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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?

#601

Post by marcosdumay »

f00zz wrote: post #585
marcosdumay wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impossib…

The solution should be simple: allow billboard ads, but tax them based on surface area. Use the tax revenue to hire more street sweepers. This shouldn't be hard to implement, as the city is already quite effective at fining businesses that do not comply with Cidade Limpa. Want to turn a building facade into a giant LED billboard, Shenzhen style? Fine, just pay up. Everybody wins. This kind of policy would make sense…

Ok, I could agree with that tax. But it's not the sweeper service that will make the city beautiful, sweeping is a bare minimum.

But anyway, how does advertising relates to development? Do you have a clear answer to this? Because not every economic activity feeds the development process, some even slow it down.

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

#602

Post by Fnoord »

shukantpal wrote: post #598
Fnoord wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can be materially distracted from driving by a banner on the side of the road, then you shouldn't be on the road in the first place. So if I browse a website and get distracted by all the ads, it is my own fault? This is victim blaming, as well as a dishonest take on the matter. There's not one banner on the road. Its distraction upon distraction upon distraction. Its like with smartphones. The problem isn't…

> So if I browse a website and get distracted by all the ads, it is my own fault? 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 y…

> 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”.

That's a too liberal definition. Consider our boundaries getting broken. I am not talking about one ad banner on the a website. I am talking about skyscrapers, pop-ups (actually banned by default on modern browsers), multiple flashy GIFs as banner (like in the 90s), sounds in ads (working on a tab you're not even on!). These are all examples of annoying ads. I'd care less for an ad which is obvious like how Google text Ads used to be on Google Search.

> You could’ve easily claimed “I don’t GAF who you are and don’t say Hi to me”.

Yeah, its funny how in USA its normal that if I go in a grocery store, people ask 'how are you' but they don't care about the answer, they're obliged to say it. I'm glad we don't have that nonsense dishonesty here in my country.

'Hi', however, is fairly neutral, in this example is person to person (instead of tech to person), and means no harm. Its a greeting, supposedly to start contact, or to initialize a business transaction (such as payment). Its as honest and functional as it gets!

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

#603

Post by aix1 »

bee_rider wrote: post #561
aix1 wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time series of frame probabilities is of course highly autocorrelated, but I never bothered to model that due to lack of interest. From memory, a simple single-frame classifier was >95% accurate (this was quite a few years ago, mind you). In my small-sample and not very rigorous testing, this was higher than human rates. Turns out that on average it's pretty hard to tell an ad from content just by looking at the…

I don't know much about TV broadcasting, so sorry if this is dumb, but what's a segment length? I assume it is either: lengths of a particular shot, or (probably more likely) it is some extra information that is broadcast with the TV signal about how long a chunk of broadcast is? I like the idea of looking at pixels, just because that's the sort of info that gets sent down the HDMI cable and will always be available.

There exist inline insertion signalling standards (e.g. SCTE-35). These could be used for the insertion of ads. However, none of this signalling typically makes it into the final over-the-air or cable broadcast and so is not useful for ad detection.

To your question on segment lengths, ad spots have specific, predefined duration. In the US these are typically 15s, 30s and 60s (sometimes 45s). This property could be exploited to detect ads. Consider, for example, a video segment that's exactly 30s in duration and is repeated many times over multiple TV channels. It is very likely to be an ad.

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

#604

Post by f00zz »

marcosdumay wrote: post #601
f00zz wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution should be simple: allow billboard ads, but tax them based on surface area. Use the tax revenue to hire more street sweepers. This shouldn't be hard to implement, as the city is already quite effective at fining businesses that do not comply with Cidade Limpa. Want to turn a building facade into a giant LED billboard, Shenzhen style? Fine, just pay up. Everybody wins. This kind of policy would make sense…

Ok, I could agree with that tax. But it's not the sweeper service that will make the city beautiful, sweeping is a bare minimum. But anyway, how does advertising relates to development? Do you have a clear answer to this? Because not every economic activity feeds the development process, some even slow it down.

> But it's not the sweeper service that will make the city beautiful

Sure, but you can't force by law those decrepit buildings along the Minhocao to renovate. At least with advertising income they would be able to afford a paint job.

> how does advertising relates to development?

Everyone hates advertising, but it's an important driver for competition. A new business has no chance of breaking into an existing market without advertising, for instance (though I guess the internet has made outdoor ads less important). Not to mention the direct jobs that were lost with Cidade Limpa.

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

#605

Post by specialist »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #402
n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #35

I live in the area of Grenoble, a french city leaded by ecologists than banned ads several years ago (since 2014 if I'm correct). This is a pleasure, or, more precisely, I feel overwhelmed when I exit my city and am surrounded by so many ads! https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.france24.com/en/20141124-fr...

Austin, TX long ago passed a law that said a billboard can be used to advertise only for the business on the parcel of land where the billboard is physically located. Thus, a car repair shop could have a billboard advertising themselves, but they are not allowed to lease it out to advertise, say, a tanning salon that is not on the same site. At the time it was passed, any existing billboards were granted an exemption…

Because corporations are people and so therefore have exceptional claim to Freedom Speeches™ denied us mere humans (natural persons).

