problem isn't just "ads exist", it’s that ads have become a business model that rewards being as intrusive and manipulative as possible

This has always been the case though. They just got better tools over time.

A simpler solution is to allow the device owner to turn off ads. Ads on purchased devices should be opt-in, not default and not mandatory.

Unfortunately, the whole point is that along with the fridge/whatever tech you purchase a billboard and willingly bring ads into your home. Of course ads on purchased devices should be mandatory AND we customers will soon be expected to pay a "subscription fee" to temporarily unsubscribe from the ads. What kind of company would possibly make ads opt-in? IMO allowing the owner to turn off ads is a problem (for the company), not a solution

That's fine. They can simply charge for the product what it costs to make, like they always did before, and if they find that nobody uses the "enable ads" button (because why would they?) they can save some maintenance effort by removing that button. They might even find the fridge doesn't need a wifi chip and can be cheaper.

Most products are not priced to cost.

> What kind of company would possibly make ads opt-in?

Amazon has for years: Kindle with ads on the lock screen is $20 cheaper than without: https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Amazon-Kindle-Paperwhite-glar...

It's not as easy with some digital devices (even TVs these days), but fridges are a category where I can decisively say people who don't want ads can just buy a version without ads.

If a fridge maker wants to sell you a cheaper fridge subsidized by ads, I don't think that's a problem as long as tracking is optional.

That’s true as long as there are options that don’t have ads.

There used to be TVs that don’t have ads or tracking, but that’s not the case anymore (or so I’ve heard; haven’t bought a TV personally yet). I don’t see why fridges would be immune to that.

At least with fridges a screen is extra cost to be built in.

On other hand with TVs unless you are doing just a monitor, you need something to control it. And I mean like digital TV, selecting input, possibly show some overlay or controls. And at that point just slapping a computer in it is lot faster development cycle. And then you might as well support streaming services as general population seem to want those.

Smart TVs became the norm when they reached the same price point as normal TVs. That's when the ad bullshit came up. You can still buy smart TVs without ads though, going for Android TV and put it in "basic TV mode" will disable pretty much all the crapware. You won't be able to use the TV to watch Netflix or HBO without a third party streaming dongle, though, which is probably why nobody does it.

The smart part of a fridge isn't inherent to the technology necessary (unlike DRM'ed TV streams and apps). In fact, bolting the display (or ice maker for that matter) into the door makes it conduct more heat and therefore perform worse. I don't know about other economic regions, but here the energy label is quite clearly visible on the front of every fridge, so they can't hide the power waste either.

I have yet to see a smart fridge cheaper than a similar normal fridge. Partially because manufacturers seem to market this crap like a luxury feature.

The cheapest smart fridge I can find on a reliable web store, at least here, is three times the price of a normal fridge (€1500 vs €500). Even in the huge "American style" fridges, there's a sizable price difference (€1500 vs €1000) before you get to the first smart fridge.

I think we are about 10 years away from dumb fridges only being available from specialized catering or kitchen supply distributors. The screens are coming, they start as the 'luxury' option and then filter down to every single model.

Consider - I vehemently do not want a computer screen in my vehicle. I specifically bought a particular model in 2019 without one. If I want to upgrade, I am unable to exercise my preference though, as new cars without screens are no longer offered for sale.

Screens are cheaper than physical dials, and these days touch screens are cheaper than buttons. That's why car manufacturers have moved to screen dashboards; they've been trying that since the 80s with LED speed indicators, and I can't recall the last physical odometer I've seen in a car. Cars already have navigation consoles built in these days (whether they're Android Auto/CarPlay or something custom) so using those screens as a place to put cheap software buttons to replace expensive physical ones was a matter of time.

There is no cost advantage to putting a screen in front of a fridge.

There's a financial incentive if they're displaying ads or collecting and selling data.

The word for software that intentionally subverts the owners intent is called malware, and it's already illegal in the United States. We don't even need any new laws, we just need to be brave enough to enforce them.

I tend to think that banning things is almost never the right answer. Who gets to decide what counts as an ad? What's stopping governments from designating speech they don't like as an ad?

I agree with you on the total ad ban, but this has more about schizophrenia than ads. I've had to care for someone with schizoaffective disorder and she would tell me the smoke detectors were spying on us because of the red light in it, so we had to cover it with electrical tape or she would become too distressed. She told me the cats were spies with CIA microchips in them. The fridge ad is incidental -- if weren't the fridge it would have been something else.

