Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adfree Cities

adfreecities.org.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 278 posts

Re: Adfree Cities

#11

Post by amadeuspagel »

docdeek wrote: post #4

The award of the contract for the outdoor advertising space (bus shelters, roadside space) in my city was tied to providing and maintaining a cheap metro-area wide bike sharing scheme. For 30ish euros a year I get unlimited 45 minute trips on bikes that are widely available, well maintained, and easy to use. In 2022 there were more than 10 million trips taken on these hire bikes and nearly 84,000 annual subscribers.…

It's not a good trade, there shouldn't be a monopoly on public ads, local businesses should be able to reach consumers without having to go through a monopolist that captures all of the value.

Re: Adfree Cities

#12

Post by helen___keller »

I understand why people hate advertising but if I’m honest, I don’t agree with having an “adfree city”.

I personally like the aesthetic of visual overload that you find in ad-laden cities (let’s say in Tokyo). It makes the space feel living, breathing, and alive, which a city should be. And then the visually quiet spaces, like temples and parks, feel much more sweet.

Also at a conceptual level I disagree with the justification that we should make cities adfree due to the harms of ads (described in OP). Ads will appear elsewhere: within stores, online, on top of taxi cabs, stapled to poles, and so on. We can’t make ads disappear. Our best bet is to target specifically the most harmful ads by law (like misleading/false advertising and such).

Re: Adfree Cities

#13

Post by jmugan »

I think of it as "stealing" my attention. Instead of enjoying blue sky as my thoughts wander peacefully, someone takes this from me to yell that I should buy a new widget.

Re: Adfree Cities

#14

Post by sphars »

tylervigen wrote: post #6

I have personally gotten very aggressive at removing as many ads from my life as I can. I pay for the "premium" version of everything I can to remove ads (Spotify, YouTube, podcast subscriptions) and use adblocker aggressively. It's so much nicer than the alternative. There are two places where ads remain: 1) Social media where the ads are integrated and not blocked (Facebook, YouTube in-video promos) 2) Billboards i…

For integrated ads on YouTube (sponsor messages), you can use the SponsorBlock extension (https://sponsor.ajay.app/). If you're using Android, you can also get NewPipe with SponsorBlock integration.

Re: Adfree Cities

#15

Post by [deleted] »

tylervigen wrote: post #6

I have personally gotten very aggressive at removing as many ads from my life as I can. I pay for the "premium" version of everything I can to remove ads (Spotify, YouTube, podcast subscriptions) and use adblocker aggressively. It's so much nicer than the alternative. There are two places where ads remain: 1) Social media where the ads are integrated and not blocked (Facebook, YouTube in-video promos) 2) Billboards i…

[deleted]

Re: Adfree Cities

#16

Post by kzrdude »

Ad-free goes hand in hand with distraction-free for me. Thus "Stay up to date with Adfree Cities" and "Watch the video to see three steps you can take today" do not speak to me, at all.

Re: Adfree Cities

#17

Post by joelthelion »

tylervigen wrote: post #6

I have personally gotten very aggressive at removing as many ads from my life as I can. I pay for the "premium" version of everything I can to remove ads (Spotify, YouTube, podcast subscriptions) and use adblocker aggressively. It's so much nicer than the alternative. There are two places where ads remain: 1) Social media where the ads are integrated and not blocked (Facebook, YouTube in-video promos) 2) Billboards i…

You can get rid of most of your remaining ads by using the Firefox version of ublock and sponsorblock. I almost never see any ads. Twitch is a notable exception.

Re: Adfree Cities

#18

Post by digging »

tylervigen wrote: post #6

I have personally gotten very aggressive at removing as many ads from my life as I can. I pay for the "premium" version of everything I can to remove ads (Spotify, YouTube, podcast subscriptions) and use adblocker aggressively. It's so much nicer than the alternative. There are two places where ads remain: 1) Social media where the ads are integrated and not blocked (Facebook, YouTube in-video promos) 2) Billboards i…

In my city there's a major road with no billboards, and I drive on it whenever it's a reasonable option. It's not exactly lovely, but it's only as bad as driving on a busy road has to be, no worse. It's also a lot safer.

Whenever I tell people I prefer this road, they balk. When I tell them there's no billboards, they stop and think and realize that it's actually one of the nicest roads in the city. Parts of it are actually quite beautiful and forested.

I've seen a handful of billboards that were mildly entertaining. I've never seen a billboard that made me [edit to add: consciously] want to buy something, in my entire life, as far as I can recall. I've seen countless billboards that manipulated my emotions, showing me food or sex while I'm just trying to drive, purposefully distracting me. And countless more that just suck and are pointless. Among my many grievances with car-dependency, billboards aren't at the top of the list, but they're a very easy target because most people actually hate them as soon as they stop to think about it in my experience.

Re: Adfree Cities

#19

Post by nicbou »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8
tylervigen wrote: post #6

I have personally gotten very aggressive at removing as many ads from my life as I can. I pay for the "premium" version of everything I can to remove ads (Spotify, YouTube, podcast subscriptions) and use adblocker aggressively. It's so much nicer than the alternative. There are two places where ads remain: 1) Social media where the ads are integrated and not blocked (Facebook, YouTube in-video promos) 2) Billboards i…

You can get rid of #1 by moving to Mastodon. Many servers appreciate donations but basically none of them have ads.

#1 is about ads in the content itself, not ads that are designed to look like the posts around it

Re: Adfree Cities

#20

Post by ponector »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #11
docdeek wrote: post #4

The award of the contract for the outdoor advertising space (bus shelters, roadside space) in my city was tied to providing and maintaining a cheap metro-area wide bike sharing scheme. For 30ish euros a year I get unlimited 45 minute trips on bikes that are widely available, well maintained, and easy to use. In 2022 there were more than 10 million trips taken on these hire bikes and nearly 84,000 annual subscribers.…

It's not a good trade, there shouldn't be a monopoly on public ads, local businesses should be able to reach consumers without having to go through a monopolist that captures all of the value.

The alternative is to not have a cheap popular bikeshare system.

Also with monopolist it is really easy to keep some standards, quality of the ads.

Post reply on HN