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You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

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Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#81

Post by GlitchMr »

DitheringIdiot wrote: post #77
GlitchMr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, I decided to check your website with adblocker turned off. After rejecting (!) GDPR consent, the website decided to send my personal information to the following companies: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Ad Lightning, Setupad, UniConsent, Adagio, ID5, Criteo, Magnite, RTB House, Casale Media, EMX Digital, Adform, Pubmatic, Between Digital, Lijit Networks, AppNexus, 33Across, Adx Premium, Sharethrough, Sm…

I just checked the same thing. I didn’t get a consent banner at all, not sure why. I’d just like to add that a decent chunk of the traffic to this site is from people typing “free photo editor” or things along those lines. The creator of this site is specifically targeting people who want a free photo editor… And then complaining about people wanting to use it for free.

Are you in European Union? I imagine the consent banner may skipped when not in European Union.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#82

Post by pessimizer »

leppr wrote: post #39
smarx007 wrote: post #7

But ads in real life do not prevent me from going on about my day. There is no analogy to interstitial pages with ads like in Forbes some time ago with the button Continue to your article: it would be infuriating if you had to view an ad before being able to use the subway ticketing system. You also don’t have ads on at the airport timetable screen. You don’t have pinkertons following you to learn your habits and sho…

Some new forms of IRL ads do interrupt your flow. Examples I've encountered: * In a mall touchscreen navigation kiosk, an ad is shown when you first wake up the device by touching it. * At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order touchscreen kiosk flow. * On Starbucks screen menus, the whole menu is periodically replaced with a video ad, forcing you to wait until its end to finish making your choice. > You also d…

> * At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order touchscreen kiosk flow.

And they've only added (most of) these recently. What they've done for me is is increased the time it takes to check out by at least a third. They're paying for the ads with lengthened lines, which is a little shocking when talking about the automated option, because customers choose the automated option to save time.

It might be a bad expectation for us to have. McDonalds might find it more profitable to start ripping out seats (especially with covid), and adding more automated checkout stations. Have us spend 5-10 minutes ordering. Offer discounts if we spend 10 additional minutes ordering and watching ads. Enter us into a sweepstakes while we order that pays every half-hour in free food.

You could cram a lot of 2-sided touchscreen stations in the footprint of a McDonalds; people standing everywhere like a pachinko parlor, or a storefront full of video poker machines.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#83

Post by DitheringIdiot »

GlitchMr wrote: post #81
DitheringIdiot wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked the same thing. I didn’t get a consent banner at all, not sure why. I’d just like to add that a decent chunk of the traffic to this site is from people typing “free photo editor” or things along those lines. The creator of this site is specifically targeting people who want a free photo editor… And then complaining about people wanting to use it for free.

Are you in European Union? I imagine the consent banner may skipped when not in European Union.

I’m in the UK. So not anymore. But we still apply GDPR rules as far as I’m aware

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#84

Post by stareatgoats »

Advertising as it is done presently has at least three faults, which is just as much a fault with the ethics of society for allowing this to go on:

- adverts seeks to hijack your attention away from whatever you were doing, which is a mental burden resulting diminished performance (in the case of a work environment), is downright dangerous in the case of traffic environments and lessens the enjoyment in the case of leisure activities.

- there is little to no ethical restriction on content; the advert that gets displayed is likely not that of the best product: it is the one whose owner paid the most money, and the ad that gets the most traction is the one that tells the best story, so perfused with lies by omission and other forms of deceit that we don't even notice any more.

- the ubiquity of ads causes an perpetual escalation of the struggle for attention, to the extent that we might credibly expect to get ads implanted in our brains eventually if we don't say enough is enough.

The solution seems simple enough to me: we need to establish a code of conduct for advertisers which at the core means that they may no longer shove ads down our throats at every junction; instead adverts should be freely displayed in separate spaces (like a dedicated page on each website) where people voluntarily could look for products and services that they need (or just to browse), much like the ad pages in newspapers of days now long gone by.

