- 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.
- 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.
by datadrivenangel
3 subcomments
- 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.
by swiftcoder
5 subcomments
- 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?
- I'm glad someone is finally pushing back on unskippable / dark-pattern ads. The "fake progress bar", tiny close buttons, and multi-ad chains are just hostile UX.
Small related thing. I built a tiny free + open-source Chrome extension ("Parsely") that lets you focus only on the content. No ad, No distraction.
I originally made it to avoid ad-heavy / attention-stealing pages when I'm reading something.
If this kind of "make the web slightly less annoying" tooling resonates, feedback/PRs welcome.
Demo page: https://parsely.obasic.app
Why we built this: https://parsely.obasic.app/story
GitHub: https://github.com/TeamOliveCode/parsely
- 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
by radicaldreamer
1 subcomments
- 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.)
iOS: - 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.)
Windows (note, I don't actively use Windows, so these are the things I've collected and used in the past, no idea of their current state): - 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
Linux: - Firefox + uBlock and done.
- OpenSnitch if you run random executables from the Internet.
Firefox as a whole: - https://github.com/arkenfox
- In 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.
- Interesting, I wonder if this will spike VPN traffic into Vietnam.
- Interesting, the link title was revised, but "Vienam" spelling remains? What?
- 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.
- Higher volume of skippable ads incoming
- Was this posted automatically or why it reads Vienam? Without the T! And the title also reads so?
- Both here and on the source post there is a typo in the title (Vietnam instead of Vienam).
- 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.
by UnreachableCode
5 subcomments
- 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.
by oneeyedpigeon
1 subcomments
- So instead of one minute-long ad, I'm going to get 12 I have to manually skip? Thanks, Vietnam.
by nexawave-ai
0 subcomment
- 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 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.
- 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.
by tannhaeuser
0 subcomment
- 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.
by SunshineTheCat
1 subcomments
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
by secondcoming
0 subcomment
- I not too long ago received an ad on YouTube that was an entire episode of the UK reality TV program 'Made In Chelsea'. I think it was skippable but I couldn't believe that a) someone set up an ad campaign to do this, and b) YouTube didn't detect it.
by 125123wqw1212
0 subcomment
- 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.
by 125123wqw1212
0 subcomment
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
by booleandilemma
0 subcomment
- I wish the US led with stuff like this. More and more I feel like our politicians just care about enriching themselves without trying to improve our quality of life.
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269
Feels appropriate:
What if we made advertising illegal?
by blauditore
0 subcomment
- 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.
by FuturisticLover
0 subcomment
- I like how the country is taking bold steps. This is a great move.
- 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.
- That’s not bad but better would be to require a default of chronological order for showing content with an option for “discover” other content but only on demand.
- 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?
- 5 seconds... too slow. Ublock's better.
- Are there a total ad time percentage metric in this law too, or will they simply be watching many more smaller ads?
by anonzzzies
0 subcomment
- 5s is still too long. Immediate skip.
by croisillon
4 subcomments
- missing a T
by aldousd666
0 subcomment
- AdGuard as a local VPN also bans unskippable Ads without the pesky legal enforcement baggage.
by catlikesshrimp
0 subcomment
- Vietnam, not "Vienam"
- So, is it vietnam or vienam ? because the headline says vienam.
- I love this, I hope the rest of the world adopts it :)
- I know this is a deeply unpopular opinion, but I don't get humans sometimes. Why does this need regulating? Am I the only person who just doesn't use services which do this?
This is so obviously a free-market problem. The reason these ads exist is because there's a significant percentage of people who are happy to put up with them and those people mean that products can be better funded without requiring subscriptions.
If people want to use products with unskippable ads, then who cares? This "I want X without Y" regulation is so stupid. You can't have X without Y. Just go buy Z product and stop asking regulators to find ways to keep you coming back to products of consumer-hostile corporations.
by knowitnone3
0 subcomment
- US companies respond with 100 skippable ads per minute
by ApolloFortyNine
1 subcomments
- How does television work in Vietnam? Is it all adfree?
by unglaublich
0 subcomment
- I live an ad-free lifestyle and it is very serene.
by nephihaha
1 subcomments
- It's nice to read a case of government intervention making things better for the public rather than just more surveillance and control. And from Vietnam of all places.