There are billions of dollars motivated against this outcome

There are billions of lives motivated for it.

No there aren't. There are not billions of people motivated for the total elimination of all advertisements everywhere. The vast majority of humans do not care one way or another, and most of those who dislike advertising probably wouldn't support banning them entirely.

Yes. There most certainly are. The vast majority of humans are not benefiting from it and are therefore motivated against it.

Also, they do care. They just might not be consciously aware of the damage it causes.

>The vast majority of humans are not benefiting from it and are therefore motivated against it.

The vast majority of humans don't benefit from most things, but they are not therefore motivated against most things. That's not how motivation works.

>Also, they do care they just might not be consciously aware of the damage it causes.

So the one thing the entire human race agrees on is that advertising is evil, just unconsciously? They don't realize it but somehow you do?

No, sorry. I have assume you're trolling. Good show, you managed to annoy me.

You must own shares in Google. The vast majority of humans are motivated against inequality. Advertising creates a larger wealth gap. The fact that you're annoyed by me says a lot more about the type of person you are than anything else. And no I'm not "trolling". Grow up and reconsider your insane position.

The vast majority of humans don't consider advertisement to be as fundamental a form of inequality as you seem to.

The fact that you can't comprehend my disagreement in good faith demonstrates that there's no point in continuing this conversation. No, I don't own shares in Google, nor am I insane. I think you're the one who needs to broaden their horizons a bit. Good day.

>The vast majority of humans are motivated against inequality

Citation please.

Humans are an apathetic bunch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Mn2NbjlqU

> The vast majority of humans are not benefiting from it and are therefore motivated against it.

The vast majority of humans do not benefit from you, personally, owning a car, but that doesn't mean we're all motivated to call a towing company to your house.

I floated an idea past my partner- facebook without ads. They responded without hesitation "but I like the ads!"

My wife also likes ads. It drives me crazy. Half of the time she’s on instagram, she’s paging through ads. At least we have agreed to minimize our children’s exposure to ads. For example if there’s an educational show only on YouTube I will download it and they watch it offline. We will never buy a kitchen appliance with ads on it.

I think, if given the conscious choice, people would choose to not have ads as they are now. The point is, that choice is not given, and most people don't know how to eliminate them from their lives, or that they even have a choice

A lot happens in the world because people are passive, or prioritize their attention on other things, not that they are "okay" with it. If it was made easy for them, they'd choose it.

Lobbying ensures such choices are taken away from people, outside of the envelop of actionability by most people.

The only people who like ads are the ones running them.

Back in the day, I chose to buy the Kindle with ads to save a few dollars. (I think it was $10 cheaper; looks like it's $20 now[0].) I 100% found this a worthwhile trade-off, and so did thousands of other consumers.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Amazon-Kindle-Paperwhite-glar...

if you really liked ads you would have paid extra

I like that ads saved me money on a Kindle. They had an upside for me, and a downside, and the upside was worth more to me than the downside.

it sounds like the money was the upside, not the ads!

Sure, in much the same was as lack of food spoilage an upside, not the big metal box I put the food in. But since one is a direct result of the other, we typically treat it as an upside of the thing causing the upside.

somebody had to effectively pay you to look at the ads, and you had to pay someone else for your refrigerator. does that distinction make sense?

[flagged]

True. I’m rooting for the lives as well.

Relevant read (not my own): https://simone.org/advertising/

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

My own hypothesis is that our lives will become so saturated with ads that they will completely lose their effectiveness, advertisers and platforms will finally be forced to acknowledge that they aren't effective, and a monetization crisis will follow. Subscriptions everywhere.

Sounds like Japan.

However, their ads are crazy "in your face." They haven't given up, at all. They doubled down.

It’s more like drugs in that they will be less effective , but not completely, so we will continue to get more exposures as advertisers compete for attention

They won't lose effectiveness because once in a while you will actually find something you want, click on the ad, and buy it. The reason there's ads everywhere is because they actually do work. It's not a hypothesis.

I didn't claim what you think I did. I said that I hypothesize that they will become increasingly ineffective with time. Data already shows it's trending in that direction.

The harm they cause is so massive compared to the small amount of benefit. Everyone got along just fine when they had to go look for the things they wanted (like with a search engine!), or they did without.

> Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.

This is a terrible idea. Users should have choice & control.

I'll say something that on the surface level seems controversial, at least to HN: Some users prefer ads. And those users should be allowed that choice.