All we need is a mechanism that promotes this behavior, and sanctions breaches.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#85

Post by brokenkebab »

southerntofu wrote: post #67
smarx007 wrote: post #7

But ads in real life do not prevent me from going on about my day. There is no analogy to interstitial pages with ads like in Forbes some time ago with the button Continue to your article: it would be infuriating if you had to view an ad before being able to use the subway ticketing system. You also don’t have ads on at the airport timetable screen. You don’t have pinkertons following you to learn your habits and sho…

Ads are everywhere you go on the streets. They lure your attention span with bright colors and LEDs which may create accidents. They reinforce a sense of need to consume and/or a feeling of being inappropriate as a person. Supermarkets will try very hard to "give" you their customer card so they can collect more detailed info about you and profile your habits. Companies often place adverts illegallly [0] by recruitin…

Telling "lure you attention" is just a way to frame it. There are plenty of evidence that visual monotony has negative effect on mind, and FWIW in most modern urban environments (blocky, and painfully uniform) ads often do a little bit of favor by providing variance. I've been to places where street ads are heavily regulated to the point it's noticable that there are less billboards and they are more plain. Unless those are full of historical baroque, gothic/art nouveau buildings it absolutely doesn't make it more attractive (I support restricting ads in historical towns).

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

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#86

Post by JulianMorrison »

tormeh wrote: post #78
JulianMorrison wrote: post #49

Ads should simply be illegal anywhere, anywhen. Perhaps if we did that for, say, 80 years, then after the last advertiser has dropped dead of advanced age, we could cautiously re-enable the legality of purely informational, manipulation-free adverts.

Yeah, good luck defining what an ad is. And adverts will always try to manipulate their audience. It would take 3 seconds for them to start doing that again.

That neener-neener attitude is a great example of why advertisers need to be told "just no, for the entire rest of your lives, without exception".

What fraction of your lifespan spent behind bars do you care to wager that you can wiggle and sleaze around the rules? Especially ones that are applied by judges with common sense, rather than algorithms?

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#87

Post by noahbradley »

technothrasher wrote: post #66
jcun4128 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard some gas stations have ads on the pump display

These pumps with “Gas Station TV” are so annoying that I go out of my way to get my gas at a different station. I’ve wondered if it actively drives other customers away too or if I’m just very sensitive to it.

I've found you can often mute those screens if you press one of the buttons beside the screen. Apparently it's different depending on the machine, so just mash them all I guess.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#88

Post by snarfy »

stareatgoats wrote: post #84

Advertising as it is done presently has at least three faults, which is just as much a fault with the ethics of society for allowing this to go on: - adverts seeks to hijack your attention away from whatever you were doing, which is a mental burden resulting diminished performance (in the case of a work environment), is downright dangerous in the case of traffic environments and lessens the enjoyment in the case of l…

If my attention has value, then hijacking it is a form of theft.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#89

Post by ljm »

kiryin wrote: post #26

I strongly believe that advertising by definition is unethical in all of it's forms and "block" ads to the best of my ability, in real life as well. I do not view ads that reach me by mail, and as for billboards and posters I see around town, I make a note to avoid the products they advertise. I know this doesn't make a difference but it's an ideological thing. If my actions could in theory cause a tiny little dent i…

Junk mail is particularly frustrating because companies are generating so much paper waste only for someone to deliver it to your door, and you to put it directly in the bin. No, Dominoes, I don't give a fuck about your shit pizza, and sending junk through my letterbox 5 days a week isn't going to change my mind.

I wish it was banned outright.

Re: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

#90

Post by cyborgx7 »

yanderekko wrote: post #21

Why stop at ads though? I should just have a personalized algorithm that filters all real-world content I see, or otherwise sanitizes it for my consumption. For example, apply beauty filters to everyone around me so I don't have to deal with the unpleasantness of ugly people. Block out any noise that might trigger discomforting thoughts, like political opinions that I disagree with. If it sounds dystopian, well.. onc…

Tell me you only read the headline, without telling me you only read the headline.
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