18 ms·

Vietnam bans unskippable ads

1580 points by hoherd 9mo ago

cm2012 9mo ago
Basically banning brand advertising ads. Interesting. This will be a pain for a bunch of developers to adhere to lol.
- dr-detroit 9mo ago
  [dead]
- pif 9mo ago
  > Basically banning brand advertising ads. I don't get it. Could you please elaborate? Thanks in advance!
  - cm2012 9mo ago
    In marketing their is a distinction between direct response ads (get people to take action) vs brand ads (force people to just watch, no immediate action needed). Unskippable ads are almost always brand ads focusing on total view time.
croisillon 9mo ago
missing a T
- hart_russell 9mo ago
  viet fucking nam man - the dude
  - edm0nd 9mo ago
    The T really ties the word together man
- joebig 9mo ago
  Unyielding fidelity to the original article title.
  - otikik 9mo ago
    Faithful "to a t"
  - winstonwinston 9mo ago
    What is unyielding fidelity? noun. A steadfastness in loyalty and support, characterized by a firm and unwavering devotion to a cause, principle, or person, demonstrating exceptional persistence and reliability despite obstacles or challenges. Without a t, it may as well be a streaming service.
- verisimi 9mo ago
  It doesn't bode well for the quality of the source, if it can't even spell a country's name right!
- benatkin 9mo ago
  I wondered if maybe it was about Vienna
llbbdd 9mo ago
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.
- lenerdenator 9mo ago
  Then there can be regulation of that too.
  - toomuchtodo 9mo ago
    Indeed, just keep pulling the policy ratchet if tech tries to subvert.
    - nickff 9mo ago
      It likely wouldn't take much to get YouTube to just shut out Vietnam; ads there are very cheap, so they probably weren't making much money anyway.
      - toomuchtodo 9mo ago
        Minimal loss, the content can still be ripped and shared through other systems. Youtube is adversarial S3 imho. We can collectively live without Google and Youtube, without getting into the slop argument. I would take a different perspective about social contract if Google did not do Google things, and try to squeeze its users as hard as possible.
- Spivak 9mo ago
  I don't think Google's gonna be hurting for this one given the fact that hitting the skip button gives Google a strong signal that a real human just watched the ad and it didn't just play to an empty room.
  - senkora 9mo ago
    Yep. Ad viewability standards simply require that a video ad was 50% onscreen for a continuous 2 seconds in order for it to count as an impression. Google probably usually gets that even for skippable ads. > Picture this: an advertiser pays premium rates for space on your site, but their carefully crafted creative sits unseen at the bottom of a page your readers never scroll to. Despite technically delivering the impression you promised, you've essentially sold empty air. This disconnect between ads served and ads seen is why viewability has emerged as the cornerstone metric in digital advertising's maturity. > Video ads require at least two seconds of continuous play while 50% visible ... These seemingly arbitrary thresholds represent extensive research into human attention patterns. https://www.playwire.com/blog/ad-viewability https://www.playwire.com/blog/ad-viewability
mc32 9mo ago
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.
nrclark 9mo ago
Interesting, I wonder if this will spike VPN traffic into Vietnam.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 9mo ago
  What's the subset of users with a VPN but no ublock?
  - acureau 9mo ago
    NordVPN users sold by the "anti-hacker" ads?
- anvuong 9mo ago
  Yeah probably not. A large amount of posts and videos from social medias are blocked in Vietnam, it's still a communist country with very low level of free speech and press freedom, albeit still better than China. Source: I used to live there.
energy123 9mo ago
Higher volume of skippable ads incoming
_jab 9mo ago
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.
- iammjm 9mo ago
  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.
  - spencerflem 9mo ago
    And the worst part is, from a societal point of view - it doesnt matter if $companyA wins over $companyB, if the reason they won is that there was more Geico ads than Liberty ads etc. We allow every space to be overrun with these things, wasting our time and infecting our brains and in the end its zero-sum for the companies and negative-sum for us. No value anywhere is created.
    - ksaj 9mo ago
      The bigger problem is those fake "realistic robot dog" ads, and all the other ai-faked products. Why YT and Google in general would want to be associated with such scammery, I do not know.
      - pixl97 9mo ago
        >Why YT and Google in general would want They want the numbers to always go up. Scam ads pay just like non-scam ads. Hence why companies have to be forced not to be assholes with legislation.
      - 9mo ago
catapart 9mo ago
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.
- austin-cheney 9mo ago
  > Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. Why?
  - cm2012 9mo ago
    Its market distortionary and makes global advertisers have to customize for the local audience, some might not bother
    - oompydoompy74 9mo ago
      Good?
      - iknowstuff 9mo ago
        Not as good when you just end up having to pay more for services right
        mc32 9mo ago
        The incentives are better aligned though, so long as they are not undermined (by moving the target) Ala cable tv.
        oompydoompy74 9mo ago
jason_s 9mo ago
In case you wanted a more reputable source: https://theinvestor.vn/online-video-advertisements-in-vietnam-must-allow-skipping-after-5-seconds-new-rule-d18026.html https://theinvestor.vn/online-video-advertisements-in-vietna...
glimshe 9mo ago
They shouldn't be surprised if ads are shown more often.
- wrsh07 9mo ago
  Yeah - it seems like this will cause a series of 5 second skippable ads that still sums up to >many seconds of unskippable ads (unless that's banned, in which case they will just see ads more often, as you say) I expect it will make the experience worse rather than better because the publishers will try to maintain their inventory (how many seconds of ads they show per minute watched)
  - zeroonetwothree 9mo ago
    You mean a regulation will cause unintended consequence? Color me shocked
  - oldjim798 9mo ago
    Then a new regulation is needed; one that caps the ratio of seconds of ads to minute watched.
