Live data from Hacker News

Vietnam bans unskippable ads

saigoneer.com

291–300 of 835 posts

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#291
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. Why?

Second order effects. Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue. This means the platform and the video creator both make less revenue. This means less videos get created. All of these happen at the population level. I hate ads, but regulations that are for things that aren't public health (including mental health), anti-monopolization, etc. are p…

If your revenue comes from parasitical strategies it's negative sum and the economy is better off without it.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#292
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite most annoying ad tactic is the trick slowing down progress bar. It starts off fast making it seem like it’s going to be, say, a ten-second ad so you decide to suffer through it… but progressively slows so you notice at like the 20 second mark you’re only 2/3 of the way through the progress bar, so probably less than halfway done. Murderous rage.

Mr. Beast on youtube is guilty of that. Matt Parker of Standup Maths fame did an in-depth look at how that works. Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate people in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c

> Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate people in general.

My first thought is that the person has a strong grasp of their profession and they love money. A hack like that has to have a really high value/effort ratio.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would naturally lead to less content eventually I, personally, am drowning in "content".

> I, personally, am drowning in "content". Until the content is utterly captivating and speaks to your soul in a way even your closest friends and partners can't, we haven't hit peak content. You know that one movie you see every decade or so that you can't get out of your head? The one that left you flabbergasted, that you've watched at least half a dozen times, and that you frequently and fondly remember? It touche…

Why would you ever expect or even want us to be 'swimming' in such emotionally activating content? The reality is that people will just get desensitized and there will be the same proportion of dreck and the same discoverability problems as ever. Your argument is dopamine junkie logic, sitting around waiting for a dealer to bring you something stronger instead of putting effort into searching out or making things that satisfy you.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#294
post #86

I'm just wondering why governments think it's a good idea to regulate ads. IMO that is something the market (e.g. the users) should take care of.

Best argument I can think of is the fact that half of ads on American TV have the words "ask your doctor about ___" in them. Drugs ads should be banned.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#296

I 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 too struggle with this. It's not like people can't publish things on the web without ads. If the author/artist wanted it to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. So people who use ad blockers are either making a moral choice to consume a paid service for free, or are ignorant of how the internet economy works.

There is an argument to be made that advertisements are so detrimental to the user experience and mental health of the recipient that they are morally justified in blocking them. However, that is debatable when you consider the alternative, which is that the medium you are consuming may not exist at all if not for the advertisements published along with it.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#298
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mr. Beast on youtube is guilty of that. Matt Parker of Standup Maths fame did an in-depth look at how that works. Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate people in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c

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…

[deleted]

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#299
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising isn't the general concept of letting people know what products are available for purchase. It's more specifically doing this for money and showing it to people who don't want to see it. One might quibble about exactly what the word "advertising" encompasses, but that description covers the bad stuff pretty well, whatever name you want to give it. I'd boil it down to: if you added a "don't show this" optio…

> and showing it to people who don't want to see it. So, do superbowl ads not count as ads because a non-negligible portion of the viewership wants to see them? Or are you saying that there needs to be a non-negligible fraction of the viewers who don’t want to see it for it to be an ad?

There's a spectrum. Movie trailers are closer to the "not ads" portion of the spectrum, although when shown in theaters they are much more ad-like than when made available online.

There are probably a decent number of football fans who would use a "skip ads" button if they had one for the Super Bowl, so they're still some way toward the "ads" end of the spectrum. But they're certainly less objectionable than most TV ads.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#300
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already numerous competitors to YouTube. Of course they have collectively like 1% marketshare, but that's because it's basically impossible to compete against YouTube right now. But if YouTube died, these sites would rapidly become fully competent replacements - all they're missing is the users.

How would they pay for the infrastructure required to support all those users? I can't stand ads, but when I was younger, no way would I have paid for YT Premium (though to be fair, ads are much, much worse now).

Let me pay usage based, with full transparency in hosting, infra, and energy costs. Like a utility.

Subscription services are like hungry hungry hippos, you give them $10 a month and next year they want $100.

I honestly think if everyone starts paying, it will only make them remove the free tier quicker. I think society is better with youtube free, even if ads are annoying.

Post reply on HN