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California law forces Netflix, Hulu to turn down ad volumes
- secret-noun 1y agohttps://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB576 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... > a video streaming service that serves consumers residing in the state shall not transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany I was hoping we'd find a more precise definition. Couldn't this be gamed by editing a short (1 second, for example) segment of the intended content to have loud audio to artificially set the upper bound?
- anigbrowl 1y agoIt's already spelled out in more detail in the FCC guidance which the legislation incorporates by reference. Backing down the private right of action is bullshit though.
- potamic 1y agoIt does mention compliance with the CALM act, which lays out the precise methodology by which loudness will be measured [1] > The Calm Act refers to A/85, and A/85:2013 specifies BS.1770 (specifically referencing BS.1770-1) as the source of its loudness measurement techniques (1770-2 did not exist at the time A/85 was finalized). So BS.1770-1 currently serves as the yardstick by which U.S. television programming will be evaluated for CALM Act compliance. > BS.1770 recommends the Leq(RLB) measurement algorithm, where Leq(W) the frequency weighted sound level measure, xw is the signal at the output of the weighting filter, xRef is the reference level, and T is the length of the audio sequence. > The drawback of BS.1770 as originally conceived is that it measures average loudness over the entire length of content. This may be fine if the loudness is fairly consistent over time. If not, a quiet section of content may, as illustrated in Figure 5, bias the average level so that it measures as acceptable despite having some sections that are unacceptably loud. [1] https://www.telestream.net/pdfs/whitepapers/wp-calm-act-compliance.pdf https://www.telestream.net/pdfs/whitepapers/wp-calm-act-comp...
- spike021 1y agoi've noticed this with amazon prime in particular it's got to be at least 25% louder than the actual content i'm watching.
- nullify88 1y agoYouTube does this too. We immediately fetch the remote and mute the damn thing. And I'm contemplating finding something that auto mutes for me.
- smoghat 1y agoFor us, even regular YouTube is substantially louder than any streamer. If we want to watch something on YT than go back to Hulu/Netflix, we always have to adjust the volume. I don’t get it, why, why?
- fwip 1y agoLouder content is more compelling (to a point), so I'd imagine that louder content helps boost watchtime, which is what both Youtube and the video creators are optimizing for. The music industry's "loudness war" seems related. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
- spike021 1y agothat's odd to me because a lot of the time I've found that regular YouTube content is on the quieter side to other services.
- potamic 1y agoIt's sad that such a thing needs regulation in the first place. In real life if a salesman is being inconsiderate, I'll go out of my way to avoid their sales and find someone else who is better mannered. But we don't seem to apply the same measure to ads. Ads can be brash, insulting and manipulative, and yet that doesn't seem to cause a negative outcome for them. Rather it appears such ads work better and now that's what everyone's pushing towards. Human psychology is such a weird thing.
- ivell 1y agoI doubt if the ads are working better. I suspect their measurement approaches related to ads effectiveness is wrong. If we are just measuring viewing of an ad as positive, then obnoxious ads will be viewed and thought to be effective. But the emotional response would be the opposite (getting annoyed instead of getting interested). I think for the company placing the ad it is a net negative.
- ulrikrasmussen 1y agoI think there's so much snake oil in the ad business because it is indeed hard to measure the effectiveness of ads, in particular when shown in places where you cannot track the user behavior and correlate the ad with subsequent user behavior. In the end, platforms like Netflix and Hulu don't need to prove that a higher volume works, but perhaps their customers think that it works, and that is enough.
- iinnPP 1y agoThis service problem is fixed like most media-related service problems. Sailing. MPC has the ability to normalize volume in a video automatically.
- iamacyborg 1y ago> I think there's so much snake oil in the ad business because it is indeed hard to measure the effectiveness of ads, in particular when shown in places where you cannot track the user behavior and correlate the ad with subsequent user behavior. Or the alternative, you can track it therefore you assign a disproportionate amount of value to it versus the things that are harder to track.