    - wrsh07 9mo ago
      And what do you think the consequence of that new regulation will be?
      - tcfhgj 9mo ago
        Just ban unrequested ads altogether
        wrsh07 9mo ago
        Do you think YouTube will continue to be available in a country that does this? Or free Spotify? Is that good? Or bad?
datadrivenangel 9mo ago
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.
- xoxxala 9mo ago
  Considering how unhealthy soda is to consume, I'd ban those ads in a heartbeat right along side tobacco and alchohol. The UK just banned all TV and online junk food ads and I'm alright with that.
  - triceratops 9mo ago
    > The UK just banned all TV and online junk food ads Unbelievable, when you consider the sheer volume of betting ads they have.
    - pacifika 9mo ago
      Yeah but the gov relies on that income. £2.0-£2.5 billion
      - triceratops 9mo ago
        Is that the income from gambling advertising or the income from gambling? This is also why taxes on vices should always, always, always be revenue neutral. Lawmakers should never have to choose between reducing demand for a vice and revenue.
  - foolfoolz 9mo ago
    or maybe we can let people think for themselves
- wolvoleo 9mo ago
  Soda ads are actually banned in some jurisdictions so it's not really a cleanly legit product. You can make the same argument for ICE cars.
throwaway2056 9mo ago
- Google just needs to tell DJT - Vietnam get 50 % tariffs - Change the ban - Easy peasy for Tech bros.
- Vaslo 9mo ago
  Thank you for your zero value Reddit comment
jason_s 9mo ago
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.
- DrewADesign 9mo ago
  My favorite most annoying ad tactic is the trick slowing down progress bar. It starts off fast making it seem like it’s going to be, say, a ten-second ad so you decide to suffer through it… but progressively slows so you notice at like the 20 second mark you’re only 2/3 of the way through the progress bar, so probably less than halfway done. Murderous rage.
  - xoxxala 9mo ago
    Mr. Beast on youtube is guilty of that. Matt Parker of Standup Maths fame did an in-depth look at how that works. Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate people in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c
    - drcongo 9mo ago
secondcoming 9mo ago
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.
begueradj 9mo ago
Both here and on the source post there is a typo in the title (Vietnam instead of Vienam).
ApolloFortyNine 9mo ago
How does television work in Vietnam? Is it all adfree?
- DooMMasteR 9mo ago
  nope but freeTV is limited to 10% total ad time, and payTV limited to 5%. Maximum ad time per hour is 4 times 5 minutes and a single movie cannot be interrupted more than two times, a show not more than 4 times. News cannot be interrupted at all and programs shorter than I think 10 minutes neither.
srean 9mo ago
And then I thought the poster skipped a t
simonebrunozzi 9mo ago
Title should be "Vietnam", not "Vienam". I would downvote the submitter just for the reason that he posted this without correting it first.
- marzell 9mo ago
  "correting" lol
  - simonebrunozzi 9mo ago
    Ironic. But mine is just a dumb comment, not the title of the post.
- stevewodil 9mo ago
  The article title reflects the typo, it's an issue with the original publication.
  - anigbrowl 9mo ago
    So what? If something is obviously wrong it should be fixed.
833 9mo ago
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.
larodi 9mo ago
Was this posted automatically or why it reads Vienam? Without the T! And the title also reads so?
- hoherd 9mo ago
  I posted it with the original article title. I'm not sure who changed it, but yeah, there is a typo which also exists in the linked article.
  - larodi 9mo ago
    Indeed it first had no T, and s.o. changed it. Also raises questions reg the original title.
lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
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.
- add-sub-mul-div 9mo ago
  A television commercial hasn't been unskippable since the advent of the DVR in 1999. If you do care about avoiding commercials, that's where you have the most power to avoid it. It's streaming where the service has full power to restrict control of navigation through the video stream.
  - metabagel 9mo ago
    At some point, I would imagine we will be able to request content and have an agent skip or otherwise remove advertisements, right? We'll have to wait for that, just like with a DVR, but it seems worth it to me.
- rjh29 9mo ago
  My mum has a DVR so she tends to watch things later and skip the ads. For this reason our TV provider is pushing a new box which has no DVR capability and can only access things from streaming... they bill this as an advantage since you don't have to explicitly record anything. But it's all about adverts.
oneeyedpigeon 9mo ago
So instead of one minute-long ad, I'm going to get 12 I have to manually skip? Thanks, Vietnam.
- ryandrake 9mo ago
  No, "thanks, company that is pushing 12 ads at you." The law is not forcing companies to treat you badly.
gip 9mo ago
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.
- miltonlost 9mo ago
  How, as a user, do I avoid getting ads shoved in front of my eyes on buses? on billboards? on subways? on tv channels? at movies? in my mail? in my email? in my search results? in my map app? i'm just wondering what you want the "market" to do and how.
- porcoda 9mo ago
  Ad driven internet content is at least 25 years old, so it’s had time to settle into the equilibrium the market will converge to. The current state of things is precisely where the market drove it to, so it seems pretty clear that the “invisible hand” isn’t going to make it better and appears to favor making it worse. This seems like an obvious case where an external force is required to push the market in a direction it doesn’t naturally want to land at.
  - oldjim798 9mo ago
    Beyond the ad driven internet, ad driven content has been at least 150 years old. Ever seen a photo of a pre-WW1 baseball stadium? Or soccer stand? Covered in ads. Old newspapers are awash in ads. Day time TV soap operas are so named because they were sponsored by soap companies. All a giant waste. Just propaganda blasted at our eyes and ears all day, a drum beat of distraction attacks on our attention. Almost all forms of advertising should be banned or regulated till they are as quiet and unobtrusive as possible.
