But I just don't see an alternative, and I don't imagine how one can draw a line between what's good and what isn't. In a sense, there cannot be good ads by definition. In a perfect world, there is no ads, because there is no direct competition — and that's the only way. There is only 1 laundry powder, so you don't have to choose. There may be several laundry powders, each one being the best for a specific type of clothing. And there may be even several laundry powders for each type, one simply being cheaper than the other. But there is always one definitive answer, to which one is the best, so you can make your choice just applying the appropriate filters in your groceries app. Similarly, when you choose a smartphone, you don't really need reminded about samsung being the best everywhere you go: you just go to gsmarena (or such), use some filters and make an informed choice. If an app/consultant/oracle/search engine can truly allow you to choose what's best for you, nobody would think about it as an advertisement, and nobody would need to place it anywhere, because you'll consciously ask it when you need an advice.

Ads are not about that. They are about shouting your product name loud enough to substitute or even obstruct making an informed choice. This is pretty much necessary, when you have 20 laundry powder brands, that make essentially the same product, neither being the best for anyone. And while it could be unnecessary when selling a phone (since all of them are actually different, even if only in how they look), it isn't in the current market, since they need to persuade you that you need a new phone.

So, all ads are bad, but they are unavoidable in a free-market economics, where competition exists. And controlling them doesn't sound ok to me. To be fair, I'm somewhat libertarian-minded in general, so of course it doesn't sound ok to me, but, seriously, where should one draw the line? Is product-placement in movies ok? Is a guy shouting on a street for people come into a restaurant ok? Sure, there is a lot of gradient in-between all this and spoiling the city landscape or even drawing coca cola banners with lasers on the night's sky. But then regulating such things isn't really about regulating ads, since this could be about art projects as well. And, furthermore, one could just call coca-cola banner an art project anyway.

So, I don't see what should I be fighting against, and how should I do that. I appreciate that somebody out there is concerned and stands against evil ad-corporations, but I'm almost holding back to not call it futile.

That said, I would always want to live in a city in which advertisers are constantly fighting each other to get everyone's attention with ads, in every possible way, to the extent permitted by reasonable zone/cosmetic regulations[a], because the alternative is often symptomatic of economic stagnation or even disaster.

Anecdotally, a city without ads is a city without economic growth. Compare:

* Cities in the former Soviet Union: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=soviet%20union%20ci...

* Cities in North Korea: https://www.google.com/search?q=north+korea+city+streets&tbm...

* Cities in East Germany before reunification: https://www.google.com/search?q=east+germany+city+streets+be...

to, say,

* Peking streets: https://www.google.com/search?q=peking+streets&tbm=isch

* Tokyo streets: https://www.google.com/search?q=tokyo+streets&tbm=isch

* Times Square: https://www.google.com/search?q=times+square+nyc&tbm=isch

--

[a] For example, in the US it is virtually impossible to display ads on residential streets, because doing so requires getting explicit permission from local government bodies like a neighborhood commission.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-lyndon...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/curious-canberra/2017-0...

We went all-in on this advertising based economy and no one really wants it but the advertisers.

The anti-billboard movement, adopted by a few cities such as Geneva[0], is a good step towards less visual pollution.

[0] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/directdemocracy/geneva-z%C3%A9r...

I am thinking at a partial solution(emphasize on partial), offer the users a non-tracking account(Free) , you still give them targeted ads but using a non tracking method like a survey at account creation, options for the user to tell you that he does not like this type of ad, options for the user to tell you what kind of ads he wants to see (like I could accept non-animated ads, software related, local business related, technology related, and article related ads). But all of this would be impossible if most of the tracking is for anti-fraud , then you would need some DRMed browsers to confirm you probably are a human.

“Push it over,” he said.

“You,” she said. “You did most of the work.”

“It’s your birthday.”

-Monkey Wrench Gang

If it sounds dystopian, well.. once we're used to it, having to experience the ugliness of an unfiltered world would surely seem more dystopian. Right?

The VR goggle / IRL ad blocking is an interesting idea. I immediately jump to fear that something politically sensitive could be censored. However, I suppose we still have that issue in online ad blocking.

