Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vietnam bans unskippable ads

saigoneer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 835 posts

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#771

Post by tcfhgj »

tzs wrote: post #535
iceflinger wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were going to be buying it anyway why does it even matter what the price is? Why can't they just list it at the coupon price for everyone?

Let me clarify. When I said I'm going to buy it anyway I didn't necessarily mean at that time. There are many things that are in the "do not need to go out and buy it now but I do need to buy it in the near future" category. I would normally get those at the store I normally buy that kind of thing when I'm there to get other things. E.g., most groceries come from the big Walmart Supercenter near my house. If I get a…

just get a list of shops and compare their prices instead of waiting for an ad popping up in front of you for each product you buy when you actually would prefer to watch something else?

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#772

Post by tcfhgj »

tirant wrote: post #338
iammjm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world would definitely be better without ads. All ads are poisonous. All of them first convince you that you and your life as it is is not good enough, and that in order to be happy again you need to spend money to buy a $product.

Definitely the world wouldn’t be better without all ads, because that would be a clear violation of free speech. However ads should be limited only to communication channels that are optional to engage in. As for example, an ad on YouTube, a private video platform, should be perfectly fine. That’s part of the product. On the other hand, ads on a highway, on the street, should not be allowed. I have not given permissi…

ads aren't free speech, but corrupted speech

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#773

Post by tcfhgj »

jonny_eh wrote: post #498
amelius wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would people learn about various choices? By going to a website where they can learn about various choices. It could be similar to ads, but with higher truth value to it. AND most importantly, the user would view the information when THEY want to see the information, not when the marketeer wants to shove it in their face.

> By going to a website where they can learn about various choices. Who pays for the website? In the end, a world without ads gets very pricey very quickly.

who paid for product catalogues in the past? who gives free samples to journalists for testing?

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#774

Post by tcfhgj »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #615
TechSquidTV wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When crypto was genuinely new, and I was young, I had hope that one day we might actually embrace micropayments. Turns out I was not only young, but stupid.

Ignoring the cryptocurrency angle for a second (to avoid distracting knee-jerks)... Have you thought deeply about why micropayments have not been embraced?

ads

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#775

Post by kube-system »

lm28469 wrote: post #700
kube-system wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there are very few markets in which all of the buyers have perfect information. It is extremely common in the science/technology sector that buyers aren't looking for a solution to a problem they have because they are under the impression that a solution doesn't exist. The archetypal business-school case study for this is the story of Viagra. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/03/27/viagra... But it…

> No, there are very few markets in which all of the buyers have perfect information. This is solved by 5 minute of searches on the web in 99% of cases really. I never in my life bought something because I've seen an ad about it, meanwhile I solved countless of my problems by thinking about the issue and looking for a solution online or talking to people about it

Absolutely! But, you're missing the cognitive part of this. People don't search for things that they don't think exists.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#776

Post by catapart »

mattacular wrote: post #724
catapart wrote: post #14

Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board. If you can't sell me on your ad in 5 seconds, it's unlikely you can sell me on your product in 15 or 30 seconds. And if your product is of any interest to me whatsoever, I'm happy to continue watching the ad. I sit through movie trailers and tech ads all the time, even with an option to skip. But I h…

> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. > But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board. You don't see how these are conflicting viewpoints? What do you think would compel a company to act in some way that is not in line with its short term financial interests? Sheer luck?

Long term financial interests, mostly. I know the ads run on my network will never, under any circumstance, be allowed to appear without a skip button within 5 seconds. Immediately, if possible. The only conditional is when the skip button appears, not if. And that's divorced from the copy; the component that plays the ad doesn't care what copy is running, it controls the skipability.

If an advertiser does not like those terms and is willing to forgo my users for that position, more power to them. I have every confidence that I will still find advertisers and, in my experience, they will be higher quality advertisers for the demographics of my users. Artists tend to advertise in cheap space that they know other artists will be viewing. You get the idea.

What has me curious is why you see those two as conflicting viewpoints? I didn't need a government to regulate me. Just common sense and care for my users. I'm not going to subject them to noisy or obnoxious ads, nor am I going to subject them to content that may not be suitable for everyone, and so I'm also not going to subject them to overly long ads. It seems, to me, that you have a profound lack of faith in the platforms you use. Which I can understand as a practical realization about the current apex platforms. But I don't know why it would blind you to the possibility of reasonable people acting reasonably.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#777

Post by tcfhgj »

dmix wrote: post #745
fraboniface wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're dead right, it would be the one killer move to remove a lot of perverse incentives, fix the internet, possibly even social media, and all live in a happier world. The whole economy would stop paying the ad tax to Google and Meta. And it's not that impractical : just make a consumer-run search engine for products and services.

People already complain about having 10 differently monthly subscriptions for internet stuff. If you remove ads people will need 30 to do the same stuff they do now.

or micro payments or something different which will work better.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#778

Post by agoodusername63 »

xigoi wrote: post #662
yibg wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see this pro-ads argument all the time and it’s so obviously-stupid that I’m truly baffled. If you're truly baffled by a view that many people share, you're probably missing something. How do you solve discoverability, especially of a new type of product or category? I invented this new gadget call "luminexel". People don't know what it is yet, because it's new. How do people find it in a catalog? Or the thing I…

> How do you solve discoverability, especially of a new type of product or category? I invented this new gadget call "luminexel". People don't know what it is yet, because it's new. How do people find it in a catalog? You make a post on Hacker News titled “Show HN: I made this cool thing called Luminexel, check it out!” Some people will think it’s really cool and tell their friends about it. Eventually it will end up…

My man that’s an ad

Many posts on HN are ads. We’ve just collectively decided that some of them are OK

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#779

Post by SockThief »

UnreachableCode wrote: post #701

While on the subject, does anybody know any good ad-blocking solutions for mobile phones? So far I have experimented with NetShield from ProtonVPN and https://nextdns.io/ with varying results. There are also features baked into certain browsers like the cookie blocker with DuckDuckGo which works extremely well, and UnTrap for Safari on iOS which allows for heavy Youtube web customisation. Also, shout out to Playlet o…

https://blokada.org/

Blokada 5 is free. It blocks ads and trackers system wide. It works in all games and apps I checked for the last 4-5 years.

Used to work with YouTube as well, but not any more. I use New Pipe for that.

You're experience may vary depending on block lists you subscribe to, but vanilla set up is already quite good.

Re: Vietnam bans unskippable ads

#780

Post by tcfhgj »

mvdtnz wrote: post #507
_jab wrote: post #13

I've often wondered whether the world would be better without ads. The incentive to create services (especially in social media) that strive to addict their users feels toxic to society. Often, it feels uncertain whether these services are providing actual value, and I suspect that whether a user would pay for a service in lieu of watching ads is incidentally a good barometer for whether real value is present. Don't…

My experience is that people who make sweeping claims like "all advertising should be banned" have never run or managed a small business. There is simply no way to survive as one of the little guys without some kind of marketing.

people still would buy food in their favorite shops, so they probably will survive - perhaps even with higher profits as zero-sum ad spending is gone
Post reply on HN