- platevoltage 9mo ago
  Best argument I can think of is the fact that half of ads on American TV have the words "ask your doctor about ___" in them. Drugs ads should be banned.
- anigbrowl 9mo ago
  The market inevitably trends toward the lowest common denominator. We deserve better.
blauditore 9mo ago
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.
haritha-j 9mo ago
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.
kfarr 9mo ago
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.
- xp84 9mo ago
  As a fellow parent, I cannot recommend Apple Arcade enough. My son is only allowed to play games that come from AA. These games aren't allowed to have any ads or in-app purchase. In return, you pay seven measly bucks a month (though I have it included as part of a package since we use iCloud and Apple Music and Apple TV+ anyway). The games in AA are either made for Apple Arcade (some great indie type games) or, very commonly, they are basically 'de-fanged' ones from the regular App Store, with all the IAPs and ads ripped out. Where there is an in-game currency that normally is scarce without paying, they'll either just give you a bunch of it to start with, or you will earn it naturally while playing. I agree with you that the number of ads and purchase-pushing mechanics in all regular App Store/Play Store games is insane. It's all because a few whales who do buy these purchases are what pays for the whole thing.
  - BeetleB 9mo ago
    Know of an equivalent for Android? I'm leaning towards letting the kid play games only on an XBox and never on the phone. Even if I get rid of the ads, I don't want the games to be accessible wherever they are. Whereas with a TV, they need to situate themselves in a dedicated place to play games.
    - xp84 9mo ago
      I haven't used it much, because I was dragged kicking and screaming back to iOS by family inertia (photo library and iMessage), but there is this which bills itself as the same idea: https://play.google.com/store/pass/getstarted https://play.google.com/store/pass/getstarted
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
Aachen 9mo ago
Translated source: https://thuvienphapluat-vn.translate.goog/phap-luat/ho-tro-phap-luat/tu-1522026-quang-cao-online-phai-duoc-tat-sau-5-giay-thoi-gian-cho-tat-quang-cao-tren-mang-khong-qu-249658.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp 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
- esperent 9mo ago
  > Wonder if that's the real purpose here I don't think so. Vietnam has been making great progress with privacy and digital rights laws, at least in paper. I haven't been following how well they actually enforce them though. More likely there's a split in the government between a progressive faction who created this law and the old school side, and they probably had to add that text to get it into law.
radicaldreamer 9mo ago
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.
- barbazoo 9mo ago
  What a shit world but hey I'd probably buy that if I had to live there. I can't stop thinking about this rental apartment building in my city that's on indigenous land so regulation around advertising doesn't apply (BC) and they have a huge electronic billboard right in front facing probably couple dozen windows. I feel bad for the people living there, negatively about anyone advertising there and negatively about otherwise very environmentally conscious land owners for allowing this.
bArray 9mo ago
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.
- stodor89 9mo ago
  "Hurr durr we're monitoring the situation."
timwalz 9mo ago
[flagged]
tgtweak 9mo ago
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?
noAnswer 9mo ago
Time for a military intervention by the US.
elashri 9mo ago
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.
- xvector 9mo ago
  Companies are not obligated to provide you with services for free. You are free to solely use non ad supported services.
  - elashri 9mo ago
    They are free to block me if they detect I am using adblocker. It is on by default. And for most services paying does not guarantee that I do not get ads. I am not under any obligation to let my client serve their ads which is usually the number one malware vector.
  - tintor 9mo ago
    And he is free to use free ad-supported services and not watch ads.
tracker1 9mo ago
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.
- amatecha 9mo ago
  Obligatory "We Must Destroy X10" moment! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF8NK6eruUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF8NK6eruUs :D
jonplackett 9mo ago
VPN use via Vietnam is about to go global.
- crims0n 9mo ago
  Not sure it will be worth the 300ms latency penalty.
  - jonplackett 9mo ago
    300ms is a lot less latency than an ad
swiftcoder 9mo ago
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?
- guerrilla 9mo ago
  Never seen it before today...
- Fernicia 9mo ago
  The only real results on Google are the article and this HackerNews post...
  - swiftcoder 9mo ago
    Did you search "vienam" with the quotes? duck duck go turns up a number of articles (albeit in at least one case the typo is in the metadata, not the article itself)
- spullara 9mo ago
  It is just this article.
- wild_pointer 9mo ago
  ubiquitous? "Vienam" (with quotes) shows this page as the first result.
- acureau 9mo ago
  Definitely a typo, see "vietnam-news" in the same URL.
itsafarqueue 9mo ago
Vie(t)nam
Zanfa 9mo ago
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.
- gretch 9mo ago
  Pretty sure this is a form of ad fraud and the people who paid for those ads would be really mad at you e.g. if it were a CPC campaign
- esperent 9mo ago
  "accidentally". It seems that quite a few mobile gaming companies make this mistake. Or they "accidentally" set the click area of the button offset from the graphic, or very very small.
- fireflash38 9mo ago
  I don't understand why we don't have a law that specifies an operating-system level input that will always close an ad. No hunting for tiny X's. No shifting DOM to dodge clicks. Hit Esc and it stops. For iOS and Android force it as part of the UI, like the volume buttons, back/home buttons.
mmh0000 9mo ago
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
- suriya-ganesh 9mo ago
  I used to think this. and I do run some of your suggestions. But how is the internet economy supposed to function without these micro transactions, in the form of ads. A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.