- thayne 1y ago> It’s modeled off a federal law passed in 2010 that caps ad volumes on cable and broadcast TV, but doesn’t apply to streaming services. Why did that law not apply to streaming services in the first place? The internet was very much alive and kicking in 2010. Sure, streaming wasn't as prevalent as it is today, but it wouldn't have taken a lot of imagination to see the same problem would become an issue on the internet as well.
- idle_zealot 1y agoThe Internet, and before it, computers, broke our legal system. There are loads of things that we decided were bad and banned, but "thing but on computer" or "thing but online" somehow were interpreted to be exempt. For instance, there's a law banning video rental stores from sharing customer records, because it's obviously bad if private entities are allowed to collect and use potentially private information like media consumption habits. But movie streaming? Every detail about every piece of media you read or watch, when you watch, when you pause or bounce, every interaction and speck of attention catalogued and actively used to guide consumer behavior? That's fine actually, totally allowed. How about copyright? Right of first sale dictates that you can do whatever you want with a purchased copy of some media, short of distributing copies. You can give it away, sell it, lend it out, modify it, make personal copies, whatever. But what about "media but on computer"? That all goes out the window. Oh, you don't own a copy, you just have a non-transferable limited license to view that media on a specific device for as long as the distributor doesn't change their minds. An insane legal fiction that magically nullifies hard-won rights.
- bigmattystyles 1y agoThe video store example is funny because iirc, it wasn’t until someone high up/very involved in government got bit by it. During Robert Bork’s failed Supreme Court confirmation, a reporter figured out he rented porn. Maybe it was something less raunchy / embarrassing than porn but either way, iirc, they got that law on the books fast after that….
- extraduder_ire 1y ago
- afandian 1y agoNow do Duolingo. That ping is _so_ loud.
- noisem4ker 1y agoYou can disable sound effects (as well as the overdone haptics) in the settings.
- afandian 1y agoGood to know! Too late in my case, between the loud noises and the infantile UX I've long since deleted the app.
- Acrobatic_Road 1y agoeven better, he could uninstall it.
- mattmaroon 1y agoTVs and streaming devices could, should, and sometimes do fix this as well. I’d pay a little extra for that.
- clayliu 1y ago[dead]
- DoctorOW 1y agoI'm honestly surprised that somebody hasn't sold a bundle of a TV antenna, set-top box, and cloud storage for a DIY streaming service kind of thing. I'm aware of Plex and Jellyfin, but I feel like you could make the setup instant and painless even for non-technical users. All these problems we're seeing with streaming (content spread over many expensive subscriptions, unregulated advertising, disappearing/moving content) would be easily solved.
- extraduder_ire 1y agoA company tried to do that, but centralising the hardware so you didn't need to hunt for reception. They were sued out of business quickly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo
- dotnet00 1y agoPlex, as a business, is already in a tough spot because it's mostly used to stream pirated media, and if they make too many overt moves towards making piracy easier, media companies might start going after them. Thus all the stuff to haphazardly integrate streaming services. Selling it as a preconfigured kit might be risky.
- smoghat 1y ago[dead]
- lksaar 1y agoSomething like Streamio + Realdebrid?
- eagleal 1y agoIn Italy such devices are known as Pezzotto, because they are like a patch to connect to different streaming, IPTV, etc channels. Of course illegaly. There was a huge crackdown of both such services providers and their users in the EU (ties between politicians and sports broadcasting lobbies), which was immediately followed with increased pricing from every service, from Sky, DAZN, Mediaset Premium etc to on-demand platforms like Prime, Netflix, Disney Plus, etc. In addition it seems a cartel has followed up: almost every service has added Ads on top of their lower tier, even though users already paid the increased price in service.
- lionkor 1y agoIt's good that regulation is being passed. People here saying it's "sad" that laws need to be made probably miss the point; this is the point of laws. They exist to ensure things are done right when there's no other incentive to do them right other than "it'd be nice".