- This "Vienam" sounds like a nice place!
by alex_young
1 subcomments
- Where is Vienam? Probably next to Camboia?
- Running ads unskippably: unspeakably sad.
by jonplackett
1 subcomments
- VPN use via Vietnam is about to go global.
- And then I thought the poster skipped a t
by luxuryballs
0 subcomment
- *Vietnam mandates 5 second ads
- So I have only one subscription: Youtube because of family/kids and bonus YT music.
For the rest: adguard phone/pihole home, frosty instead of twitch, newpipe instead of youtube(I hate the interface), infinity instead of reddit and a lot more alternatives for social media. Also using xmanager for some apps ;). I have zero ads on my phone or my pc. I disabled the ads once for my wife, she instantly yelled at me to enable it again :).
- I saw one where it was 20 seconds before the skip/x appeared, then when you hit X it pushes you to the app store, then when you hit back the x button moves to a new location, then when you hit it, it puts you into a 5 second "hey we're not done yet" ad cta... combine that with the fact the ad is showing soap opera gameplay that doesn't exist in the game - how is this even allowed?
- Unfathomably based
- Refreshing to see.
Makes you wonder what we could achieve if we all just started to say no to enshitification of the world.
by shevy-java
0 subcomment
- We need this too in the EU.
Actually, there should not be ads to begin with. They always waste my time. Thankfully there is ublock origin - which Google killed while lying about why they did so. Everyone knows why Google killed ublock origin (it still works on Firefox, but how many people still use Firefox?).
- It's Vietnam.
by knowitnone3
0 subcomment
- 2 words. adblock
by just-working
0 subcomment
- I <3 Vienam
by lifetimerubyist
2 subcomments
- I always wondered about traditional television. People like my dad still have it. It still has a shitload of ads. They're unskippable. People don't really seam to care about those for some reason though.
by fennecbutt
0 subcomment
- Finally. I've seen the ad. I never want the product or service or (most often) shitty misrepresented mobile game.
Advertising standards agencies in most Western countries are scum.
by itsafarqueue
0 subcomment
- Vie(t)nam
- Another step towards Blipverts from Max Headroom.
- Socialists countries, always in the forefront of basic human rights.
- So I really hate ads and either block them or avoid the product altogether. My tolerance is very close to zero.
But is it the government's job to regulate good user experience? Are unskippable ads a social problem that must be regulated away? I am the polar opposite of a libertarian, but to me ads are the alternative to other means of monetisation. They support things that are free to use but not free to operate. The transaction is consensual and not unavoidable.
by engineer_22
0 subcomment
- And just like that, millions of disillusioned youth embraced communism ...
- 'Vienam'? 'this like "Quality Learing Center"?
by explosion-s
0 subcomment
- vie*t*nam?
by simonebrunozzi
2 subcomments
- Title should be "Vietnam", not "Vienam". I would downvote the submitter just for the reason that he posted this without correting it first.
- Original title was
> Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appear After 5 Seconds
If we need to edit titles, could we at least take the opportunity to correct obvious typos? (Missing the t in Vietnam)
- [dead]
- [dead]
by throwaway2056
1 subcomments
- - Google just needs to tell DJT
- Vietnam get 50 % tariffs
- Change the ban
- Easy peasy for Tech bros.
- fuck yes, fuck APPLOVIN
- If you were giving out free cookies at the front of your store intended to thank shoppers for coming in, and someone reaches in and grabs one while running past, that's an ad-blocker. Not the most ethically justifiable[1], but legal. This law though is saying that if you have a person at the door who makes sure you are at least browsing the store before giving you a free cookie, that practice is now illegal. This is utterly nonsense to me. Does the Vietnam constitution contain a right to free VOD? How do TV broadcasters get away with it, given they're riddled with "non-skippable ads" -- about 17 minutes per hour of them!
[1] if you want to dispute this, is it just because you're thinking the store is run by a big company you don't like and that you feel rips people off? Does it change though if your mom baked those cookies to give out to try to get people to shop in her little boutique that barely makes enough money to cover rent? The point is just that it's not universally justifiable. I don't care if you block ads (I block them too) or take free samples from stores.
- 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.