  - crims0n 9mo ago
    I too struggle with this. It's not like people can't publish things on the web without ads. If the author/artist wanted it to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. So people who use ad blockers are either making a moral choice to consume a paid service for free, or are ignorant of how the internet economy works. There is an argument to be made that advertisements are so detrimental to the user experience and mental health of the recipient that they are morally justified in blocking them. However, that is debatable when you consider the alternative, which is that the medium you are consuming may not exist at all if not for the advertisements published along with it.
nexawave-ai 9mo ago
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.
Cort3z 9mo ago
Are there a total ad time percentage metric in this law too, or will they simply be watching many more smaller ads?
amatecha 9mo ago
Interesting, the link title was revised, but "Vienam" spelling remains? What?
just-working 9mo ago
I <3 Vienam
mbix77 9mo ago
Refreshing to see. Makes you wonder what we could achieve if we all just started to say no to enshitification of the world.
wotsdat 9mo ago
[dead]
dwa3592 9mo ago
It's Vietnam.
engineer_22 9mo ago
And just like that, millions of disillusioned youth embraced communism ...
Babkock 9mo ago
This "Vienam" sounds like a nice place!
apparent 9mo ago
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.
FuturisticLover 9mo ago
I like how the country is taking bold steps. This is a great move.
alex_young 9mo ago
Where is Vienam? Probably next to Camboia?
- p0w3n3d 9mo ago
  On the South Chia Sea
aaronday 9mo ago
Another step towards Blipverts from Max Headroom.
batrat 9mo ago
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 :).
nicbou 9mo ago
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.
xp84 9mo ago
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.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
explosion-s 9mo ago
vie*t*nam?
tannhaeuser 9mo ago
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.
archon810 9mo ago
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?
SunshineTheCat 9mo ago
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.
- aldousd666 9mo ago
  I recently read about 'in thread' ads, like on Twitter, as being not as effective unless they are 'brand recognition' ads. Like, they will help you decide which one to pick when you are staring at two fungible brands on the shelf, but they will not convince you to buy something you have never heard about before, especially not from a direct click through. So while Ads work is true, in many ways, they don't in many others. The brand damage you can get from having those in-thread ads is also real: Ads target the user, not the thread, but by showing up, users associate advertisers with the thread. If you were in some argument about dictators taking over, and suddenly a product pops up, you may assign the negative energy you have toward dictators to that brand as well.
maelito 9mo ago
5 seconds... too slow. Ublock's better.
- esperent 9mo ago
  This is primarily targeting mobile gaming which is huge in Vietnam.
  - maelito 9mo ago
    Ah yes, thanks.
aldousd666 9mo ago
AdGuard as a local VPN also bans unskippable Ads without the pesky legal enforcement baggage.
knowitnone3 9mo ago
US companies respond with 100 skippable ads per minute
knowitnone3 9mo ago
2 words. adblock
unglaublich 9mo ago
I live an ad-free lifestyle and it is very serene.
bambax 9mo ago
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)
- dang 9mo ago
  Yikes! not sure how we missed tha. Fixed now.
- sedatk 9mo ago
  Paging @dang Also submission titles can be edited in the first 5 minutes of posting or so.
henearkr 9mo ago
Running ads unskippably: unspeakably sad.
- henearkr 9mo ago
  (I managed to improve it.) Running ads unskippably: unspeakably sad earning.
luxuryballs 9mo ago
*Vietnam mandates 5 second ads
fHr 9mo ago
fuck yes, fuck APPLOVIN
catlikesshrimp 9mo ago
Vietnam, not "Vienam"
canxerian 9mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269 Feels appropriate: What if we made advertising illegal?
stephen_g 9mo ago
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.
nephihaha 9mo ago
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.
- wtroughton 9mo ago
  I'd make the case that turning their citizens into consumers like America has done could be considered a national security risk.
dusted 9mo ago
So, is it vietnam or vienam ? because the headline says vienam.
khana 9mo ago
[dead]
fennecbutt 9mo ago
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.
125123wqw1212 9mo ago
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.
anonzzzies 9mo ago
5s is still too long. Immediate skip.
shevy-java 9mo ago
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?).
booleandilemma 9mo ago
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.
bwb 9mo ago
I love this, I hope the rest of the world adopts it :)
125123wqw1212 9mo ago
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.
jacquesm 9mo ago
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.
UnreachableCode 9mo ago
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/ 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.
- Myzel394 9mo ago
  I am using Brave and YouTube Revanced on my android and I completely forgot what ads look like
- jnovacho 9mo ago
  Firefox on Android has UBlock Origin available. But that covers the browser only. I guess AdGuard and VPN might help here?
- StefanoC 9mo ago
  Adguard works great. UBlock on Firefox also does the job.
- pacifika 9mo ago
  Firefox Focus has an extension build in that works with Safari
- SockThief 9mo ago
  https://blokada.org/ 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.
fHr 9mo ago
Unfathomably based
kypro 9mo ago
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.
motbus3 9mo ago
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
bilekas 9mo ago
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.
ongytenes 9mo ago
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.
gverrilla 9mo ago
Socialists countries, always in the forefront of basic human rights.
ggomma 9mo ago
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 https://parsely.obasic.app Why we built this: https://parsely.obasic.app/story https://parsely.obasic.app/story GitHub: https://github.com/TeamOliveCode/parsely https://github.com/TeamOliveCode/parsely

