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Vietnam bans unskippable ads

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Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#541

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gpm wrote: post #496
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The crucial feature would be that nobody would have to pay to get listed, or only a small nominal fee that anyone can afford You see the contradiction. You’re essentially saying no bad ads, only good ads, without defunding the difference. (Anyone can afford a Google or Meta ad in the way they could a White Pages listing.)

I'd interpret this as a proposal for two new laws: 1. No non-invited display of paid messaging, period. If you go to a directory and ask for a list of people who paid to be part of that directory, it can show it. If you play a game, watch a movie, take the bus, or search a non-paid directory of sites they simply cannot show you things they were paid to show you. I think I'd call this making attention-theft a crime. 2…

> No non-invited display of paid messaging, period. If you go to a directory and ask for a list of people who paid to be part of that directory, it can show it

How would you distinguish someone asking for the directory versus asking for something else with said directory (which are totally not ads, pinky promise) displayed alongside?

> I'd call this making attention-theft a crime

Someone standing up to make a political speech in a public square is now a criminal?

> A paid directory has to charge the same (small, nominal) fee to everyone involved

This is just ads with a uniform, "small, nominal" fee. Uniformity is objectively measurable. Smallness and nominalness is not. Presumably you mean these directories have to be published at cost?

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#542

Post by tpmoney »

Panoramix wrote: post #235
al_borland wrote: post #90

Earlier 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…

I have never in my several decades of life seen and ad for anything and thought "I need to get that".

I sincerely do not believe this. I suspect that you have a very specific definition of ad that is far narrower than I do, but I do not believe you never once saw a movie trailer and decided to go see the film, or saw a billboard or sign for a restaurant while out on vacation and decided to check it out. Or that you never went to the grocery store to pick up the steak that was on sale this week. Or that every single tech purchase you have ever made in your life was exclusively and solely on the word of mouth recommendation of your close friends, all of whom had previously purchased identical products with their own money.

Look I'm not saying you can't live a low ad lifestyle. I don't have cable or network TV and run ad-blockers on every device I own. And yet I can look around my home and see numerous products purchased at least in part due to an ad. The Retroid Pocket sitting on my table, the M series laptop sitting in front of me. The Sony TV across the room, the game consoles under it. Heck the dog at my feet was the one I adopted because I went to an adoption event being sponsored at a local business. Even when I'm seeking a specific product out and then seeking out information, I'm looking for reviews and a lot of those reviews are given sample/free product for the purposes of making their review. That's an ad. I might be able to place more trust in that review if the reviewer doesn't give the product manufacturer editorial control they way they'd have in a sponsorship, but you can be damn sure if sending free product to independent reviewers wasn't paying off in terms of higher sales, the manufacturer wouldn't be doing it.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#544

Post by cortesoft »

phantasmish wrote: post #152
al_borland wrote: post #90

Earlier 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?

I don’t think all ads are the same, and I feel like you are choosing to pretend the ads you don’t mind aren’t ads at all.

You say “that is what a store is for”… well, how would you even know a store exists to go check it out? In the physical world, you would walk by and see the store and be curious to check it out… well, what is a store front other than an ad for the store? Putting your name, product, and reasons you will want their product on the store front IS AN AD. You wouldn’t walk into a store front that was completely blank, with no information about what they are selling.

And even that simple advertising is impossible online. If I create a new online store, how will people ever know it exists? There is simply no answer that doesn’t in some way act as an ad. I would love to hear how you would let people know your store exists in a way that isn’t just an ad in another form.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#545

Post by physicles »

climb_stealth wrote: post #444
x187463 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fantastic video from Matt, as usual. Yet another data point on why nobody should be wasting a second watching Mr Beast content. Complete algorithmically optimized garbage. I recall Mr Beast showing up in a Colin Furze video for a few minutes and Mr Beast was very clearly incapable of being a normal person. He was obviously out of place, being in full makeup and styled, and couldn't seem to be bothered to actually e…

Luckily the recommendation system does work to some extent. I'm glad I don't get to see any of that stuff on my youtube. Opening the front page in a private view is a scary place of hyper-optimised drama and attention seeking. It's scary imagining people getting sucked into that :/

If you turn off you watch history in account settings, then youtube.com is just a passive-aggressive black screen telling you to turn it back on. It’s beautiful.

When you click over to subscriptions, you see only the stuff that you subscribed to, and nothing else.

Recommendations on a video are based on you subscriptions and the current video, and nothing else.

I could never go back.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#546

Post by cortesoft »

titzer wrote: post #161
al_borland wrote: post #90

Earlier 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…

Magazines, phone books, friends, stores. You know you could go to a store (or call them on the phone!) and talk to a person. "Hello, I am trying to find a thing to help me with X." Turns out that products that work well tend to get remembered, and ones that don't get forgotten.

Call what store? How do I know a store even exists to call it? How do I find out the store’s name and phone number? How do I find out where the store is located?

You say products that work tend to get remembered, and sure, for existing products with a market you might be right… people would continue buying those things even with no advertising.

But how did the FIRST person who bought the product find out about it? Someone has to try it once before you can even know the product works. How would a new product enter the market?

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#547

Post by cortesoft »

wolvoleo wrote: post #97
al_borland wrote: post #90

Earlier 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…

If a product is really that good than people will legit recommend it. It's not a problem at all.

How does the first person find the product to recommend it, though? There has to be SOMEONE who tries the product without being recommended by a previous customer.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#548

Post by BeetleB »

mmh0000 wrote: post #539
BeetleB wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Root your damn phone! I did for many years, and finally gave up. With recent Androids, life in the rooted world is much more difficult: Netflix automatically drops to a lower quality tier. Many apps now just refuse to work on a rooted phone. But the worst thing: If I want to update the ROM to get the latest security benefits, I have to wipe my data. Surprised you didn't mention something like PiHole.

PiHole is fine, I guess. I'm not a huge fan of it personally because: - It's local network only, and while I can VPN home, I don't always want to - It has a high maintenance overhead, at least for me. It would block too much, then my wife would complain, and I'd have to spend time figuring out the magic rule that was breaking. - It's DNS-level blocking only, which is helpful but doesn't cover nearly as much ground as…

But doesn't uBlock only block stuff via the browser?

I want to block ads from most apps.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#549

Post by mxkopy »

Tanoc wrote: post #502
transcriptase wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you watch him on Joe Rogan’s podcast he gives a full overview of how every single tiny detail down to colors, length of scene cuts, facial expressions, language, total length of videos, time of day for release, thumbnails, sound effects, music is extensively A/B tested to not only optimize for the algorithm but for hijacking people’s attention as well. That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing…

This seems like innately hostile behaviour. Not to other video creators, but to his audience. Stripping as much as he can using data and mathematics is the kind of thing engineers do to pull more out of a machine, not something you do when you're creating informal communications to other humans.

It’s basically drug dealing. Which is fine if you’re doing it for fun, but doing it to make money develops the most antisocial parts of a person

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#550

Post by twoodfin »

thuuuomas wrote: post #313
pixl97 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We aren’t even mining asteroids near Earth’s orbit. Space colonization is a ketamine dream. There’s no extraterrestrial economy. Earth is all we have. One pie.

A pie that includes sand which is now turned into GPUs that can solve complex problems described in English. Value that was unlocked fairly recently from “one pie”.
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