The 5-4 podcast about the SCOTUS covers these (and other) pro-corporation decisions. https://www.fivefourpod.com Basically the ELI5 treatment for those of us completely ignorant of the law. Highest recommendation.

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

#606

Post by marcosdumay »

f00zz wrote: post #604
marcosdumay wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I could agree with that tax. But it's not the sweeper service that will make the city beautiful, sweeping is a bare minimum. But anyway, how does advertising relates to development? Do you have a clear answer to this? Because not every economic activity feeds the development process, some even slow it down.

> But it's not the sweeper service that will make the city beautiful Sure, but you can't force by law those decrepit buildings along the Minhocao to renovate. At least with advertising income they would be able to afford a paint job. > how does advertising relates to development? Everyone hates advertising, but it's an important driver for competition. A new business has no chance of breaking into an existing market…

> Sure, but you can't force by law those decrepit buildings along the Minhocao to repaint.

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.

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

#607

Post by blackhaz »

DarylZero wrote: post #600
blackhaz wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand you. You're saying we can go about, say, murdering people and we are fine with that as long as we don't get caught? Is breaking social agreement acceptable if enforcement fails? If my personal ethics allows me to break the law, but enforcement fails, can I still claim to be a positive element of the society? What I am saying is that society has agreed not to damage each other's property, has agreed…

The law doesn't come from "society agreeing" -- it's imposed by the strong on the weak and the young.

Well, if we can't agree with the rule of law then what, we're back to a primitive society? I don't think homo sapiens culture is, at this stage, advanced enough to thrive in a primitive community, how attractive that may sound. In a few hundred or thousand years, perhaps?

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

#608

Post by riversflow »

Fnoord wrote: post #602
shukantpal wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if I browse a website and get distracted by all the ads, it is my own fault? 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 y…

> 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”. That's a too liberal definition. Consider our boundaries getting broken. I am not talking about one ad banner on the a website. I am talking about skyscrapers, pop-ups (actually banned by default on modern browsers), multiple flashy GIFs a…

> Yeah, its funny how in USA its normal that if I go in a grocery store, people ask 'how are you' but they don't care about the answer, they're obliged to say it

Wow, in most cases this just isn't true. Granted some employees are ordered to use it as a greeting, but most people who ask genuinely care, and there is no social expectation to ask. Perhaps the culture in the USA is just a bit more personable than you have a theory of mind for? If you really don’t believe me, try answering the question in the negative, theres a reason why its like a joke that you have to respond positively. You’ll instantly be asked whats bothering you, and most people won’t let go easily. They genuinely want to try to cheer you up if you aren’t doing well and if they think they can reasonably help you, generally will.

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

#609

Post by Nextgrid »

Aerroon wrote: post #315
Nextgrid wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have zero problems with ad-supported shit going out of business and making space for good, paid content. Imagine a world where content has to be so good as to convince people to take out their wallet. No more clickbait, "this video is sponsored by ShitVPN", chumboxes, etc.

I can imagine such a world. It would be cable TV with heavy region locks. The poorer parts of the world wouldn't be on it at all. Paying for things online is still a terrible experience. You need a credit card, which isn't always easy to get outside of the rich western countries. I would never have used websites like reddit, HN, Twitter, YouTube or Google if I had had to pay for it. As a kid I wouldn't have been able…

I disagree.

Advertisers usually buy ads to encourage the purchase of a product/service. It is not sustainable to spend more on advertising than what the revenue you get back from it in the form of purchases - over the long term, the ROI has to be positive. Ad-supported services still exist in poor parts of the world despite the advertisers only being able to pay very little (as it has to be relative to the local price of the advertised goods/services), so the prices of paid services can similarly be adjusted to compensate.

> heavy region locks

This is already done, I'm pretty sure Netflix in India costs a fraction of what you'd pay in the US for example. While it's not an ideal solution, it's mostly a solved problem.

> Paying for things online is still a terrible experience.

Agreed on this one, but again the reason it isn't is because currently ads are a "good enough" model that there is not enough market pressure to develop something better. If ads become unsustainable, the content industry will have no choice but to either die out or compromise and collaborate to develop a payment model that has better UX.

> you would have even more of this

Only if it's allowed. If ads are nuked out of existence due to enforced regulation (promoting products makes you a reseller from the eyes of the law and you need to assume liability and provide support & warranty) or even just platform rules (posting commercial content on YouTube requires a costly subscription - shilling sponsored products without it will result in a ban) you wouldn't have it.

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

#610

Post by Fnoord »

riversflow wrote: post #608
Fnoord wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”. That's a too liberal definition. Consider our boundaries getting broken. I am not talking about one ad banner on the a website. I am talking about skyscrapers, pop-ups (actually banned by default on modern browsers), multiple flashy GIFs a…

> Yeah, its funny how in USA its normal that if I go in a grocery store, people ask 'how are you' but they don't care about the answer, they're obliged to say it Wow, in most cases this just isn't true. Granted some employees are ordered to use it as a greeting, but most people who ask genuinely care, and there is no social expectation to ask. Perhaps the culture in the USA is just a bit more personable than you have…

Been there, done it (Southern Bay Area 2005-2007). I am honest by default when it comes to questions. There is practically no interest in a conversation. You are supposed to say 'fine, how are you'. Its like regarding tipping culture as voluntary: fake.
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