1580 points by hoherd 9mo ago

cm2012 9mo ago

Basically banning brand advertising ads. Interesting. This will be a pain for a bunch of developers to adhere to lol.

dr-detroit 9mo ago
[dead]
pif 9mo ago
> Basically banning brand advertising ads. I don't get it. Could you please elaborate? Thanks in advance!
- cm2012 9mo ago
  In marketing their is a distinction between direct response ads (get people to take action) vs brand ads (force people to just watch, no immediate action needed). Unskippable ads are almost always brand ads focusing on total view time.

croisillon 9mo ago

missing a T

hart_russell 9mo ago
viet fucking nam man - the dude
- edm0nd 9mo ago
  The T really ties the word together man
joebig 9mo ago
Unyielding fidelity to the original article title.
- otikik 9mo ago
  Faithful "to a t"
- winstonwinston 9mo ago
  What is unyielding fidelity? noun. A steadfastness in loyalty and support, characterized by a firm and unwavering devotion to a cause, principle, or person, demonstrating exceptional persistence and reliability despite obstacles or challenges. Without a t, it may as well be a streaming service.
verisimi 9mo ago
It doesn't bode well for the quality of the source, if it can't even spell a country's name right!
benatkin 9mo ago
I wondered if maybe it was about Vienna

llbbdd 9mo ago

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.

lenerdenator 9mo ago
Then there can be regulation of that too.
- toomuchtodo 9mo ago
  Indeed, just keep pulling the policy ratchet if tech tries to subvert.
  - nickff 9mo ago
    It likely wouldn't take much to get YouTube to just shut out Vietnam; ads there are very cheap, so they probably weren't making much money anyway.
    - toomuchtodo 9mo ago
      Minimal loss, the content can still be ripped and shared through other systems. Youtube is adversarial S3 imho. We can collectively live without Google and Youtube, without getting into the slop argument. I would take a different perspective about social contract if Google did not do Google things, and try to squeeze its users as hard as possible.
Spivak 9mo ago
I don't think Google's gonna be hurting for this one given the fact that hitting the skip button gives Google a strong signal that a real human just watched the ad and it didn't just play to an empty room.
- senkora 9mo ago
  Yep. Ad viewability standards simply require that a video ad was 50% onscreen for a continuous 2 seconds in order for it to count as an impression. Google probably usually gets that even for skippable ads. > Picture this: an advertiser pays premium rates for space on your site, but their carefully crafted creative sits unseen at the bottom of a page your readers never scroll to. Despite technically delivering the impression you promised, you've essentially sold empty air. This disconnect between ads served and ads seen is why viewability has emerged as the cornerstone metric in digital advertising's maturity. > Video ads require at least two seconds of continuous play while 50% visible ... These seemingly arbitrary thresholds represent extensive research into human attention patterns. https://www.playwire.com/blog/ad-viewability https://www.playwire.com/blog/ad-viewability

mc32 9mo ago

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.

nrclark 9mo ago

Interesting, I wonder if this will spike VPN traffic into Vietnam.

OsrsNeedsf2P 9mo ago
What's the subset of users with a VPN but no ublock?
- acureau 9mo ago
  NordVPN users sold by the "anti-hacker" ads?
anvuong 9mo ago
Yeah probably not. A large amount of posts and videos from social medias are blocked in Vietnam, it's still a communist country with very low level of free speech and press freedom, albeit still better than China. Source: I used to live there.

energy123 9mo ago

Higher volume of skippable ads incoming

_jab 9mo ago

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.

iammjm 9mo ago
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.
- spencerflem 9mo ago
  And the worst part is, from a societal point of view - it doesnt matter if $companyA wins over $companyB, if the reason they won is that there was more Geico ads than Liberty ads etc. We allow every space to be overrun with these things, wasting our time and infecting our brains and in the end its zero-sum for the companies and negative-sum for us. No value anywhere is created.
  - ksaj 9mo ago
    The bigger problem is those fake "realistic robot dog" ads, and all the other ai-faked products. Why YT and Google in general would want to be associated with such scammery, I do not know.
    - pixl97 9mo ago
      >Why YT and Google in general would want They want the numbers to always go up. Scam ads pay just like non-scam ads. Hence why companies have to be forced not to be assholes with legislation.
    - 9mo ago

catapart 9mo ago

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.

austin-cheney 9mo ago
> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. Why?
- cm2012 9mo ago
  Its market distortionary and makes global advertisers have to customize for the local audience, some might not bother
  - oompydoompy74 9mo ago
    Good?
    - iknowstuff 9mo ago
      Not as good when you just end up having to pay more for services right
      - mc32 9mo ago
        The incentives are better aligned though, so long as they are not undermined (by moving the target) Ala cable tv.
      - oompydoompy74 9mo ago

jason_s 9mo ago

In case you wanted a more reputable source: https://theinvestor.vn/online-video-advertisements-in-vietnam-must-allow-skipping-after-5-seconds-new-rule-d18026.html https://theinvestor.vn/online-video-advertisements-in-vietna...

glimshe 9mo ago

They shouldn't be surprised if ads are shown more often.

