The AI Billboards Are Killing SF • Hacker News Board

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#41

Post by zem » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

Brendinooo wrote: post #26

"Killing SF" is overly dramatic, and others have noted that the phenomenon observed here is not unique to AI, or SF. But there is something a little...alienating about advertising that's not meant for you. It's a dumb example, but in Pittsburgh the football stadium was renamed from Heinz Field to Acrisure Stadium. Of course, "Three Rivers Stadium", the name of the previous building, was best. It's not a name that tri…

for me it's the opposite of alienating - it's like the ads have been banished to some niche sphere and I can live my regular life in the city unbothered by advertising.

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#42

Post by dabbz » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

pringk02 wrote: post #16

cdrnsf wrote: post #11

I saw the band Chat Pile a while back in Los Angeles. They played the previous night in San Francisco — their singer mentioned the billboards and led the crowd in an ethusiastic chant of "F*k AI!".

Great performers, great band

Far better than the band 999mb, they don't do well in the gig economy.

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#43

Post by soperj » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

Brendinooo wrote: post #26

"Killing SF" is overly dramatic, and others have noted that the phenomenon observed here is not unique to AI, or SF. But there is something a little...alienating about advertising that's not meant for you. It's a dumb example, but in Pittsburgh the football stadium was renamed from Heinz Field to Acrisure Stadium. Of course, "Three Rivers Stadium", the name of the previous building, was best. It's not a name that tri…

Heinz just sells diabetes & fatty liver disease and packages it as a staple of american cuisine.

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#44

Post by embedding-shape » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

Brendinooo wrote: post #26

"Killing SF" is overly dramatic, and others have noted that the phenomenon observed here is not unique to AI, or SF. But there is something a little...alienating about advertising that's not meant for you. It's a dumb example, but in Pittsburgh the football stadium was renamed from Heinz Field to Acrisure Stadium. Of course, "Three Rivers Stadium", the name of the previous building, was best. It's not a name that tri…

Same with Barcelona FC's stadium. Originally called "Estadi del Barcelona", a new nickname became popular enough that the members voted to rename it to "Camp Nou". That makes sense to me, the ones who are there and members, get to decide the name. Cue 2022: Spotify (Swedish/American company?) buys the rights to the name, so now it is supposedly "Spotify Camp Nou" which is used absolutely everywhere on marketing materials, buildings and clothing, yet no one actually calls it that nor does Spotify have much to do with Barcelona or the club.

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#45

Post by garethsprice » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #10

clint wrote: post #3

I remember when I was young and every billboard in SF was some stupid web 2.0 startup, or SaaS, or Crypto Shitcoins. Now we're plagued with AI billboards and the world is ending!

At least I could usually tell what a web 2.0 company actually did. With AI nearly being a commodity at this point, AI billboards are like seeing ads for different brands of table salt.

There were cryptic billboards in the last 2 tech booms too (dotcom, web 2.0) - the one that comes to mind is the Google ones that were a puzzle that led to a recruiting funnel (2004: https://www.npr.org/2004/09/14/3916173/google-entices-job-se...)

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#46

Post by viccis » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

Oh it's the AI billboards, and not the crowds of like 20 people shooting up at 7am as I'm walking from my hotel to Moscone for my work conference? I guess the AI billboards do create a bitterly ironic feeling in that context, but my overall impression of SF is that it's the lowest trust society I've ever been to, in or out of this country. Basic lawlessness is so common that even things like my hotel's elevator inspection was 3 years out of date when I last visited. Part of that is that I end up having to walk around the Tenderloin/SoMA/Union Square parts of town if I'm there for something at Moscone, but honestly that's on SF. Keep the downtown part of your city that people visit clean enough that my clothes don't reek at the end of the day just from the smell of the city. I honestly never have this issue in NYC.

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#47

Post by Barbing » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #40

Brendinooo wrote: post #26

"Killing SF" is overly dramatic, and others have noted that the phenomenon observed here is not unique to AI, or SF. But there is something a little...alienating about advertising that's not meant for you. It's a dumb example, but in Pittsburgh the football stadium was renamed from Heinz Field to Acrisure Stadium. Of course, "Three Rivers Stadium", the name of the previous building, was best. It's not a name that tri…

I think it's alienating because people were told all their lives that their commercial impact is actual power, that they can "vote with their wallet". That has never been true, but now they're not even lying to us anymore. Regular people have no relevant political power and no relevant economic power, and the people in power have stopped pretending that we do. The world is not for us, we don't even matter enough to h…

A small town vote can with their wallet on their local diner, at least. The sentiment certainly has significant limitations, though lots of votes with wallets should still matter, just as inversely one writein for Buckethead wouldn’t suddenly make him prime minister.

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#48

Post by Barbing » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

arjie wrote: post #39

SF is always on the brink of death from one thing or another. Has to be the most melodramatic populace in America. I’ve lived here for 13 years, my wife for 20. It’s the same as always. We saw a Sees Candies : No AI needed billboard yesterday. Thought that was funny.

You might like this prank billboard that’s up: https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/prank-san-francisc...

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#49

Post by viccis » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #18

superloika wrote: post #15

Advertising should be banned. It's an attack on the mind.

You can't in california, actually. While you can generally restrict new ones, you can't eliminate existing ones without basically paying out the lost revenue+etc to whoever is running it.

You can actually just eliminate existing ones. The government can just do things and absolutely already does whenever politicians really want something to happen (data centers, etc.). There's no law of nature that billboards must be allowed to remain where they are.

Re: The AI Billboards Are Killing SF

#50

Post by nekitamo » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #35

Brendinooo wrote: post #26

"Killing SF" is overly dramatic, and others have noted that the phenomenon observed here is not unique to AI, or SF. But there is something a little...alienating about advertising that's not meant for you. It's a dumb example, but in Pittsburgh the football stadium was renamed from Heinz Field to Acrisure Stadium. Of course, "Three Rivers Stadium", the name of the previous building, was best. It's not a name that tri…

I think it's related to the K shaped economy. The country is no longer being built for the middle class, which is concerning.

I think you're on to something. It's really concerning that the people with the money to run these ad campaigns are so removed from the bulk of the populace that they don't even bother targeting them with all the billboards anymore, just each other.

Otoh maybe I'm looking at it wrong, and maybe billboard advertising has gotten so ineffective that it's cheapened to the point that you can tuck it into your campaign as an afterthought. If you get one solid enterprise lead from it, it pays for the whole year. And besides it has branding value.

Either way, definitely feels a bit dystopian to me. How alienating must it feel for the service worker commuting to his dead end job where even the billboards don't make sense anymore?