Ads are part of a value exchange. It's disingenuous, imho, to frame the question as "Do you want 'X' with or without ads?" Absent any other criteria most people would naturally say without ads. But I feel it's disingenuous because it overlooks the value exchange.

A better example: Would you prefer Netflix with ads for $7.99/month with ads, or $17.99/month without ads?

A lot of people are choosing the ads tiers. It's the fastest growing tier. Personally, I have the ads-free tier, but I can make that choice for myself. The people wanting the ads tier should be able to make that choice too. I don't see the value in taking it away from them.

I don't deny there are bad experiences. I do think Samsung is making a mistake & damaging customer trust with the refrigerator thing. I likely won't be buying one in the future.

Like anything, advertising can be done well or it can be done badly. I don't use Instagram myself, but I have a lot of friends who love fashion who do & say they're on their to follow brands & find deals. They find the ads a good way to discover some new fashion product & snag a good discount.

Likewise Amazon sent a catalog to my house. My kids are using it to think of what they want to ask Santa. A catalog is basically a book of ads.

This is one of the major political problems of the 21st century, convincing people that many of the problems they see in society are in fact free choices made by individuals, and not necessarily something that needs to be fixed from the top down. The human tendency to impose one's own preferences on others is strong, and it seems every generation needs to learn the lesson anew.

Freedom from ads seems like a fundamental human right, and necessary for freedom of thought. "Unskippable" ads seem incompatible with freedom of thought.

> "Users should have choice & control."

Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries, some sort of severe regulation seems necessary.

> Freedom from ads seems like a fundamental human right, and necessary for freedom of thought.

This doesn't make any sense to me.

> Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries

Sure you can.

You can get a more expensive Netflix tier.

You can pay for YouTube Premium.

You can choose not engage with businesses that have a monetization model you dislike.

I am not able to travel to work or anywhere else without seeing ads, which manipulate my thoughts in unpleasant and often offensive ways. If samsung and similar companies achieve their goal, screens with ads will become more numerous and impossible to avoid, even at home.

These and other types of "unskippable ads" violate my personal freedoms and should rejected by society.

netflix and youtube are cute examples of paying to get fewer ads, but you do not get very far without finding product placements or other types of ads in their videos.

I'm not sure how to express this, but you're not entitled to only see things in life that you find pleasing. You might as well complain you sometimes see ugly people.

> These and other types of "unskippable ads" violate my personal freedoms and should rejected by society.

It's funny you keep bring up unskippable ads. I remember when YouTube invented the skippable ad format about ~15 years ago. How quickly it became a right & a guaranteed personal freedom.

Then there needs to be stronger campaigns against addictive advertising (ironic) but we also need to enforce education about malicious advertising and marketing. People need the knowledge of how to defend themselves against advertising weapons. The current status quo is everyone for themselves. Even the too few volunteer shepherds (you) have no pull against giant money machines.

> Time to ban all adverts everywhere.

I think that is too much, but it should be almost entirely banned, with only very limited exceptions. Advertisements which you are specificailly looking for, such as catalogs for those specific things, could be one of those exceptions.

However, even regardless of these exceptions, there will need to be limits, such as: do not be dishonest, do not emit light, do not waste power, do not spy on you, do not block the view of other things, do not try to prevent you from seeing them, they cannot pay you or give you discounts for seeing the ads, etc.

> The time to negotiate a "middle ground" is long past.

I think it will need to be a "nearly banned" ground rather than the "middle" ground, though.

> Ad companies need to be reined in. They cannot control themselves.

This part I agree with.

> The only solution is [...] to make sure that anyone who gets that idea will never get it again.

But, this part, I think that won't work. Even if it does work (which it won't), it is bad for freedom of speech and freedom of opinion.

Ads are the main drivers of ruining the Internet that we once enjoyed.

I agree, ads are inserted everywhere, also hidden, and has surpassed the physiological threshold and brain barriers for a more healthy life (e.g. attention and feelings).

Ads exist because options are available. There exists the need to stand out and differentiate the moment there are more than one choice for the consumers. Commercial ads didn't exist under communism for a reason.

Your resume is ad. Cover letter is ad. Think about different word choices you made when creating your resume?

If explicit advertising doesn't exist then implicit one will. Which one is worse? I'm sure you've seen all of the product placements on movies and shows.

Product placement is already illegal unless explicitly signposted (a specific state mark being shown on the screen while it is happening) in certain types of shows, in the EU at least.

