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Vietnam bans unskippable ads

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Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#571

Post by andrepd »

DrewADesign wrote: post #64
jason_s wrote: post #42

I just uninstalled a game from my mobile phone this morning that had heavy ad usage. It was interesting to note the different ad display strategies. From least to most annoying: - display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10 seconds) - display an animated ad, have the "x" to close appear soon (3-10 seconds) - display a static ad, have the "x" to close appear after 20-30 seconds - display an animated a…

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.

Uber (and many other apps probably) do a similar thing. A completely deceptive progress bar that's basically an animation that's AB tested for lowest perceived wait, rather than being an actual progress bar in any sense of the word!

Everything is trying to scam you nowadays jfc

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#572

Post by xeonmc »

consp wrote: post #551
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was forced to do this as a developer of Flash websites in the early 00's. I loved making custom progress bars really fun so people didn't mind watching the huge sites download. I HATED when they had me mess with the time so that it got to 90% really fast and then spent AGES finishing the last 10%.

We all know the Microsoft progress bars reached 99% easily and had an infinite last % in the '90s. I'm still not convinced that was by accident.

Zeno’s progress bar.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#573

Post by andrepd »

physicles wrote: post #545
climb_stealth wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is basically what I do in NewPipe! Just a good ol' chronological list of my subscriptions, nothing else. Ahh if only everything could be this 2006...

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#575

Post by xp84 »

BeetleB wrote: post #518
xp84 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow parent, I cannot recommend Apple Arcade enough. My son is only allowed to play games that come from AA. These games aren't allowed to have any ads or in-app purchase. In return, you pay seven measly bucks a month (though I have it included as part of a package since we use iCloud and Apple Music and Apple TV+ anyway). The games in AA are either made for Apple Arcade (some great indie type games) or, very…

Know of an equivalent for Android? I'm leaning towards letting the kid play games only on an XBox and never on the phone. Even if I get rid of the ads, I don't want the games to be accessible wherever they are. Whereas with a TV, they need to situate themselves in a dedicated place to play games.

I haven't used it much, because I was dragged kicking and screaming back to iOS by family inertia (photo library and iMessage), but there is this which bills itself as the same idea:

https://play.google.com/store/pass/getstarted

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#577

Post by akersten »

suriya-ganesh wrote: post #256
mmh0000 wrote: post #251

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.

Behavioral (invisible) analytics alone is the secret trillion dollar industry that online advertisers want to distract you from by focusing on the morality of ad blocking.

A good blocker should block many of those scripts too, but there's no stopping server-side analytics at scale.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#578

Post by latexr »

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.

> when you're creating informal communications to other humans.

What he’s creating is fame and money for himself, the fact that it’s by doing videos is incidental. That’s why he also got into ghost kitchens, a game show full of corner cutting, and a theme park in Saudi Arabia open for under two months.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#579

Post by xp84 »

BeetleB wrote: post #518
xp84 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow parent, I cannot recommend Apple Arcade enough. My son is only allowed to play games that come from AA. These games aren't allowed to have any ads or in-app purchase. In return, you pay seven measly bucks a month (though I have it included as part of a package since we use iCloud and Apple Music and Apple TV+ anyway). The games in AA are either made for Apple Arcade (some great indie type games) or, very…

Know of an equivalent for Android? I'm leaning towards letting the kid play games only on an XBox and never on the phone. Even if I get rid of the ads, I don't want the games to be accessible wherever they are. Whereas with a TV, they need to situate themselves in a dedicated place to play games.

> only on an XBox and never on the phone. ... I don't want the games to be accessible wherever they are.

I couldn't agree more that a carry-anywhere gaming (or worse, social-media) device is too corrosive to childhood.[1] My eldest is only 7, so unsurprisingly he doesn't have a phone, and uses an iPad. The size of it has a nice side-effect that it's impractical to carry around, so it's only used at home and in the car.

When he's older, I plan to give him a phone that can only text and call.

[1] Sure, some of us had things like Game Boy, but consider how long those batteries even lasted, how bulky and limited the devices were, how expensive games were, how there were zero ads... It's really far from the same thing. I'd be fine with him having a thing like a Game Boy.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#580

Post by Retric »

everdrive wrote: post #558
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…

>That weird creepy face with the outline and uncanny smoothing aren’t by accident. I take your point, but I am still baffled why people find this appealing.

Novelty goes a long way, old enough YouTube video are optimized for their time period and end up looking stylized in their own ways.

Fashion swaps styles fast enough most people can’t afford full wardrobes before it changes, which by default keeps each style looking fresh.

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