Are there any known examples of censorship of content critical of $GOV being applied to an ad-blocker? Any crowd sourced list could in theory be vulnerable to censorship.

It would be nice once AR glasses come. Although they probably won't be able to black things out (unless they also have an LCD layer to darken certain pixels) as well as a colour layer. Life online has improved so much with adblockers. I literally rarely see ads anymore online or on TV.

[1] https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=HTES19380414.2.41&e=-------en--2...

It also makes a difference that they can't put too much text on them, because they're too far away for you to be able to read that. So you have visually smaller billboards with simpler messages on them. Driving across Iowa is more pleasant because of this.

or watch Steve Mann's explaination what the ey tap is good for: https://youtu.be/DiFtmrpuwNY

I guess unfortunately the holo lense and alike will be rather used to inject ads to reality

So there are "adblocks" in cities, they're just done in a much better way than on the web: the ads aren't created at all instead of forcing citizens to spend time fighting an individual war against them.

If the equivalent augmented reality technology were developed, I'm unsure of what grounds objections would stand on. If someone wants to go about with video goggles which replace billboards with waterfalls or wildflowers, go for it. Develop the technology and release it.

https://ublockorigin.com/

I do sometimes antiadvertisement. I see anoying ads? I will write those companies. Works best when cc as many mail addresses you can find from them.

I also don't think most advertising is fair anyway. Most companies can't afford it, you actually don't see a lot of different ads as well.

It's always magnum ice cream, cigarettes, some weird hipster new thing no one needs.

The analogue of blocking ads in real life is physically removing, destroying, or defacing them.

Want something like that check out drab soviet era cities were advertising was banned.

Banksy certainly seems to have thin skin if he gets hurt feelings over adverts. Fuck that too, I'm responsible for my own feelings.

Now I think that this isn't a problem that needs a technology solution, but instead needs a civic and social strategy.

Ads are a huge drain on our collective mental space, for no benefit to most people.

The goal of the system is to mediate every interaction with digital technology and then leverage that mediation to become an ad delivery platform.

Fight it.

fig1 is an any billboard ads replaced with a xterm to show inbox or whatever.

it worked well in labs and constrained environment. didn’t work IRL.

should work today IRL with 1k lines of code with modern hardware + algos/models.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.58...

Seems bananas to me for your entire functionality be dependent on third parties.

Result.

If getting rid of ads means the poor will be worse off why do so many well intentioned people support this position?

They gotta make money to keep up somehow, and if they can't do it through ads, they will do it through subscription.

Once in a while, I enable adblock detector, and do not allow usrers with adblocks use the service. I wish everyone was doing that.

When you see someone willing to give you a car (or anything else), but they want money in exchange (i.e. sell it to you), you understand, that it is wrong to take the car without giving them money (i.e. stealing).

But when you see someone willing to give you an article, a poem, a song, a funny video, but they want you to watch the ad in exchange, lots of people think it is fine to break their conditions.

It is extremely easy to detect ad blockers on the web. I wish website creators stopped tolerating ad blockers. People would finally learn to watch ads, or pay for stuff, and the creators would be able to create much better content.

  github
  google analytics
  facebook
  stackpath
  wikimedia
  google adwords
  google fonts
  amazon ads
  (a few others I dont recognise)
  and, of course, the companies that you use to collect "consent"...

  criteo
  33across
  openx
  adxpremium
  setupad
  4dex
  adnxs
  casalemedia
  pubmatic
  emxdgt
  rubiconproject
  districtm
  lijit

These networks are able to identify me by a cookie (and other techniques), so they can compile my activity on YOUR site into a log of my activities across multiple sites which they "provide their ads" on. They can absolutely identify you as an individual - google, facebook, etc, are ones that people have INTENTIONALLY given their names too, and many of these other networks sell/lease the data to others to allow them to provide their own identity link.

Furthermore, these 3rd party "scripts" have access to the entire page content too. They can read my email address should I register. They can even capture my password if they were so configured (or were in themselves hacked to do so).

Bear in mind i did NOT consent to any of this when I landed on your site, and even when i specifically removed "consent" via the form on your landing page, i was STILL being tracked by ALL those I mention above.

