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How soon until we see AI-powered adblockers that filter the output of any signal to remove anything that it perceives as an ad?
by kibwen 4y ago
How soon until we see AI-powered adblockers that filter the output of any signal to remove anything that it perceives as an ad?
- paxys 4y agoWe've had the ability for DVRs to automatically detect and skip ads for at least a decade now. Dish is the most prominent company that tried it, and immediately got sued by TV networks and had to remove the functionality.
- thewebcount 4y agoMy TiVo has a commercial skip button. It doesn’t work everywhere, but for a show that’s been in your queue for a few days it usually does. Apparently it uses AI to detect where others have fastfowarded or used the 30 second skip button and figures it out. It’s pretty nice for those times when I actually want to record something that has ads in it (which is rare).
- Turing_Machine 4y agoI'm thinking of Carl Sagan's book _Contact_, in which one of the characters became a billionaire by developing "Adnix" (removed ads), "Preachnix" (removed televangelists) and "Jivenix" (removed politicians) technologies.
- Eleison23 4y agoThen some guys at Bell Labs developed "Unix" and... oh dear.
- e1ghtSpace 4y agoHow soon will content makers make their content look like ads to force these algorithms to fail?
- maskros 4y agoThat's already happened ... just look at how many youtube channels have integrated a "and now let's briefly talk about my sponsors" segment in the middle.
- derekp7 4y agoNow all Youtube needs is to give the content creator the ability to disable the fast forward / skip 10 second buttons at specified portions of the video (in return for a fee of course).
- midoridensha 4y agoThey could try that, but browser extensions like Enhancer for YouTube will fix it. Also, you can just download the video with youtube-dl and watch it that way.
- weberer 4y agoThat's exactly what they do with their "Shorts" section. They completely take away play controls from the user.
- brokenmachine 4y agoIs there any way to add the controls back? I'd definitely like to disable the looping at the very least.
- drdec 4y agoThis is how ads were in the beginning of television, the characters in the snow would talk about the product.
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoAnd how ads on radio have been since forever.
- 4y ago
- qsort 4y agoSeveral TV models already incorporate that feature. If your device is supported, your remote should have a button conforming to the IEC 60417-5009 standard to activate it.
- kube-system 4y agoWe had expert systems in VCRs 20+ years ago that did that. They just sensed the black frames that occur during the fade-in/out between the commercials and the content.
- harry8 4y agomythtv is still pretty great fwiw. Auto flagging ads is pretty good, but even don't bother, just using kodi as a front end with the plugin and skipping forward 3 minutes when an ad comes on does most of the job. (sometimes you do another 30 seconds or 1 minute and you get really good at it). Start watching your program 10-20 minutes late and no ads. Live sport is the only place I see tv ads at all nowadays - hence the crush and cram maybe? Everything you do to avoid ads, from blocking your ears, to ripping out magazine pages, running myth or equivalent, pi hole and similar adblockers must be made explicitly completely legal on the grounds of self-defence and proper care of your family. Regardless of the legality it's kind of your ethical duty.
- Firmwarrior 4y agoHey, do you have a good way to communicate this to normies? I haven't had any luck explaining to my wife that advertisements are basically a sort of cancerous meme designed to deliver misinformation and manipulate you into wasting your money on products that focus more on self-promotion than quality or value. I just sound like a jerk and she somehow takes it as a personal attack
- engineer_22 4y agoSome people will see the world differently than you do, no matter what you say. You'll learn to live with it.
- kelnos 4y agoI sometimes have trouble explaining this to others without coming off as a jerk as well. I think the thing to do is to focus on yourself rather than the person you're talking to: instead of saying to someone that ads are "designed to manipulate you", say that they're "designed to manipulate, and I know that I'm not always strong enough to resist being swayed to want to buy something I don't actually want or need". Frame it as ads making you, personally, feel manipulated. Don't try to proselytize and tell people that they're being manipulated, because no one likes to be told that they're gullible and weak. So focus on how ads affect you, not on how you believe they affect the person you're trying to convince. Because even if you're right about how it affects them -- and you probably are -- it doesn't feel good to be told that.
- AlbertCory 4y agoDust off my old response to "augmented reality": subtractive reality. I originally thought of it as "subtracting out annoying people" but "subtracting out ads" is much more compelling.
- rahimnathwani 4y agoThere was a Black Mirror episode which included that. It started off simple: a mother subtracting a scary dog from the view of her young daughter.
- thih9 4y agoWhat could possibly go wrong? It sounds interesting on a psychological/developmental level too, children are routinely taught to ignore certain thoughts, concepts or emotions. Looks like technology could offer increased level of granularity and control. Scary times.
- brokenmachine 4y agoAah, the old Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses from Hitchhikers Guide.
- tedunangst 4y agoWhat happens when you watch Fight Club?