- neves 1y agoThat's what Gov is for. You can't let billionaires behave as they want.
- kstenerud 1y agoWhat I've been looking for in a player client is automatic loudness adjustment. Even in the show itself, sudden loud bits just send me scrambling for the remote to bring it down to half or even quarter volume.
- fainpul 1y agoYes - I mean not "automatic", but user-adjustable. A video player which allows adjusting the dynamic range, just like you can adjust the volume, would be awesome.
- hapticmonkey 1y agoMy AppleTV 4K’s “reduce loud sounds” and “enhance dialogue” features have made watching TV at night bearable again.
- fwip 1y agoMany TVs or speaker systems will have this feature - it's often called something like "night mode."
- palmfacehn 1y agoI thought Netflix was a paid service?
- fluidcruft 1y agoThey bumped rates and have ad-supported tiers now.
- neves 1y agoAs Amazon Prime and Disney+
- a96 1y agoThat doesn't really mean anything, although some people seem to think that it's only free services that can be bad.
- palmfacehn 1y agoI would hope that some would have the good sense to stop paying for bad services, but here we are.
- hinkley 1y agoAlso Netflix: BABOOOOOOOOONG!!!!
- revanwjy 1y ago[dead]
- sys_64738 1y agoLoud ads were a staple of TV commercials for cars and trucks. Probably to wake you up. The only time I ever have ads I mute the TV and look at the walls. I only see ads during local news broadcasts on OTA TV signal. I adblock on the internet and don't do subscriptions. I rarely see ads which is the right thing. Ads waste your time and 30 secs seeing an ad is 30 secs less you have to live.
- hinkley 1y agoSUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY AT THE TACOMA DOME!!!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zamalek 1y agoThis is trivial to geofence, so I expect this to be one of those that doesn't benefit the whole country.
- Esophagus4 1y agoAny way to block ads entirely on streaming services on a smart TV?
- addandsubtract 1y agoYou can replace the YouTube app with SmartTube: https://github.com/yuliskov/smarttube https://github.com/yuliskov/smarttube
- neves 1y agoWhat about Netflix or Prime? Instead of and app I use Brave browser. It blocks YouTube ads
- immibis 1y agoI heard that most people use piracy. You shouldn't pirate, though - taking food out of a corporation's mouth is morally inexcusable.
- ncr100 1y ago.. because corporations are people. /s Money is an important societal mechanism. It comes with some steep cons however. I have no real point to this comment.
- jjgreen 1y agoLegalise the hunting of those working in the advertising industry.
- everdrive 1y ago>on a smart TV Best way to avoid advertising when owning a smart TV is to bash your face into to a wall repeatedly until you can non longer perceive anything.
- Drunkfoowl 1y ago[dead]
- thelastgallon 1y agoWatching ANYTHING is getting exposed to advertising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_placement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_placement There is no vaccine, no cure once you are exposed to content. Your house will be filled with 300,000+ things and it is impossible to find anything, the fastest way to get your stuff is again amazon same day delivery because you don't have the time to rummage through the hundreds of thousands of things!
- hermannj314 1y ago[flagged]
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI remember that ads used to be louder on TV, too. What stopped that, was that TVs and videotape machines looked for loud content, and used that to trigger ad-skipping.
- apwell23 1y agois there a programmable tv that i can do something like this ? i want to mute ads when i am watching espn plus. my current tv is fire tv. i guess i'd have to build a little robot arm that presses mute button on the remote?
- systemz 1y agoif you want to automate pressing buton, there is something called "fingerbot"
- potato3732842 1y ago>What stopped that, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudness_Mitigation_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudn...
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI didn't know about the act, but I remember when they stopped doing it, and was told that was the reason (I was around in '84). Might be a "chicken/egg" thing.