THIS is why people have blockers, etc. I dont mind if you have an image with a link to some advertisers product/service/whatever. What I care about it that my every action on your site is providing additional data for these companies to mine and build a secret profile of my browsing habits.

EDIT: I browsed without an ad blocker to compile this behaviour. I feel dirty.

> steal

Theft implies that you are deprived of the item once it's stolen - this is not the case here, and the costs should be taken into account either way. You're comparing fractions of a cent from an ad view with $100. I'd feel much better about stealing the former than the latter even in case of actual, physical theft.

> they dont let you taste in advance

It doesn't have an impact on the "theft" scenario, but in case of a paid product I would still expect a refund if the bread is defective (moldy or fake) or was mis-sold with false advertising.

Like really, if you open a website for the first time in your life, what kind of secret information could it know about you?

So let's say that the "color of my house" is obscene and disturbing imagery designed specifically to elicit an emotional response in viewers for the sake of making them feel bad. Point still stands; you don't have to actively get in someone's way to be a nuisance that's detrimental to the quality of life and leaves people worse off than without it.

It's also worth mentioning that advertisement overwhelmingly refers to its targets in second person exactly to create the subtle illusion of addressing you specifically. To some small degree our brains probably don't recognize the difference.

> And the vast majority of people will never ever check that to find relevant things to them.

If I'm not actively looking for things that will improve my life, perhaps I am already content with my situation, and the things in question actually aren't that relevant to me.

How about a picture of Scrooge saying “bah humbug”?

Part of the deal is that they still get to work from incentives on their end. But this alone doesn't rule out your interests or even your best interests.

The subjective beauty of this is that depending on who you are, even the seminar scammer might be both obvious AND the best news you've heard all week, because you have been waiting for a specific opportunity.

BTW I really recommend watching Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast. There's a bit of a diamond of truth buried in the story, kind of an anti-anti-ad message that is really important to consider.

This is about balancing normal scooter uses advertising

Without advertising new companies can't develop new services because only the existing ones will have customers.

wow, it is like they know me!

but anyway, I'm all for blocking ads when you go out, and hopefully once they can do that the technology can be extended to allow blocking of people who are not sexy enough, because imagine what I could do with the power of invisibility!

I invite any CEO to personally walk around my city with a banner of their choosing. Being allowed to spend millions of dollars to make kids addicted to smoking and drinking isn't free speech, it's legalized crime.

I don't know much about philosophy, but what if we can assume that legal rights end and moral rights begin only when we deal with someone's natural rights, is this tenable? If we take the Declaration of Independence as a starting point, as long as there is no danger to our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, we should not deem ourselves as being in the power to judge what property we can damage ourselves. Sounds like something I could live with.

Thank you, this pretty neatly covers what I would have liked to add but couldn't find words for.

I find it pleasing to approach his approach as works and displays of art. Are they explicit calls to aggressive, rebellious arms? Maybe. Is he selling out from commercializing on his art? Perhaps. I don't really care to respond directly to either of those questions here.

Mainly want to give a shoutout to his Barcode stencil, which made a really big impression on me so far (I haven't finished the Banksy book that I found it in) and that I think is pretty fitting here. Looking around on the web, it seems there are variants, but the one with the leopard is great.

Any idea how this was supposed to work? I don't know how that information would leak out unless it was just listening for the audio from a car with windows rolled down.

In 2012, USA tried to implement the CALM act, which mandated content and ads to be at the same level (“A/85”), but it didn’t play out because ads are measured individually whereas a program is measured as a whole. Complaints to the FCC are still about the loudness of ads… See https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/the-mixers-guide-to-loudnes...

Still I’m not opposed to it being a traditional non-profit, it might be possible to obtain 501(c)(3) tax exemption as a charity under the purpose of “combating community deterioration.”

Businesses aren't entitled to attention. They aren't entitled to being known. They aren't entitled to success. They aren't even entitled to existence. I simply don't understand how some business's concerns can possibly override everything else. Are we supposed to live in some cyberpunk hell with noise as far as the eye can see just so a bunch of corporations can make themselves known? If resisting this makes me extreme, then so be it.