wrsh07 9mo ago
Yeah - it seems like this will cause a series of 5 second skippable ads that still sums up to >many seconds of unskippable ads (unless that's banned, in which case they will just see ads more often, as you say) I expect it will make the experience worse rather than better because the publishers will try to maintain their inventory (how many seconds of ads they show per minute watched)
- zeroonetwothree 9mo ago
  You mean a regulation will cause unintended consequence? Color me shocked
- oldjim798 9mo ago
  Then a new regulation is needed; one that caps the ratio of seconds of ads to minute watched.
  - wrsh07 9mo ago
    And what do you think the consequence of that new regulation will be?
    - tcfhgj 9mo ago
      Just ban unrequested ads altogether
      - wrsh07 9mo ago
        Do you think YouTube will continue to be available in a country that does this? Or free Spotify? Is that good? Or bad?

datadrivenangel 9mo ago

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.

xoxxala 9mo ago
Considering how unhealthy soda is to consume, I'd ban those ads in a heartbeat right along side tobacco and alchohol. The UK just banned all TV and online junk food ads and I'm alright with that.
- triceratops 9mo ago
  > The UK just banned all TV and online junk food ads Unbelievable, when you consider the sheer volume of betting ads they have.
  - pacifika 9mo ago
    Yeah but the gov relies on that income. £2.0-£2.5 billion
    - triceratops 9mo ago
      Is that the income from gambling advertising or the income from gambling? This is also why taxes on vices should always, always, always be revenue neutral. Lawmakers should never have to choose between reducing demand for a vice and revenue.
- foolfoolz 9mo ago
  or maybe we can let people think for themselves
wolvoleo 9mo ago
Soda ads are actually banned in some jurisdictions so it's not really a cleanly legit product. You can make the same argument for ICE cars.

throwaway2056 9mo ago

- Google just needs to tell DJT - Vietnam get 50 % tariffs - Change the ban - Easy peasy for Tech bros.

Vaslo 9mo ago
Thank you for your zero value Reddit comment

jason_s 9mo ago

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.

DrewADesign 9mo ago
My favorite most annoying ad tactic is the trick slowing down progress bar. It starts off fast making it seem like it’s going to be, say, a ten-second ad so you decide to suffer through it… but progressively slows so you notice at like the 20 second mark you’re only 2/3 of the way through the progress bar, so probably less than halfway done. Murderous rage.
- xoxxala 9mo ago
  Mr. Beast on youtube is guilty of that. Matt Parker of Standup Maths fame did an in-depth look at how that works. Whoever came up with that type of progress bar must hate people in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc0OU1yJD-c
  - drcongo 9mo ago

secondcoming 9mo ago

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.

begueradj 9mo ago

Both here and on the source post there is a typo in the title (Vietnam instead of Vienam).

ApolloFortyNine 9mo ago

How does television work in Vietnam? Is it all adfree?

DooMMasteR 9mo ago
nope but freeTV is limited to 10% total ad time, and payTV limited to 5%. Maximum ad time per hour is 4 times 5 minutes and a single movie cannot be interrupted more than two times, a show not more than 4 times. News cannot be interrupted at all and programs shorter than I think 10 minutes neither.

srean 9mo ago

And then I thought the poster skipped a t

simonebrunozzi 9mo ago

Title should be "Vietnam", not "Vienam". I would downvote the submitter just for the reason that he posted this without correting it first.

marzell 9mo ago
"correting" lol
- simonebrunozzi 9mo ago
  Ironic. But mine is just a dumb comment, not the title of the post.
stevewodil 9mo ago
The article title reflects the typo, it's an issue with the original publication.
- anigbrowl 9mo ago
  So what? If something is obviously wrong it should be fixed.

833 9mo ago

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.

larodi 9mo ago

Was this posted automatically or why it reads Vienam? Without the T! And the title also reads so?

hoherd 9mo ago
I posted it with the original article title. I'm not sure who changed it, but yeah, there is a typo which also exists in the linked article.
- larodi 9mo ago
  Indeed it first had no T, and s.o. changed it. Also raises questions reg the original title.

lifetimerubyist 9mo ago

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.

add-sub-mul-div 9mo ago
A television commercial hasn't been unskippable since the advent of the DVR in 1999. If you do care about avoiding commercials, that's where you have the most power to avoid it. It's streaming where the service has full power to restrict control of navigation through the video stream.
- metabagel 9mo ago
  At some point, I would imagine we will be able to request content and have an agent skip or otherwise remove advertisements, right? We'll have to wait for that, just like with a DVR, but it seems worth it to me.
rjh29 9mo ago
My mum has a DVR so she tends to watch things later and skip the ads. For this reason our TV provider is pushing a new box which has no DVR capability and can only access things from streaming... they bill this as an advantage since you don't have to explicitly record anything. But it's all about adverts.

oneeyedpigeon 9mo ago

So instead of one minute-long ad, I'm going to get 12 I have to manually skip? Thanks, Vietnam.

ryandrake 9mo ago
No, "thanks, company that is pushing 12 ads at you." The law is not forcing companies to treat you badly.

gip 9mo ago

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.

miltonlost 9mo ago
How, as a user, do I avoid getting ads shoved in front of my eyes on buses? on billboards? on subways? on tv channels? at movies? in my mail? in my email? in my search results? in my map app? i'm just wondering what you want the "market" to do and how.
porcoda 9mo ago
Ad driven internet content is at least 25 years old, so it’s had time to settle into the equilibrium the market will converge to. The current state of things is precisely where the market drove it to, so it seems pretty clear that the “invisible hand” isn’t going to make it better and appears to favor making it worse. This seems like an obvious case where an external force is required to push the market in a direction it doesn’t naturally want to land at.
- oldjim798 9mo ago
  Beyond the ad driven internet, ad driven content has been at least 150 years old. Ever seen a photo of a pre-WW1 baseball stadium? Or soccer stand? Covered in ads. Old newspapers are awash in ads. Day time TV soap operas are so named because they were sponsored by soap companies. All a giant waste. Just propaganda blasted at our eyes and ears all day, a drum beat of distraction attacks on our attention. Almost all forms of advertising should be banned or regulated till they are as quiet and unobtrusive as possible.
platevoltage 9mo ago
Best argument I can think of is the fact that half of ads on American TV have the words "ask your doctor about ___" in them. Drugs ads should be banned.
anigbrowl 9mo ago
The market inevitably trends toward the lowest common denominator. We deserve better.

