alt Hacker NewsVietnam bans unskippable ads
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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 get me wrong, I'm well aware this is impractical. But it's fun to think about sometimes.
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 have no use for seeing the entire Dawn dish soap's aw-shucks, faux-folksy ad play out. In five seconds, you can remind me that dawn exists, fulfilling the main purpose of the ad, and I can get on with the content I'm actually interested in.
As much as this may have unintended consequences, I can appreciate the motivation. I can't let my kids play iPhone games unless I turn the device into Airplane mode. Almost all these pay to play mobile games have 60 second interstitials after each level that can't be skipped. It's insane. I've taught my kids how to force kill the game and reload to get out. Definitely depressing compared to the PC shareware days I grew up with.
Requiring skip is good, but the part about focusing on illegal ads is better. If all ads were for soda, cars, and other legitimate products, that would be one thing, but so many ads are for straight up scams these days.
Is this just a really ubiquitous typo (google finds multiple headlines with the same spelling), or is the rendering of "Vietnam" into English spelling somewhat unstable?
About a decade ago, a mobile gaming company I was at, accidentally shipped a full-screen ad without the art asset for the close button, so the button was invisible. The ad basically forced users to visit the in-app store for a moment before they could close it.
The sad part is that day we broke all previous daily revenue records.
Translated source: https://thuvienphapluat-vn.translate.goog/phap-luat/ho-tro-p...
Online advertisements only. I was curious how they were going to implement that on TV!
It doesn't mention how much time must be in between ads
The law also prohibits advertisements that harm "national security" or "negatively affects the dignity of the Party Flag, leaders, national heroes [etc.]". Wonder if that's the real purpose here
An aside: One of the best uses for AR that I can imagine is real life ad-block. I’d wear AR glasses all the time if it would automatically replace billboards and other ads with landscapes.
They shouldn't be surprised if ads are shown more often.
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 phone! And install AdAway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdAway)
- Firefox + uBlock
- Don't install malware/spyware (Arguably, Android is spyware, but custom ROMs fix it.)
- AdGuard (free, works well, but not perfect, enable the "extra" filters)
- Don't install malware/spyware (Arguably, iOS is spyware, but Apple thinks you're a simp, so Good Luck.)
- Seriously, you probably shouldn't be using Windows, but I "get it" sometimes you have to.
- Don't install malware/spyware
- https://christitus.com/windows-tool/
- https://old.reddit.com/r/WindowsLTSC/wiki/index
- https://windhawk.net/
- https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
- https://wpd.app/
- https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
- Firefox + uBlock and done.
- OpenSnitch if you run random executables from the Internet.
- https://github.com/arkenfoxIn case you wanted a more reputable source: https://theinvestor.vn/online-video-advertisements-in-vietna...
Basically banning brand advertising ads. Interesting. This will be a pain for a bunch of developers to adhere to lol.
I often blacklist sites that cover content with unremovable ads or has unrelenting ads. They need a clear button that acknowledges I've seen it and to stop annoying me.
Interesting, I wonder if this will spike VPN traffic into Vietnam.
Interesting, the link title was revised, but "Vienam" spelling remains? What?
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 on Roku. A privacy focused YouTube proxy for the TV which blocks ads and even can identify sponsors, filler and credit segments and allow you to skip these.
I am not involved in any of these projects, I just think they're cool.
Interesting coming from a developing nation. One thing I've always thought is, it may be vible to replace ad-funded free services with paid services in developed nations where residents may be able to afford it, but developing nations may be much more reliant on such free services and could get priced out.
This is such a good step.
> Online platforms must add visible symbols and guidelines to help users report ads that violate the law and allow them to turn off, deny, or stop seeing inappropriate ads.
The fact that this even needs to be written into law to force companies into taking more responsibility with their advertisments is incredible.
Higher volume of skippable ads incoming
Was this posted automatically or why it reads Vienam? Without the T! And the title also reads so?
And this is why I run an ad blocker in my browser on top of a pihole for my home. The whole situation sucks, and I'm often willing to pay for an ad-free experience.
I still would never buy an X10 camera or any other of their products given how they abused pop-over/under ads. Same for Sony for other reasons... I can carry a product grudge for decades.
Oh, thank God, there’s someone with common sense who hates ads and is in a position of power to push this law through. Even if it’s only in Vietnam, it sets a precedent for other countries to follow. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with ads themselves; the problem lies with the platform owners. YouTube, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, HBO, etc., use dark patterns to force users to upgrade to ad free plans. These manipulation tactics are designed to push people into more expensive subscriptions. My prediction is that once platform owners can no longer make money from unskippable ads, they’ll simply get rid of ad supported subscription tiers altogether, like we had before.
I feel no one really clicks on ads. I don't understand about it, but they just feel to be there so they can have a tracker for your habits
So instead of one minute-long ad, I'm going to get 12 I have to manually skip? Thanks, Vietnam.