Of course we all know that submitting a list of things you can do to places that have explicitly requested such lists is the same thing as blasting your crap in front of the eyes of everyone you can. No difference at all.

This could happen with anything when someone has a mental illness. Should anything triggering also get banned?

I agree that we should also ban other forced and unannounced updates to appliances and other consumer devices, especially ones that change the UI flows, yes.

I think Advertising is the issue where I have the most radical views. I don't think it is a terribly controversial view anymore.

In the past when taking to people about this I have asked them to come up with an example of something funded by advertising that has not been corrupted by it. In recent years nobody even wants to take up that challenge, it is far more common for them to concede I'm right on that point.

It's a definite shift 8n public opinion but I'm still a bit wary when people change their views to agree with me when much of their world view seems unfounded. I don't really accept the us vs them narrative. I don't think billionaires are necessarily evil, I certainly don't think the solution to hyper-capitalism is to abandon all elements of society (which seems to be a growing belief), or that socialism an capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. I'd like people to agree with me about the properties of a thing rather than by whether proponents of it are on you tr8be or an opposing tribe.

I'd like a free society where that freedom is limited only by the harm you can do to others. Prevention of harm should be through robust and evidence based regulation.

I think there is a good case to be made that all advertising is harmful to some extent. There are certainly examples that are clearly harmful evading any form of regulation. When people break the rules that currently exist, what motivation do the6 hav3 to mitigate their behaviour? This is a failure of government. I'm not sure if adding more rules that can be broken with impunity would help.

Regulators need the power to inflict punishment that rule breakers actually feel. Enough that it is logical for even an amoral entity to obey the rules. That doesn't seem like a complicated thing, but I feel like it would go a long way healing society.

The current admin will get right on that …

To be clear, Dems are about as unlikely to do this as the Trump administration is. This is the sort of generational reform that requires a redefining of a political party.

It's a worldwide issue. Even the OP link was to an UK-based subreddit.

I love the idea, but our whole world is built on advertising. A world without ads does not seem possible. The internet mostly works only because of advertisements.

The Internet worked before advertising.

It was different, but it was great. I would absolutely go back.

I would not go back. YouTube is a wonderful thing that I can't afford to pay for, and I don't want to live without. There are so many creators I love that would not be able to create and share beautiful things if they didn't get ad money. It's not all bad.

yeah but what if (just hear me out) we just SELL our content. Money exchanged for goods rendered. Why subsidize this exchange with ads?

That's what YouTube premium is. The fact that someone with no money gets access to all of YouTube seems like a win to me. If the only way to access was premium the world would be a worse place wouldn't it?

I agree that it's not all bad.

But if I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose no ads.

And that's only comparing "then" to "now". I'm confident that "now" will get worse in the future, making "then" all the more appealing!

I'm all for the idea of small content creators being able to afford to create their work. I wish content creation did not attract so many people who only do it for money, though. Maybe this would be achievable if the rewards were lower. Advertising sucks all the air out of the room for alternative funding mechanisms. If ads were eliminated, there would be other mechanisms.

However, back in reality, I'll concede that (e.g.) Google's massive ad revenue has given them the ability to try a thousand other things, a handful of which will be long-term valuable to the world. But the cost is immense.

But you are paying for it. Do you really think Google would just provide that service for free?

I would too. Society would not.

I don't think this Society guy was actually asked.

The Internet has had ads since the advent of the world wide web, arguably longer.

I loved Usenet, but I also appreciated being able to have a personal webpage for free as a kid, and that was ad-supported.

The web precedes commercialization, but many tons of money were pumped into the web post-commercialization, so a lot changed quickly after that.

There were free ways to get on the net, and to host web pages, before 1995. And for many years after that, you could pay for ISP access, which would come with the ability to host pages.

We're still paying for ISP access, we just get fewer services with it. That could change.

Of course it's possible. We just don't have the courage to make it happen.

> A world without ads does not seem possible. The internet mostly works only because of advertisements.

Wow you were fed that lie and you swallowed it right up. It's actually scary that you've been so thoroughly convinced that you've fallen into learned helplessness as a result. Of course it isn't impossible to have a world without ads (at least not intrusive/unwanted ones). The internet didn't have ads when it started and doesn't need them now. No, we don't have to surrender ourselves to constant abuse by adverting, or abandon entire mediums of communication just to rid ourselves of them.

What happened to the local newspaper when most advertising went broadcast or digital? There are some local newspapers who clung onto life, but without ads local print news went the way of the dodo.