- leetrout 1y agoNo pass one for accessibility so we can actually hear dialog in the shows.
- neves 1y agoDo you manage to block ads from apps? I use streaming devices like Roku or an Android Projector. Do I need my own DNS server with a blocklist? Does it work?
- spicyusername 1y agoIf the ad is embedded in the video DNS blocking does not typically work.
- neves 1y agoSure, but in the world of microservices, maybe it is doable
- richid 1y agoIt's still worth it to block ads at the DNS level but ad platforms are wise to the game and now serve from domains that also serve legitimate content.
- p0w3n3d 1y agodef commercial(): if location.state() != CALIFORNIA: { volume += 100
- mrbonner 1y agoWhat about YouTube? I was watching a cooking show there with my kids the other day when, out of nowhere, an ad popped up, something about a jacket called “Bear” something. A man in the ad was trying to unzip his jacket, but his awkward, jerky movements looked shockingly inappropriate to the woman standing behind him. It was horribly embarrassing for the whole family, and to make matters worse, the ad blasted at twice the volume of the show we were watching. Whatever the product is, they will never have me as a customer.
- anothereng 1y agothis is why i believe ad blockers are perfectly moral to use for families
- frakt0x90 1y agoAnd everyone else.
- onesociety2022 1y agoTo be fair, Youtube Premium subscription is very affordable and lets you have an ad-free experience. I reward services if they offer ad-free versions for a reasonable price.
- 1234letshaveatw 1y agoGoogle has also decided it is somehow appropriate to run commercial break length ads now for low production quality/budget user generated content. If I watch a dude filming himself with his phone explain how to best change a bike tire, should I be bombarded with ads similar to the nightly news? Nice value proposition
- aquir 1y agoI don't use streaming service so I was not aware that this is still a thing! Back then (20 years) ago when we had a cable television I can remember how much I hated that my wife wanted to sleep to the TV but I always got waken up by the much-much louder ads! I would like to be a fly on the wall to hear the meeting when they discussed this law...it's a shame how someone/a company can be driven by money this much.
- cramcgrab 1y agoI’m glad California is on it. These more they can stick it big tech, the better. Somebody’s got to look out for us.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Jzush 1y agoGood, now do YouTube. That crap wakes me up.
- Lumoscore 1y agoSeriously, how is this still a conversation in 2025? It's completely absurd that an entire legislature had to pass a bill (shoutout to California for SB 576, the rest of you take notes) to fix something that is purely an intentional design decision by streaming companies. The sheer audacity of the industry arguing that it's "technologically too difficult" to match the loudness of an ad to the loudness of the program is an insult to the people who wrote the original CALM Act code ten years ago. They can serve up geo-specific, personalized, real-time ads based on what I ate for dinner last night, but ensuring the audio standard is consistent is where the technology apparently hits a brick wall? Please. Every time one of those blast-furnace commercials kicks in, it's a perfect encapsulation of how little the streaming platforms respect their paying customers. It’s a deliberate strategy—a final, desperate attempt to shock your brainstem into attention after you've spent an hour in the quiet dynamic range of cinematic dialogue. I'm not in California, so for now, I'm still relying on my TV's ancient "Night Mode" compressor just to survive the commercial breaks. Hopefully, the rest of the world stops pretending this isn't fixable and applies the same basic standard of decency. Our home theater systems deserve better.
- segmondy 1y agoThe sad thing for some of them is that we have developed "ad blindness" if you offer me $1000 to tell you what ad played 2 seconds after an ad, I promise you that I'll fail 99% of the time. My brain just turns them off
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nikolay 1y agoFinally! Bulgarian ads are terrible, too. In fact, the advertisers are beyond stupid, as every time they blast me with their commercial messages and stress me out and hurt my ears, they get banned from my life! Obnoxious marketing does not work in the 21st century!
- thrill 1y agoCommercials should have to be done with no audio. Make Mimes Great Again.