Btw.: a nice info-display emits over its life around 2t of CO2 PER YEAR! Most of it in waste..

If your neighborhood needs ads to have variance, it says something really sad about it. You don't need gray concrete everywhere in order to build dwellings. Some cities like Cuba overflow with city gardens to feed the locals.

> As for claim about accidents: how about murals, decorative lights on houses, big brightly lit windows?

Murals are not a problem: they're part of the environment, not something designed to stand out of the street (literally). As for flashing or strong lights, they are indeed a problem in my view.

How about some landscaping and art instead?

I could never put my finger on exactly why they felt so different.... there is an energy to the book that isnt there in the TV.

Still, with good enough equipment it can be detected even from some distance.

To know just how much they are affecting you, you have to go to a place with no ads.

Honestly the only ads I ever see in real life are bus and bus stop ads. Maybe it's terrible where you live, but here, I can barely remember the last one I saw. If anything I wish the local government would have more ads. They have a bunch of activities on sometimes that I don't hear about or forget because their advertising is so poor.

Yes, there are other possibilities. By nature those are more bureaucratic and jittery. Maybe they are closer to a solution now, but if that's the case, it's because it easier to make that law more relaxed than strict.

Some people find unapproved grafitti objectionable. How do you feel about that?

Of course, people typically "age out", but economics of that $.99 menu put together with their powerful marketing means constant flow of new patrons.

If it ever becomes ubiquitous, something's going to have to be done about it. I'd never convict anyone of destroying one of those ad screens.

Re: taxing private individuals' micro attention "income", could be handled like "use" tax. I think my state allows me to list purchases I made online and shipped into my state so I can pay sales tax for them, or to take the "I don't know, just charge me the average amount" option. Maybe YouTube needs to send me a W2 each March which itemizes all the "work" I've done for them?

Re: fair market value, doesn't seem hard when there is an option to pay dollars for a service instead of watching ads, you just found out how much your attention is worth. Attention FMV could be standardized by the IRS like milage reimbursement (58.5 cents/mile in 2022) regardless of the exact cost of /your/ miles.

Edit: I'm not suggesting this would be good or easy but it would acknowledge that an entire industry is dodging taxes and degrading our quality of life. Also, were I king, this tax would be quite high (to reflect the harm to society) and would be the responsibility of the advertiser.

Banksy is a vandal, as I'm sure anyone would admit, himself included. I am equally sure that there have been times when property owners haven't liked his work and have tried to report him for vandalism. But given he doesn't make a habit of posting videos of his actions online and bragging about them, he doesn't get caught/attributed.

https://www.tmz.com/2014/04/02/banksy-david-william-noll-ric...

advertizers invade our homes, our bodies and our souls, the most sinister social engineering campaign yet.

My main issue with it is that if I disable cookies, then every single time I need to accept it. If I enable cookies then I only need to accept it one time. I think this annoying thing actually reduces security, because people are more likely to just not delete the cookies at the end of the session to avoid this annoying popup. Makes the web totally unusable if you delete the cookies regularly without a plugin to hide the cookie banner.

It didn't bring any benefits and has wasted excessive amounts of my time.

But whether we should change that law is probably an off-topic here. All I am saying is that we must respect the law. If we don't agree with the law, we must try to change it, and not just go about destroying each other's property.

I am quite confident that it wouldn't be too hard to build an ad detection ML model that would have near-perfect accuracy. That said, an approach based on algorithmically detecting repeated segments of lengths consistent with ad spots would work just as well, if not better.

P.S. One thing I thought was really interesting was that the classifier -- that was only ever shown a binary label (ad/not-an-ad) -- learnt an embedding that grouped together entire categories of things across TV networks and geographies (studio news, weather, traffic reports etc).

Because they fundamentally don't work. The EU politicians had to have known that they didn't work from previous experience, but decided to inflict us with these pop ups anyway. Their own damn website has this pop up.[0]

Reasons why cookie banners don't work:

1. They need to be implemented by the website. This means that if a website decides to ignore the cookie law they can set all the cookies they want and you won't be notified. If they are outside of the EU's jurisdiction they won't even care.

