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Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

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Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#251

Post by neilobremski »

Inevitably the goal of a project like this is going to start the fiery debate around artist compensation, free content, and advertising in general. BUT this is a great way to really see (or rather hear) ML work.

It reminds me a little of some TiVo competitor back-in-the-day where you could hit a "skip commercials" button and it would try to get back to the show by some visual or audible change/gap. Since then, somehow we've lost interest in being able to skip commercials but I still remember fast-forwarding on my VCR and how it hurt that DVDs prevented even that.

This is solid progress on one side of the fence because you know the other side is working on new things too.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#253

Post by SkyBelow »

iamstupidsimple wrote: post #82
mnm1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads themselves are not defensible. Trying to manipulate others for gain is a disgusting practice. It can lead to depression in individuals and encourages extreme materialism in culture. There's no such thing as an acceptable ad.

Advertising is necessary (paid or not it's the same shit) for small businesses to get off the ground, at all. Cut off ads and you'll strangle thousands of startups/SMBs. Physical ads haven't lost their effectiveness. If they had then we'd be in real trouble. I don't like ads either but remember there are multiple perspectives here. We should focus on purging bad actors than the entire practice. For now though, I see…

>Advertising is necessary (paid or not it's the same shit) for small businesses to get off the ground, at all.

I think there is an issue here because people are talking about different kinds of ads.

A new restaurant putting an ad out that lets people know what the attraction of the new restaurant is (the first Hispanic Sushi bar in town) is not a problem at all (to me, anyways). But if you listen to ads you will find that many don't fall into that category. Political ads are a big example, but also many ads for cosmetic surgery and weight loss. The ads for scams are some of the worst (though generally those last only a few days per scam). Ads for gold that try to scare people into making investment decisions that aren't likely in their best interest are another example.

If ads self policed themselves better perhaps people wouldn't be so set on blocking them.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#254

Post by TeMPOraL »

fouric wrote: post #208
willis936 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, $1 for a podcast episode is egregious. Almost no one would pay that. Piracy has gone down a lot in the past 15 years because content owners made reasonable decisions.

I value my time anywhere between $10/hour and $100/hour, depending on the context, and I would bet that the vast majority of Americans would do the same. $1 for a 30-minute podcast episode is $2/hour, which is far from "egregious" by almost any standard.

Counterpoint: $1 for a 30 minute podcast multiplied by 10k customers is $10k, which sounds like an absurd amount of money for something that probably took between 5 and 50 hours to make, depending on quality level. And there's no way in hell they're earning this kind of money through advertising, so if someone's going to honestly ask for money compensating lost ad revenue, we'll be talking $0.01 to $0.1 per episode.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#255

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

cwkoss wrote: post #201
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #111

Nice! Wanted to try something similar for a while using SDR to capture FM radio and start switching radio stations when the radio jockey starts speaking i.e. automatically switch stations when songs are not playing. The Radio jockeys here (India) have started promoting ads as part of their regular content without any disclaimers or mentions that it is a promotion. e.g. They just say, 'you should put your child in thi…

Contact the advertiser's sales department, waste their time, then chew them out for their shady advertising practices. Tell them that every time you hear an ad for them without a disclaimer, you will personally tell 10 friends or strangers that their organization is run by unethical crooks and should be avoided at all cost. Since you're in India, I wonder how economical it would be to hire a telemarketing company to…

Although it might legally possible for me to take them to court for their advertising practices, integrity in Indian media is very negligible.

Only few news media, mostly those which had been existing for over hundred years as news paper, still maintain some integrity after switching to online media but obviously they are at the verge of bankruptcy as they cannot compete with limited attention, instant gratification, confirmation bias fuelling media houses.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#257

Post by iamstupidsimple »

Kaiyou wrote: post #185
iamstupidsimple wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about that garbage. I'm talking about the mom and pop stores. The catering service, the stationery shop, etc.. These services are competing with shit (other ads) right now. Wouldn't it be nice if we could clean up the ecosystem and have these companies benefit?

Sorry, I never saw such ads in my life before. That garbage, however...

I agree. These ads exist (I do see them a lot in Search) but at a much lower proportion than other places. The reason is it's a quantity game and it's much more expensive to buy ads for irrelevant keywords whereas display ads aren't like that.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#258

Post by tomr_stargazer »

sambe wrote: post #13

There's something deeply satisfying about the idea that the annoying tone and shoutiness (and volume increase) of most ads could be used against them for filtering.

Carl Sagan, in the novel "Contact" (1985), actually predicted an ad-blocking technology that worked along these lines! He called it "Adnix" [0]

[0] http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Content.asp?Bnum=2223

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#259

Post by magic_beans »

Podcasts are free.

Let me repeat that: PODCASTS. ARE. FREE.

I hate ads as much as the rest of you, but how the eff does anyone on HN expect brilliant, creative, and hard-working podcast creators to earn a living? (there are truly some podcast gems out there).

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#260

Post by magic_beans »

CodeMage wrote: post #240
pavel_lishin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. People who are adblocking are saying that they are not willing to pay with attention. No. As a person who's adblocking, that is not what I'm saying. I'm perfectly willing to pay with attention; I'm not willing to pay with my data, I'm not willing to be tracked across sites, and I'm not willing to let my browser execute whatever garbage the ad network is sending down the pipe at me.

Different folks, different strokes. I'm also adblocking and I started way before it became a privacy thing, because I don't. Want. Ads. In my content.

Do you pay for your content then?
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