blauditore 9mo ago

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.

haritha-j 9mo ago

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.

kfarr 9mo ago

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.

xp84 9mo ago
As a fellow parent, I cannot recommend Apple Arcade enough. My son is only allowed to play games that come from AA. These games aren't allowed to have any ads or in-app purchase. In return, you pay seven measly bucks a month (though I have it included as part of a package since we use iCloud and Apple Music and Apple TV+ anyway). The games in AA are either made for Apple Arcade (some great indie type games) or, very commonly, they are basically 'de-fanged' ones from the regular App Store, with all the IAPs and ads ripped out. Where there is an in-game currency that normally is scarce without paying, they'll either just give you a bunch of it to start with, or you will earn it naturally while playing. I agree with you that the number of ads and purchase-pushing mechanics in all regular App Store/Play Store games is insane. It's all because a few whales who do buy these purchases are what pays for the whole thing.
- BeetleB 9mo ago
  Know of an equivalent for Android? I'm leaning towards letting the kid play games only on an XBox and never on the phone. Even if I get rid of the ads, I don't want the games to be accessible wherever they are. Whereas with a TV, they need to situate themselves in a dedicated place to play games.
  - xp84 9mo ago
    I haven't used it much, because I was dragged kicking and screaming back to iOS by family inertia (photo library and iMessage), but there is this which bills itself as the same idea: https://play.google.com/store/pass/getstarted https://play.google.com/store/pass/getstarted

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

Aachen 9mo ago

Translated source: https://thuvienphapluat-vn.translate.goog/phap-luat/ho-tro-phap-luat/tu-1522026-quang-cao-online-phai-duoc-tat-sau-5-giay-thoi-gian-cho-tat-quang-cao-tren-mang-khong-qu-249658.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp 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

esperent 9mo ago
> Wonder if that's the real purpose here I don't think so. Vietnam has been making great progress with privacy and digital rights laws, at least in paper. I haven't been following how well they actually enforce them though. More likely there's a split in the government between a progressive faction who created this law and the old school side, and they probably had to add that text to get it into law.

radicaldreamer 9mo ago

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.

barbazoo 9mo ago
What a shit world but hey I'd probably buy that if I had to live there. I can't stop thinking about this rental apartment building in my city that's on indigenous land so regulation around advertising doesn't apply (BC) and they have a huge electronic billboard right in front facing probably couple dozen windows. I feel bad for the people living there, negatively about anyone advertising there and negatively about otherwise very environmentally conscious land owners for allowing this.

bArray 9mo ago

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.

stodor89 9mo ago
"Hurr durr we're monitoring the situation."

timwalz 9mo ago

[flagged]

tgtweak 9mo ago

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?

noAnswer 9mo ago

Time for a military intervention by the US.

elashri 9mo ago

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.

xvector 9mo ago
Companies are not obligated to provide you with services for free. You are free to solely use non ad supported services.
- elashri 9mo ago
  They are free to block me if they detect I am using adblocker. It is on by default. And for most services paying does not guarantee that I do not get ads. I am not under any obligation to let my client serve their ads which is usually the number one malware vector.
- tintor 9mo ago
  And he is free to use free ad-supported services and not watch ads.

tracker1 9mo ago

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.

amatecha 9mo ago
Obligatory "We Must Destroy X10" moment! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF8NK6eruUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF8NK6eruUs :D

jonplackett 9mo ago

VPN use via Vietnam is about to go global.

crims0n 9mo ago
Not sure it will be worth the 300ms latency penalty.
- jonplackett 9mo ago
  300ms is a lot less latency than an ad

swiftcoder 9mo ago

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?

guerrilla 9mo ago
Never seen it before today...
Fernicia 9mo ago
The only real results on Google are the article and this HackerNews post...
- swiftcoder 9mo ago
  Did you search "vienam" with the quotes? duck duck go turns up a number of articles (albeit in at least one case the typo is in the metadata, not the article itself)
spullara 9mo ago
It is just this article.
wild_pointer 9mo ago
ubiquitous? "Vienam" (with quotes) shows this page as the first result.
acureau 9mo ago
Definitely a typo, see "vietnam-news" in the same URL.

itsafarqueue 9mo ago

Vie(t)nam

Zanfa 9mo ago

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.

gretch 9mo ago
Pretty sure this is a form of ad fraud and the people who paid for those ads would be really mad at you e.g. if it were a CPC campaign
esperent 9mo ago
"accidentally". It seems that quite a few mobile gaming companies make this mistake. Or they "accidentally" set the click area of the button offset from the graphic, or very very small.
fireflash38 9mo ago
I don't understand why we don't have a law that specifies an operating-system level input that will always close an ad. No hunting for tiny X's. No shifting DOM to dodge clicks. Hit Esc and it stops. For iOS and Android force it as part of the UI, like the volume buttons, back/home buttons.

mmh0000 9mo ago

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

suriya-ganesh 9mo ago
I used to think this. and I do run some of your suggestions. But how is the internet economy supposed to function without these micro transactions, in the form of ads. A lot of the abundance in software and technology we've seen in the past decade is possible only through this mechanism.
- crims0n 9mo ago
  I too struggle with this. It's not like people can't publish things on the web without ads. If the author/artist wanted it to be free, the ads wouldn't be there. So people who use ad blockers are either making a moral choice to consume a paid service for free, or are ignorant of how the internet economy works. There is an argument to be made that advertisements are so detrimental to the user experience and mental health of the recipient that they are morally justified in blocking them. However, that is debatable when you consider the alternative, which is that the medium you are consuming may not exist at all if not for the advertisements published along with it.

nexawave-ai 9mo ago

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.