2. Targeted advertising is how a lot of websites pay the bills. This means that websites will use every trick in the book to get you to not click on the "refuse" button. Why wouldn't they? You're using their server time, but generating no revenue if you refuse. Websites will fight this process. They'll eventually lose, but the internet will either turn into a splinternet or cable TV. Ads are what make free websites work and cookies is how it happens right now.

3. Websites are made by people who aren't always well-versed in legalese and can't just hire a lawyer for everything. They don't always know whether they need a pop up or not. The safer option is to put it up there. If the EU's own website has one then probably so does yours.

4. Popups are annoying.

Cookies should be handled by the browser. Not some harebrained JavaScript.

[0] https://www.europa.eu

You are certainly allowed to. Pony up for the ad space if you want to promote the opposite, or advertise something else entirely.

I don’t think that had anything to do with what I said.

Although I’m curious What would a not “skewed” public space looks like, and how do you manage that?

A paleo fan will think the same about a vegan/carbs ad, and so would an anti-vaxxer about a conventional health poster.

Harmful ideas can, and will reach those who are susceptible to it. I think the right way to oppose harmful ideas, is by gaining the education that would allow you, and others in society to judge such ideas.

The alternative of forbidding ads in public, is essentially censorship and making society even weaker as one way or another, harmful ideas will reach each and every one of us, and when they do, the less susceptible we are, the better.

What if coca cola decided that they didn't like the color of your house, should they be allowed to change it because it can be seen from the public space?

That's just plain false. I know many people, especially in the older, less technically literate people, who now systematically disable such analytics thanks to these banners – people who had never realised the real dimension of users tracking before this law.

This kind of policy would make sense for a quaint old European town, but here we're talking about the largest city in a developing country. Generally as a developing country your first priority should be to, well, develop. The last thing you want to do is stifle economic activity.

I'm a fan, but there's still a point to be made here. Banksy works on public sites do function in part as ads.

I think a good comparison is a bike:

Bikers usually stay either on the road or on a bike path. When they go in pedestrian zones, their rather bad manouverability make bikers go slow or get off.

Just one week ago I was hit by a scooter going over 20km/h in a crowded pedestrian zone. Shit like that has become common, whereas the number of times I have seen someone do that on a bike can be counted on one hand.

And if you've never been annoyed by scooters you are lucky, because when that craze started in my city not only were people driving them like maniacs, they left them on sidewalks to the point where people were so pissed off they just started to throw them into the river.

I love whataboutism.

I’m very fascinated to know how you live in such a fashion that you purchase food and other products that sustain your life that in no way utilize roadways. Or are you just virtue signaling and personally contribute to this road traffic you hate so much and is the real “problem” by purchasing things from the supply chain?

Roads are made for cars, so it’s expected cars use them for legal purposes like driving. What wouldn’t be expected is if companies began littering roads with their shit products and marketing which blocked the roadways and put drivers at risk of accidents. If I saw companies creating traffic through illegal littering and marketing that obstructs the roadway, that would bother me.

Side walks, running/bike paths are also made for specific purposes, those lawful purposes don’t include companies littering them with their commercial products and marketing.

Hum... Technically you can. The fight would really not be worth it, but the city can pass a law that fines eye-sores.

Anyway, you seem to want something aligned with my first comment up there of conditioning ads on a well maintained structures. That would very likely work too.

About advertisement, it is one of those industries that look like if they reduced by orders of magnitude the value they provide would increase. If that's the case, the right thing to do is to allow it, but tax it heavily (so all of those proposals are quite good). But "looks like" is a bad basis for actual policy, real data would be much better.

> “Though I find him as annoying as many others do, I find him equally and strangely compelling,” Belisle wrote. “He is, in his own way, a placeholder. He prompts me to remember that not all hear the same music I hear; or respond the same way.”

> In a phone interview, Belisle, who specializes in family and preventive medicine, said The Whistler is breaking down barriers that people put around themselves, forcing people to notice what is right in front of them. He is, she said, a reminder that everyone marches to the beat of their own drummer.