Ads are speech. Replace all mention of "ads" in your post with "speech I don't like" and see how it reads.

Ads are speech until they are intrusive, until they track you across websites, until they violate your privacy.

It's one thing to have a block of HTML dedicated to ads, and another to have YOUR shit running on my machine WITHOUT my consent.

It is with your consent.

You continue to visit these websites.

If you don’t want their code running on your machine, simply don’t send a GET request.

I assume you forgot the /s.

Otherwise this is a very weak argument. Using the Internet is approximately mandatory in our current society. "Don't use the Internet" is not useful advice.

Sounds like the risk of seeing an advertisement is probably worth the benefit of using the internet then.

It's not an "either/or", as you seem to keep implying.

Yeah it is

Infrastructure and content isn’t free. Either you pay for it by watching ads or you don’t get it at all.

You can pay with money.

You’re welcome to!

If I buy a book, I'm not required to read any part of it. I'm allowed to control what I read.

You’re allowed to use an adblocker.

You might be safe as long as the ad is on a website but stupid laws that shouldn't exist like the DMCA can make it illegal to block ads when you have to circumvent a technological measure in order to block those ads. Blocking ads and the steps needed to block them might also violate some product's EULA which could result in civil judgements against you.

> DMCA can make it illegal to block ads when you have to circumvent a technological measure in order to block those ads. Blocking ads and the steps needed to block them might also violate some product's EULA which could result in civil judgements against you.

Your issue there is with the government. No disagreement from me in this regard :)

The problem of course isn't the fact that government and laws exist. Most of us are happy that we have government and laws. The alternative is very ugly and doesn't lend itself to progress or prosperity.

The problem is that our government was allowed to be bribed/corrupted by corporate interests to pass bad laws designed to protect their profits and enforce control by taking freedom from consumers. The true villain here isn't government, government was just the tool they leveraged against us.

It's supposed to be our job to insist that our government work for the interests of "we the people" and we failed. The solution now is to get rid of corrupt politicians and the bad laws they passed and replace them with good ones that preserve our freedoms and don't put corporate interest ahead of the people's.

Sadly, our entire political system has been carefully refined over centuries to make it harder and harder to keep our government accountable to the people but hopefully it's not too late to change that situation within the democratic framework we've created.

If the rule you followed lead you to this, of what use was the rule?

“We just need to do it right this time and surely it’ll work!”

Maybe the whole idea of restricting adults from engaging in consensual transactions isn’t the greatest?

The founding fathers knew that the system wasn't perfect and would need to be modified as things changed and flaws were discovered. Making it work by "doing it right this time" was the point. That's not a sign of a bad system, it's a good thing!

Of course, nothing about government itself prevents adults from engaging in consensual transactions, and only a tiny percentage of laws do. Sometimes those laws are stupid and sometimes they are good to have. The original plan (and I still think it was a good one) was that we would have the ability to remove the bad laws and add good ones as needed. That process mostly even works, but with corruption and bribery in our government going unchecked it usually just works for a small few and the rest of us get shafted as a result.

That is a very weak argument. I don't have any way to decline seeing the ads before I do. I can't disable tracking by disabling js because, like a parasite, tracking software has uses what is necessary technology for websites to function.

Sounds like to you the use of the internet is worth the risk of being tracked.

There needs to be a distinction between "free speech" and "bought speech".

The term free speech is misleading. It is really freedom of speech. I.e. someone who says something doesn't have to be afraid of prosecution because of what they said.

It isn't the speech that is being protected it is the person who says it.

Using the term "free speech" creates those weird scenarios where now we have someone argue that the US Constitution mandates ads to be everywhere.

Also porn is related to free speech.

There is no need to be a puritan against any form of pornography to expect consensus against having most addictive/eye-catching porn ostensibly displayed everywhere in the public sphere. And it’s perfectly clear that it’s actually possible to be simultaneously fine with people watching all the porn they want in their private sphere if they are warned willing adults.

Time, place, and manner restrictions already exist on speech. I'm not an anti-ad absolutist, but it would be perfectly fine by me, and most people not financially incentivized otherwise, to place time, place, and manner restrictions on ads. I'd love a blanket ban on billboards, for example.

Ads are not speech. Money is not speech. The map is not the territory.

If you change words in a text then the meaning changes. Even if all ads are speech (I don't think they are, but I don't need to argue that), not all speech is advertisement. You can say your piece in one of many other forms that doesn't hijack my attention.

