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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?

#161

Post by agumonkey »

egeozcan wrote: post #106
agumonkey wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something different about streets and web. I'm not sure but on my laptop i kinda expect things to go to the point, fast. A street is not a mean to an end. So a bus stop with some ad.. doesn't really changes everything. Consider web ads more like annoying bus boys trying to get you to order something in their restaurant by stepping in front of you and mirroring every move.

It changes a lot if you have ADHD. IMHO, it's an accessibility problem for people like me.

It really disturbs your way in public space ?

Maybe i'm too oblivious to IRL ads.

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

#163

Post by throwawaycities »

Miner49er wrote: post #116

Reminds me of this Banksy quote: People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most…

Seems like perfectly curated marketing. But I do admit I am outraged when a row of stupid fucking scooters blocks my entire running path, when it’s clearly a location no one would ever rent a scooter, rather they are there to deliberately block the path for no other purpose than obnoxious exposure of their brand.

I’d love for there to be DAOs to combat those scooter companies, say for example by blocking the executives’ front doors, cars, garages, offices with giant billboards or vending machines.

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

#164

Post by fock »

brokenkebab wrote: post #85
southerntofu wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Well, not every roof over a busstop bench needs to look the same. With ads it does. Plant (different!) trees inplace of the billboards. Or (god forbid) just let your local graffiti-guy spray there...

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

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

#165

Post by marcosdumay »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #109
marcosdumay wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very effective way to solve problems in a community resource is to demand maintenance from a private party in exchange from exploiting it in a sustainable way. São Paulo just closed that possibility. 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.

I consider solving a problem directly to be less bureaucratic than solving it indirectly by involving even more parties and hoping they do what you want them to do and having to negotiate with them on how much they will do in exchange for what they are getting. Taxpayer pays x to government which pays workers to clean. Taxpayer pays x-y to government which pays x-y to government workers who need to go out and negotia…

There are unavoidable inefficiencies for a government to perform any action.

The idea that a government can maintain all the surfaces of a large city in a pleasant situation is completely unrealistic. It can at most decentralize to to smaller bodies (and get a huge variance of outcomes, what is quite an ok solution too), but São Paulo doesn't have those bodies and is organized in a way that makes them almost impossible to create.

Yeah, maybe the best policy for the city is pushing governance into smaller bodies. But if your goal is to make the city visually pleasant, that's the solution that will take decades instead of years from the alternatives.

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

#167

Post by 323 »

kdmccormick wrote: post #157
323 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. Funnily enough, you can say the same thing about Bansky's art: > An artist who defaced several works of famed graffiti artist Banksy has been charged with the cri…

What are you gaining by arguing this? What point are you trying to make? Do you really think an artist who hand-paints pieces on walls is comparable to a corporation that copy-pastes their flashing, carefully targeted, profit-seeking message onto dozens of billboards overlooking a highway? Are their motives and the results of their work not wildly different? Your second example is valid. But your first example is a c…

A lot of times people who loudly yell "fuck the system" are also quietly using the system when it suits them, that's my point. Bansky is no "dismantle the capitalism" hero or whatever pedestal people have him on.

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

#168

Post by IvanK_net »

supermatt wrote: post #60
IvanK_net wrote: post #20

I own a website www.Photopea.com, visited by 3 million people a month. 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…

Thats a pretty disingenuous comparison. You aren't just charging your users "ad views". You are also facilitating 3rd parties tracking their online behaviour, and they certainly aren't agreeing to those terms when they first land on your site.

Could you be more specific? What "3rd parties" are tracking what "behaviour" of yours, and why exactly is it worth so much? And what do you mean by "you" in "tracking you"? Do they know your name?

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

#169

Post by 323 »

Retric wrote: post #160
323 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. Funnily enough, you can say the same thing about Bansky's art: > An artist who defaced several works of famed graffiti artist Banksy has been charged with the cri…

I see nothing hypocritical about either of those. The vandal wasn’t sued by the artist who may have approved. In the second case I find greeting cars as objectionable as street billboards.

So you called that artist a "vandal". Would you also call Bansky a "vandal"?

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

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

#170

Post by Kaze404 »

Outside of my office's window I can see a billboard about 2 blocks away from my apartment. For about 30 minutes every couple of hours it flashes red, blue, white and purple at about 3 different colors per second, with the following text in the middle: "You should advertise here!"

It honestly blows my mind how someone can look at it and think it's a good idea, instead of how absurd that someone is allowed to put up a giant seizure machine in one of a city's busiest streets.

I used to think that advertisement had gone too far when it was used to track people online, but a literal real life recreation of the iCarly episode where Spencer causes a traffic accident using a billboard caught me by surprise.

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