Vietnam bans unskippable ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#151

Post by Imustaskforhelp » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:01 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #94

vladms wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that the world would be better without ads in their current form, we should think why are ads required and what are the benefits. The main issue is how you discover a new product. The main benefit to society is/could be faster progress. The main downside to society could be unhappy people that consume crap. I think smart people should think about alternative solutions, not just think "ads are the proble…

That's a great idea for a dystopian sci-fi story: you can opt out of ads, but your product choices are publicly broadcast instead.

Oh man this is a nice idea, I will try to add on somethings which I can think about from the top of my mind

To be really honest, even if things were publicly broadcasted, The amount of choices of products we make in each day would be huge.

So no random stranger would go and look for your product choices. What would matter are the close friends and family or perhaps when one becomes really famous?

Would the fundamental idea of anonymity go away from all internet? Like if someone posts a youtube video or even a yt comment, would I get to know what they ate for dinner?

Can ads still be blocked? If my product choice is an LLM lets say, would my prompts be choices as well that will get leaked with the conversation to everyone?

To be really honest, Govt.'s (snowden showed us) already can know about your product choices pretty good enough and the internet/infrastructure behind it is pretty centralized nowadays as well

Sure there are alternatives but how many people do you see using beyond the tri-fecta of cloud and how those choices come downstream to us consumers if services run there

I feel like this is gonna be a classic example of Hawthorne effect (Had to look the term for that) meaning that people will behave differently now that they are being observed.

Also do you know that its not any technical limitation which limits it but financial incentives.

There is no incentive to having your product choices be publicly broadcasted but for the services, there is an incentive of money if they show you ads and which they end up showing to ya.

If there was an financial incentive for the servers to create this choice itself of opting out / public broadcasts option, they probably would be reality.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#152

Post by phantasmish » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:01 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #90

iammjm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world would definitely be better without ads. All ads are poisonous. All of them first convince you that you and your life as it is is not good enough, and that in order to be happy again you need to spend money to buy a $product.

As much as I hate ads, I don’t know that it’s so simple. There are products that do solve legitimate problems people have. Maybe there is less of that now, but in this past this was very true, and advertising helped make people aware that solutions to their problems have been developed. The first washing machine, for example. The problem comes when the advertisement manufacturers problems that didn’t previously exist…

This is what a fucking store is for. They have catalogs. You could ask for one. If they think people will want something they will try to sell it and will tell you about it if you go looking.

I see this pro-ads argument all the time and it’s so obviously-stupid that I’m truly baffled. Is this the kind of lie ad folks tell themselves so they can sleep at night?

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#153

Post by pixl97 » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:01 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #102

simplicio wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but on the otherside, ads make available a huge amount of media and services to people who would otherwise be unable to afford it. Like, I suspect a non-trivial percentage of people wouldn't have email if it weren't for gmail and other free w/ads services.

Maybe. Or maybe we could fund those services from all the money we'd save without advertising.

Assuming a zero sum economy, which is a pretty poor assumption.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#154

Post by Imustaskforhelp » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #138

wolvoleo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I won't pay for premium because even if I pay for it I still get ads in the content itself. Fix that and then I'll pay. Until then I just block the ads and the sponsors.

YT makes it easy to skip embedded ads now. They mark places where people skip past and shortcut it so you don't need to watch them.

Sponsorblock exists as well.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#155

Post by titzer » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #112

_jab wrote: post #13

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present. Don't…

Better from whom? As a user, maybe. But if you're trying to compete, it's incredibly useful to get exposure. For instance, suppose you run a competitor to Salesforce and you want to buy the Salesforce keyword because you provide a better product. I don't know how you would bootstrap that otherwise. If anything the big businesses use advertising as a protection moat. As a small business, I would def prefer to be in a…

> If anything the big businesses use advertising as a protection moat. As a small business, I would def prefer to be in a world that allows me to advertise, even if I have to compete for things like my own name

These two sentences are contradictory. Big business uses it as a defensive measure, yet you think a small business can use it as an offensive measure. It's an absurd outcome of the SEO of the last two decades that people think it's fine to pay for get traffic using your own keywords. Stockholm syndrome.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#156

Post by cramsession » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #146

barbazoo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there not always some sort "marketplace" where people see what's being offered one way or another? I don't think we need ads for discovery, I see it more as a nefarious way to occupy space in people's conscious.

>Is there not always some sort "marketplace" How exactly does that work for virtual products?

If they provide value, people will seek them out.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#157

Post by Aachen » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

simplicio wrote: post #70

_jab wrote: post #13

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present. Don't…

Maybe, but on the otherside, ads make available a huge amount of media and services to people who would otherwise be unable to afford it. Like, I suspect a non-trivial percentage of people wouldn't have email if it weren't for gmail and other free w/ads services.

> ads make available a huge amount of media and services to people who would otherwise be unable to afford it.

They don't. Follow the money: why do ads power free services? The advertiser needs to expect to make more money in the scenario where they run the ad as compared to where they don't. The viewer must be spending more money in response to having seen it

If the viewer doesn't have the money to pay the first party fair and straight (say, a video website), they also don't have money to splurge on that fancy vacuum cleaner in addition to the website and advertisement broker getting paid, no matter how many ads you throw at them

Ads are useful for honest products, like if I were to start a company and believe that I've made a vacuum cleaner that's genuinely better (more or better cleaning at a lower or equal cost) but nobody knows about it yet. However, I don't see the point in money redirection schemes where affluent people inefficiently pay for public services (if they're indistinguishable and the company shows ads to both, thereby funding the poor people's usage). Let's do that through taxes please

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#158

Post by pixl97 » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

croemer wrote: post #120

matthewsinclair wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often wondered what would happen if we _taxed_ advertising [0]. The same rationale applies: it'll never work, and it'll never even be tested, but I agree, it was fun to think about. [0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0177-what-if-we-taxed-adver...

You're forgetting a very important problem: hard to implement. Sugar in drinks and CO2 emissions are easily measured. The definition of what's an ad is much harder.

>what's an ad is much harder.

Not really that much harder, and would immediately cover the worst offenders. I mean we already have disclosure laws on product placements and ads.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#159

Post by inglor » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

jason_s wrote: post #42

I just uninstalled a game from my mobile phone this morning that had heavy ad usage. It was interesting to note the different ad display strategies. From least to most annoying: - display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10 seconds) - display an animated ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10 seconds) - display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear after 20-30 seconds - display an animated a…

You likely turned off any privacy invading feature and didn’t let the app track across apps.

The fact you are getting irrelevant ads is a good thing that indicates that is probably working.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#160

Post by pixl97 » Tue, Jan 06, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

nalekberov wrote: post #84

arethuza wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's impractical - isn't it exactly what YouTube Premium offers, ad free viewing for £12.99 a month. I watch quite a lot of content on YouTube and really should sign up for Premium but I feel that the shockingly irrelevant ads I get presented with on YouTube are trying to drive me to sign for it - they're certainly not going to get me to buy anything!

Yet, most content on YouTube these days are sponsored by the companies trying to sell you a crap. And with 'Native ads' it's nearly impossible to have ad-free experience nowadays.

>most content on YouTube these days are sponsored by the companies trying to sell you a crap.

Because YT doesn't pay shit to content creators, hence being part of creating this.

The people making the content need to make a living too, as much as ads suck.