I didn't say that all speech is ads, I said that ads are speech.

?? I know you didn’t. I don’t think my post is hard to understand. The point of freedom of speech is the free expression of ideas and opinions. You can do that in many ways. You could write a book. You could email the editor of a news website. You could write a song. In my ideal society, though, you would not be allowed to put it on a massive billboard that everyone has to look at all the time. I don’t think this curtails anyone’s freedom of speech.

Not all speech should be allowed.

> But who decides what is legal then?

Laws and judges.

... written and appointed, respectively, by the worst politicians you can imagine.

That's the case currently! What I said is why those laws and judges don't ban advertising!

Nope. Something only a person benefiting from such cancer that ad business is would say that (and there are tons of those here on HN lets be honest, better half of faangs has ad-paid ultra high salaries and bonuses).

Ultimately its just another manipulation to part you with your money in other ways than you intended, nothing more and nothing less.

Ah yes, a great point. We must protect the freedom to heap shit on other humans

No, ads are not the same thing as free speech at all. "Free speech" is the right to say anything to anyone *who is willing to listen*. You don't have a right to come into my home and tell me your ideas about immigration policy - though you do have a right to talk about immigration policy in other places!

The government has to guarantee that there are places for people to say things. But the government does not have to guarantee that there are places for people to say things *in my own home*. And similarly, I think most public spaces should be free from ads and other 'attention pollution'. If a company wants to write about their own product, that's fine, but they must do so in a place where other people are free to seek them out, as opposed to doing so in a way that forces the writing upon others without consent.

Underaged porn is speech. Replace all mention of “underaged porn” in your post with “speech I don’t like” and see how it reads.

Certainly you can see the difference between that and advertising.

Dov Charney couldn't.

> Ads are speech.

Companies should have more limited speech than individuals. Nerfing the concept of “corporate personhood” will be a key part of fixing our problems IMHO.

So the US government can't punish you for speaking, and they can't punish someone else for speaking on your behalf. They can, however, punish you for speaking in exchange for money, speaking words you don't believe (advertising, lying). They can punish you for trying to brainwash people (the difference between advertising and propaganda is who is speaking and what they get from it, and why). They can punish you for forcing others to listen to your words (my neighbor playing music at night). They can punish you for making unfair deals. Most of this is not usually applied to private speech, but the right to free speech does not prevent it. You cannot be punished for attempting to speak in general, however there are absolutely limits.

Ads really aren't that bad. Targeted ads may even help you discover products you'll enjoy.

The ad in the article is pretty obviously an ad to anyone that can read the words, "New Series. Start Watching".

Ads like these that randomly display during idle is hardly what I consider invasive.

Hopefully OP's sister gets her mental health under control, but I wouldn't immediately raise pitch forks to ban an entire industry vital to the economy and business-consumer communication.

We have AI deepfake celebrities selling boner pills on YouTube.

Ads absolutely are that bad

> hardly what I consider invasive

This is an ad in someone's kitchen in their home. How can it get more invasive?

And a banner ad may display on a laptop in your home, what's your point? Location or device type matters not. This ad doesn't interrupt the user or demand any attention.

I am now appreciating the spectrum of ad acceptance. I am closer to the "billboards shouldn't be allowed" end of the spectrum.

An ad sitting on a screen in my personal space sounds like a dystopian novel.

> And a banner ad may display on a laptop in your home

I call this invasive too. That is why I use uBlock.

> This ad doesn't interrupt the user or demand any attention.

Tell that to anyone with ADHD.

Why should one have to endure the intrusion? Why does every product need adverts as it seems to be the place society is going? They are that bad and their place is only potentially in the places that people are looking for said products.

When every product has adverts, is it a choice any longer? Even finding devices, like TV's without ads is more difficult( no on is advertising them :) ) and paying more is often not an option.

Don't want businesses to communicate with me, thanks. So entitled!

Wasn't the refrigerator trying to communicate with her the best way it could?

No wonder people could think it's trying to do that, because it's true.

>mistakes smart fridge ad for psychotic episode (reddit.com)

OTOH, when you put it like that it would also be easy to get the idea that your fridge was the one having the psychotic episode ;)

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There are NO ads that are good. I will die on this hill

Awareness ads. See breast cancer awareness, vaccination etc.

That phrasing, tho:

Hopefully OP's sister gets her mental health under control...

Not: Hopefully we get control over risking OP's sister's mental health

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