5 seconds... too slow. Ublock's better.
Vietnam bans unskippable ads
391–400 of 835 posts
Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Isn’t the catalog an ad?
The issue is that anti-ad zealots won’t acknowledge that advertising is a spectrum. You can go full blown horrendous dystopia or enter into a commerce-free hermit kingdom where private property is banned and resources aren’t traded efficiently, with the end result being that everyone is poor because nobody trades anything with anyone.
A sign for your store that identifies you is technically an ad. A brand logo printed on your product is technically an ad. A positive review is basically an ad. What lengths are we going to go to ban ads?
Be honest: you’ve never bought a single useful thing that you found out about via an ad and ended up glad you saw an ad for?
That is important because the wealth of nations is often predicated on the populace being able to trade their labor.
For example, in recent years North Korea has developed their own Amazon-like delivery website for food and goods and has expanded intranet smartphone service because, obviously, fast communication and ease of transmitting a desire to buy or sell is helpful for growing an economy and keeping the nation from starving. Otherwise, why would they adopt an imperial capitalist concept like that?
Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads
#393Is this just a really ubiquitous typo (google finds multiple headlines with the same spelling), or is the rendering of "Vietnam" into English spelling somewhat unstable?
Definitely a typo, see "vietnam-news" in the same URL.
Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads
#394I am shaken to my core (sorry, wife hates that phrase, so I have to use it everywhere) at how many posters here see ads. I'm of the opinion that if you're seeing ads on your hardware, which you paid for, your computer is broken. That advertisements are always evil, always wrong, and never morally just. And everything possible should be done to avoid, remove, or deface them. To that end: Andriod: - Root your damn phon…
I used to think this. and I do run some of your suggestions. But how is the internet economy supposed to function without these micro transactions, in the form of ads. A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.
I struggle with this too. I struggle less when I remind myself of how much the tech sector has grown in the past 20 years. Not even just in power and control over critical infrastructure, but in wealth.
Market Cap by Year
Year 0 1 2 3 4
2025 Nvidia (4.6T) Apple (3.9T) Google (3.8T) Microsoft (3.5T) Amazon (2.6T)
2020 Apple (2.3T) Microsoft (1.7T) Amazon (1.6T) Google (1.2T) Meta (777M)
2015 Apple (598M) Google (534M) Microsoft (440M) Berkshire (324M) Exxon (325M)
2010 Exxon (369M) PetroChina (303M) Apple (296M) BHP (244M) Microsoft (239M)
Some Billionaires...
Year Musk Page Bezos Ellison Zuck Buffett
Current 714B 257B 251B 244B 227B 148B
2024 195B 114B 194B 141B 177B 133B
2023 180B 79B 114B 107B 64B 106B
2022 219B 111B 171B 106B 67B 118B
2021 151B 92B 177B 93B 97B 96B
2020 25B 51B 113B 59B 55B 68B
2016 11B 35B 45B 44B 45B 61B
- There are currently 19 people worth more than $100bn!
- 4 of them are not American (Arnault, Ortega, Ambani, Helu)
- 27 of the top 50 richest are non-Americans
- 57 of the top 100 are non-Americans
- Bill Gates was first worth $100bn in 1999, becoming the first centibillionaire
> A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.
If times were good for the rest of us I honestly couldn't care less if Musk became a trillionaire. Good for him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But while wages are stagnant, while the job market is very competitive, we have major layoffs, while inflation is hitting average people hard, and while they keep pretending they can replace us all with AI; then hell fucking yeah I do care.
It ends up being a question about what is more right, than what is right. I'd feel more conflicted if we all, or the majority of us, were benefiting from the advancements. But sympathy is difficult when we look at those numbers.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...
https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/
P.S. here's a fun game for understanding how much a billion dollars is. It's difficult because that level of money generates so much interest.
Imagine you have a billion dollars. You put it in an investment account that earns 10% yearly interest, compounded daily. On day 1 you need funds, so sit on your ass and do nothing. After than, on each weekday you hire a new employee at the cost of $250k/yr and is also paid daily.
How many employees can you hire before you have less than a billion dollars?
There's a lot of variants you can run on this kind of thought experiment and I think they're helpful for understanding that level of wealth.
Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. > But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board. I genuinely don’t know how you could get your wish without regulation. You can’t expect all players in the ad game to follow self enforced rules if there’s any possibility that not following a self-imposed rule (“all ads must have a skip button”) will bring a competitive advantage. As soon as one…
Takes like this amaze me. It's like they've suddenly forgotten what the entire advertisement industry is like. Ads are designed to take advantage, manipulate, and even trick. Then this person comes along and suggests the industry should do the right thing. In what world would that ever be a possibility? It's like asking a dictator nicely that they relinquish some of their power!
Regulation is only a policeman. It doesn’t innovate.
Competitive markets do innovate. I watch YouTube live instead of Twitch (many streamers double stream) precisely because the former has skippable ads.
I’m guessing you haven’t taken even one semester of the relevant economics. Isn’t it great to be an internet commenter?
Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads
#396AdGuard as a local VPN also bans unskippable Ads without the pesky legal enforcement baggage.
Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen these advertisements too, also only when my phone had been playing unattended for some time. I have a (unsupported, unsubstantiated) theory that YT detects phones of "sleepers" and pushes more profitable content with the understanding it won't be skipped. I've got a few spare phones, maybe I'll run an experiment.
I'm not sure why it would specifically be targeting "sleepers"... there are a lot of reasons why someone might not skip ads... people who are sleeping are probably the least valuable of them. It could just as well be something super valuable -- like an unattended kiosk device playing youtube to a crowd of people.
Regarding the kiosk, I wholly expect that an unattended device with YT on auto play will ratchet up the length/frequency of ads as long as they're never skipped.
Someone who falls asleep watching YouTube will skip ads, unless they're asleep.
The idea is that if YT can infer that someone is asleep (location, no movement, no sound, low light, night) that they can show the longest, most skip-inducing ads that they've got since they know they won't be skipped.
The difference between the kiosk and the sleeper is that if the sleeper gets a 20 minute ad at 2pm while they're eating lunch, they'll skip it. YT is incentivized to show the most profitable ad that someone won't skip.
The value in identifying sleepers isnt showing a long ad, it's showing a long ad with the certainty that it won't be skipped.
Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads
#398Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads
#399US companies respond with 100 skippable ads per minute
Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads
#400This is slightly off topic, but something I find myself wondering pretty regularly: if ads are pretty much universally hated by every human on earth, why do companies continue running them? I get the obvious answer: "they work" But do they? Do big companies have a real data-driven model to demonstrate annoying ads leading to sales? While anecdotal, I can think of a number of specific times ads slipped through my ad b…
I recently read about 'in thread' ads, like on Twitter, as being not as effective unless they are 'brand recognition' ads. Like, they will help you decide which one to pick when you are staring at two fungible brands on the shelf, but they will not convince you to buy something you have never heard about before, especially not from a direct click through. So while Ads work is true, in many ways, they don't in many others. The brand damage you can get from having those in-thread ads is also real: Ads target the user, not the thread, but by showing up, users associate advertisers with the thread. If you were in some argument about dictators taking over, and suddenly a product pops up, you may assign the negative energy you have toward dictators to that brand as well.