> “The best thing you can do is have compassion for other people whose songs are not the same as yours,” she said.

Many European websites are now proposing users to either accept cookies or buy a subscription to the website. This looks like a very sane way to address the problem to me.

> You'd just have more and more websites that block European users.

Why should I care? Market changes, adapt or disappear.

Great! It frees up space for more respectful alternatives.

However ads are universally disliked and the problems the current ad model brings (privacy, spam/scams/malware, inappropriate/illegal content, etc) are generally universal too, so it's just a matter of time before similar regulation is enacted outside of Europe too.

> because it would ruin all the freely available websites.

Laws against theft/robbery/carjacking ruin free/below-market-rate car rental websites too, yet nobody is complaining about those because society has decided that theft is bad even if it would technically open up new business opportunities that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Why should this be any different?

That's just wrong, you don't need a cookie banner for non-tracking ads.

The personal is political. Weak sides challenge stronger opponents all the time, just usually not militarily. By situating yourself in opposition to power structures, you may reframe the debate and win it on its merits in the minds of the public, thus causing friction when status quo attempts to reassert itself.

When I think of obnoxious transportation marketing I think first of stuff like this:

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2021/08/16/opinion-muscle-car-ma...

In one Dodge Charger ad they literally show a sign that reads “share the road” impaling a tree as their car blows past at a speed that’s not legal on any road in the country you’d find that sign on.

The fact that their automobiles kill and maim pedestrians and cyclists at a regular clip is a feature of their marketing campaign. It’s so preposterous and brazen that I still sort of can’t believe it exists.

The automakers know their cars are used irresponsibly and they literally feature that in their marketing. I’m sorry I just can’t get upset about a scooter lying on the sidewalk by comparison.

People will always and forever make mutually beneficial trades, probably with money.

Now, will people also always have the opportunity to freely invest sums of money in imaginary chopped up pieces of a corporation without fear of financial liability should they cause a great deal of harm? Maybe not, because Gamestop is teaching us a lot of things.

Regardless of what happens, the dumb thing is presuming that these two things are both the exact same thing called "capitalism."

That's such a useless statement that even were it true, it proves the parent's point. That moral judgement doesn't lead us closer to a world without capitalism. Go to any haven of anti-capitalism and ask for a link to the manual they have for getting from HERE to THERE. Not even a theory on how to dismantle what we have.

FWIW personally I think capitalism is the worst system, other than all the others. Rein it in, set principles in stone for what we expect and demand from our system, but markets shouldn't magically disappear because we've lost control once.

Sadly they have reintroduced the ability to litter the road with your car and it’s gone back to being rubbish. I don’t go to that part of town any more.

At a certain point, yes - if the ad doesn’t take a major portion of your screen and is non-interactive. You are not a victim - there are reasonable boundaries of being “annoyed”.

> This has a social function, its a two way benefit. Advertising isn't. Its a one-way communication.

Not really. You could’ve easily claimed “I don’t GAF who you are and don’t say Hi to me”. The one-sidedness is an arbitrary constraint you’ve put to try to reject this scenario - it should have no bearing on the annoyingness of the sound waves.

Nor did you. You just appeal to some popular notion that everyone already agrees with ("treat humans like humans"). Then you suggest this is the same as the other thing, again giving no reason.

Maybe you really can give reason to someone, who abuses people, not to do it. To treat humans as humans. But you would have to delude yourself to think you already did it here.

I do not have compassion or empathy for ads.

I would say that is precisely backwards: one should treat other humans well, for a variety of reasons. We write that down in law as a shared agreement. But the law is not itself the reason -- it springs from the reasons.

The parent comment, by context, was inferring from societal norms. You yourself now say you pointed out how there is "no justification was even given for a claim." That means you are ignoring the parent comments context, which is societal norms. The justification is implied to be societally defined normal behavior. You can ask anyone why they shouldn't steal - it would be related to societal norms / morals. But then your answer, by analogy, would be to discard those arguments.

> I didn't make any logical response to the non-argument (which wouldn't make sense to even try), instead I made a meta-response ABOUT the fact of non-argument.

The assertion that it was a non-argument is based on the rejection of its context.