Any advance in JavaScript and outrageous browser complexity is cheered at here on HN, but waking up to the fact that their actual purpose is unskippable ads and browser monopolies is not so funny.
I hate ads with all my heart. And I go out of my way to religiously block them. I employ DNS blocking (through my own adguard home server) on my whole network (I use this DNS server connected to unbound to act as recursive DNS on all devices even when I am outside home). I use ublock origin on Firefox browser (one of the forks that guts Firefox ads and privacy settings by default) and on my iPhone I use wipr + uBlock Origin lite. I have several userscripts to block ads one some websites (i.e I block HN jobs posts).
I have a mental view that gets disrupted by ads and sometimes even angry. In the rare moments which I use a computer or phone of a friend or family without those, I really can't tolerate the suffering they go through. My single best advice to people about using ublock origin and Firefox resonated with everyone of them. I use it on my parents devices as the best security measure that could be used.
Am I overreacting, maybe but I find my level of tolerance for ads is zero no matter how much I agree that some of them are good or not. Maybe this is the result of decades of self imposing dark patterns and intrusive ads do to some people. I really feel sorry for majority of internet users that do not use adblockers.
Poorly thought out and family subscription to YouTube premium in Vietnam is $6/month USD. Google is just going to pull a different lever to compensate, like just displaying more shorter ads per session.
This is slightly off topic, but something I find myself wondering pretty regularly: if ads are pretty much universally hated by every human on earth, why do companies continue running them?
I get the obvious answer: "they work"
But do they? Do big companies have a real data-driven model to demonstrate annoying ads leading to sales?
While anecdotal, I can think of a number of specific times ads slipped through my ad blocker and I went out of my way to avoid buying anything from those companies.
The main app I use with unskippable ads (usually for crappy games, ugh) is FlightRadar24 - since it remembers where you were on the map, I will always just swipe up and kill the app, and it's usually not to hard to find what I was looking at again after re-opening. Of course that wouldn't work with something with more state but I'm glad I can do that.
Good for them, now they need to take it one step further for an even shorter and better title. And we should all follow suit.
Such ban, even if copied in other places, will probably lead companies to display more small ads per showing.
It might also lead to more intrusive ads, as each user now has at most 5 second to see.
I love the picture of politicians sitting by themselves, annoyed by something as all other people are, and thinking "there's nothing I can do about it". Good on Vietnam for actually doing something about it.
I got a taste of this from an EU MEP that I proposed something to, and they replied "it can't be done because of the law". I then replied "but you make the law, it's literally your job!" - and they looked at me, blank faced. Imagine large rooms filled with people who mindlessly act within a framework they dislike, whilst being the only people who could actually change it, and not having the will to do so. It sounds like some special type of hell.
I shudder to think how many people sitting in positions of power just mindlessly continue doing a thing because of some form of complacency. Madness.
Note that this is most likely on paper only as they have zero power to enforce this on Youtube / Facebook which are the most popular ads-serving consumer services in the country currently.
The regulation will be enforce on domestic companies only.
When I was traveling in Asia I was sometimes on VPN and sometimes not. I noticed that when I was not on VPN I got a lot more unskippable youtube ads than when I was, even though I was using the same browser and adblockers.
Apparently Google knows how to circumvent adblockers, and they're testing these tools in certain markets.
Time for a military intervention by the US.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269
Feels appropriate: What if we made advertising illegal?
I like how the country is taking bold steps. This is a great move.
This will push CPMs down, and therefore companies will make up for the lower earnings-per-ad by showing more ads.
You can rearrange the deck chairs, sure, but more ads might be more annoying than fewer longer ones.
Pet peeve: Skip/close button appears after a few seconds - bht it only leads to another view whose close button is hidden for a few seconds too, and sometimes in a different corner.
5s is still too long. Immediate skip.
What's with the weird duck that flies out from the top right into the bottom left of the screen when you first open the article?
I love this, I hope the rest of the world adopts it :)
Both here and on the source post there is a typo in the title (Vietnam instead of Vienam).
Socialists countries, always in the forefront of basic human rights.
Are there a total ad time percentage metric in this law too, or will they simply be watching many more smaller ads?
AdGuard as a local VPN also bans unskippable Ads without the pesky legal enforcement baggage.
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 ad, have the "x" to close appear after 20-30 seconds
- display several ads in succession, each short, but it automatically proceeds to the next; the net time after which the "x" to close appears after 20-30 seconds
- display several ads in succession, each lasts for 3-10 seconds but you have to click on an "x" to close each one before the next one appears
I live in the USA. The well-established consumer product brands (Clorox, McDonalds, etc.) almost all had short ads that were done in 3-5 seconds. The longest ads were for obscure games or websites, or for Temu, and they appeared over and over again, making me hate them with a flaming passion. The several-ads-in-succession were usually British newspaper websites (WHY???? I don't live there) or celebrity-interest websites (I have no interest in these).
It seems like the monkey's-paw curse for this kind of legislation is to show several ads in a row, each allowing you to skip them after 5 seconds.