Cort3z 9mo ago

Are there a total ad time percentage metric in this law too, or will they simply be watching many more smaller ads?

amatecha 9mo ago

Interesting, the link title was revised, but "Vienam" spelling remains? What?

just-working 9mo ago

I <3 Vienam

mbix77 9mo ago

Refreshing to see. Makes you wonder what we could achieve if we all just started to say no to enshitification of the world.

wotsdat 9mo ago

[dead]

dwa3592 9mo ago

It's Vietnam.

engineer_22 9mo ago

And just like that, millions of disillusioned youth embraced communism ...

Babkock 9mo ago

This "Vienam" sounds like a nice place!

apparent 9mo ago

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.

FuturisticLover 9mo ago

I like how the country is taking bold steps. This is a great move.

alex_young 9mo ago

Where is Vienam? Probably next to Camboia?

p0w3n3d 9mo ago
On the South Chia Sea

aaronday 9mo ago

Another step towards Blipverts from Max Headroom.

batrat 9mo ago

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 :).

nicbou 9mo ago

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.

xp84 9mo ago

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.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

explosion-s 9mo ago

vie*t*nam?

tannhaeuser 9mo ago

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.

archon810 9mo ago

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?

SunshineTheCat 9mo ago

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.

aldousd666 9mo ago
I recently read about 'in thread' ads, like on Twitter, as being not as effective unless they are 'brand recognition' ads. Like, they will help you decide which one to pick when you are staring at two fungible brands on the shelf, but they will not convince you to buy something you have never heard about before, especially not from a direct click through. So while Ads work is true, in many ways, they don't in many others. The brand damage you can get from having those in-thread ads is also real: Ads target the user, not the thread, but by showing up, users associate advertisers with the thread. If you were in some argument about dictators taking over, and suddenly a product pops up, you may assign the negative energy you have toward dictators to that brand as well.

maelito 9mo ago

5 seconds... too slow. Ublock's better.

esperent 9mo ago
This is primarily targeting mobile gaming which is huge in Vietnam.
- maelito 9mo ago
  Ah yes, thanks.

aldousd666 9mo ago

AdGuard as a local VPN also bans unskippable Ads without the pesky legal enforcement baggage.

knowitnone3 9mo ago

US companies respond with 100 skippable ads per minute

knowitnone3 9mo ago

2 words. adblock

unglaublich 9mo ago

I live an ad-free lifestyle and it is very serene.

bambax 9mo ago

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)

dang 9mo ago
Yikes! not sure how we missed tha. Fixed now.
sedatk 9mo ago
Paging @dang Also submission titles can be edited in the first 5 minutes of posting or so.

henearkr 9mo ago

Running ads unskippably: unspeakably sad.

henearkr 9mo ago
(I managed to improve it.) Running ads unskippably: unspeakably sad earning.

luxuryballs 9mo ago

*Vietnam mandates 5 second ads

fHr 9mo ago

fuck yes, fuck APPLOVIN

catlikesshrimp 9mo ago

Vietnam, not "Vienam"

canxerian 9mo ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269 Feels appropriate: What if we made advertising illegal?

stephen_g 9mo ago

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.

nephihaha 9mo ago

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.

wtroughton 9mo ago
I'd make the case that turning their citizens into consumers like America has done could be considered a national security risk.

dusted 9mo ago

So, is it vietnam or vienam ? because the headline says vienam.

khana 9mo ago

[dead]

fennecbutt 9mo ago

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.

125123wqw1212 9mo ago

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.

anonzzzies 9mo ago

5s is still too long. Immediate skip.

shevy-java 9mo ago

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?).

booleandilemma 9mo ago

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.

bwb 9mo ago

I love this, I hope the rest of the world adopts it :)

125123wqw1212 9mo ago

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.

jacquesm 9mo ago

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.

UnreachableCode 9mo ago

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/ 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.

Myzel394 9mo ago
I am using Brave and YouTube Revanced on my android and I completely forgot what ads look like
jnovacho 9mo ago
Firefox on Android has UBlock Origin available. But that covers the browser only. I guess AdGuard and VPN might help here?
StefanoC 9mo ago
Adguard works great. UBlock on Firefox also does the job.
pacifika 9mo ago
Firefox Focus has an extension build in that works with Safari
SockThief 9mo ago
https://blokada.org/ 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.

fHr 9mo ago

Unfathomably based

kypro 9mo ago

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.

motbus3 9mo ago

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

bilekas 9mo ago

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.

ongytenes 9mo ago

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.

gverrilla 9mo ago

Socialists countries, always in the forefront of basic human rights.

ggomma 9mo ago

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 https://parsely.obasic.app Why we built this: https://parsely.obasic.app/story https://parsely.obasic.app/story GitHub: https://github.com/TeamOliveCode/parsely https://github.com/TeamOliveCode/parsely