
Vancouver Airport blocking ads with information on travellers’ privacy rights - dredmorbius
https://globalnews.ca/news/5203960/yvr-rejects-ads/
======
floatingatoll
As an airport traveler, I'm glad they blocked the ads for the phrasing
submitted, but I'm upset that they refused to explain their reasoning and
negotiate better phrasing. For example:

"Know your digital rights at the border" is great. It's in the classic tone of
raise-awareness campaigns, does not use fearmongering, and can be safely
ignored by anyone who already understands them.

"Your phone isn't safe at the border" is not great. It makes you feel afraid,
mis-describes the issue (what about laptops?), and doesn't specify the vested
interest (it's about rights).

Both parties deserve censure for their choices.

~~~
rndgermandude
"Your phone isn't safe at the border" is a statement of fact, really, not fear
mongering. It is not safe from warrantless searches.

~~~
fhbdukfrh
But you just answered the GP's concern, safe from what?

Also, just my phone? What about my laptop? Safe from searches? Pickpockets?
Malware?

There's a big difference between raising awareness of issues(ex know your
rights - check out xyz.com for more info) vs big brother is, watching; trust
no one, followed by a border security queue

~~~
Sir_Substance
>Also, just my phone? What about my laptop? Safe from searches? Pickpockets?
Malware?

If slogans had to be that comprehensive to be allowed, we would be blessedly
free of advertising.

"Your phone isn't safe at the border" is on pretty much the same level as "for
everything else there's mastercard" on the accuracy<->drama scale. I think
your standards are beyond unreasonable here.

------
apo
> “In reviewing Open Media’s request to place advertising at the airport, we
> determined that it did not serve all of our stakeholders as we felt it
> pitted two groups against each other and it also has potential to add undue
> stress to the travel experience,” wrote spokesperson Brock Penner.

What should cause every single person passing through that airport stress is
the idea that their fundamental assumptions about personal security are
incorrect.

------
RickS
Good idea, bad approach. "Your phone isn't safe at the border" might be a hard
fact but it's nonetheless an intentionally divisive expression of that
sentiment. It's ambiguous, fearmongering.... facts can be clickbait, and this
is one such case.

If the ads said "You can be legally compelled to X, even if Y. Learn more
about your airport rights at www.url.com" then it would be much less
objectionable IMO.

I don't get why campaigns keep making this mistake. Take the freaking high
road. Imagine the mind of your opposition, and accomodate the low-hanging
complaints they're going to have. Craft a message that's maximally agreeable
to the people who disagree, while maintaining accuracy.

Weasels on both sides here, IMO.

~~~
sithadmin
>If the ads said "You can be legally compelled to X, even if Y. Learn more
about your airport rights at www.url.com" then it would be much less
objectionable IMO.

It's 'less objectionable' because it's bordering on bootlicking, and could
even read as a tacit endorsement of the status quo.

~~~
RickS
Is that really bootlicking? I struggle to understand how that's the case, and
I'd prefer to hear a dispassionate reading of reality that lets me decide how
to feel based on my own values, rather than one that's intentionally extreme
to try and scare me into subscribing to a position.

~~~
deogeo
The phone is not safe from prying - their description sounds very accurate to
me. Or would you describe a broken lock as 'safe'?

~~~
mikekchar
I wouldn't describe it as "unsafe". It's neither. Locks aren't dangerous.
There is a whole level of subtext going on there and if you are in on it
(which you seem to be), then it makes complete sense. If you are not, it
leaves you scratching your head (as I was). I will argue that it is completely
ineffective wording as the only people who will understand what it means are
the people who don't need to read it.

------
Zak
> _They said we didn’t fit into the criteria but weren’t able to tell us at
> that point what were the criteria_

This kind of thing is problematic when someone has a monopoly, which
governments and major airports do by default. It might be reasonable under
some conditions to have criteria for rejecting ads that are too political,
controversial, unfair to the airlines, etc... but those criteria should be
published.

------
marcrosoft
> “In reviewing Open Media’s request to place advertising at the airport, we
> determined that it did not serve all of our stakeholders as we felt it
> pitted two groups against each other and it also has potential to add undue
> stress to the travel experience,” wrote spokesperson Brock Penner.

I now have undue stress because of you Brock Penner and your stakeholders.

Who are these two groups? Your customers and an oppressive regime?

------
saagarjha
> YVR aims to be non-political

…telling people about their rights is non-political.

~~~
admax88q
That's a dishonest quote, you didn't include the context that was provided on
why YVR considers it political.

> Additionally, YVR aims to be non-political and Open Media’s borderprivacy.ca
> website promotes an online petition with a political call-to-action directed
> towards government officials.

Not that I agree with YVRs decision not to allow the ad, but I find it hard to
argue that a website including a petition and urging visitors to message the
government about the issue to be "non-political."

~~~
rosser
Your point is technically correct (the best kind of correct), but consider
that in the US, the IRS's rules for 501(c)3 organizations, for example, allow
those organizations to advocate for political policies without jeopardizing
their tax-exempt status, but not for or against candidates.

There is a legitimate argument to be made that policy advocacy is a different
kind of "political" than what people generally take that term to mean.

EDIT: That said, I agree with the many other comments here that the tone of
the ad in question was confrontational, counter-productive, and fear-
mongering. They could perfectly well have made their — again, technically
correct — point with a more constructive or informative tone.

~~~
mynameisvlad
I get that you used it as an example, but IRS's rules wouldn't apply or likely
even be relevant to a Canadian airport's internal policy.

------
Sideloader
Advertises and marketers mislead and exaggerate with near impunity and use
legalistic language drafted by lawyers to cover their asses. It is standard
practice for companies to knowingly deploy psychological trickery in order to
manipulate consumers, including very young children. This is accepted because
capitalism is the one cow that can not be slaughtered. Profit is always good.
Caveat emptor.

But a civil liberties group informing citizens of their rights in an attention
catching way is deplored as intrusive and inappropriate and not “objective”
enough.

This attitude speaks volumes about a society that has lost its way and is
slowly collapsing under the irreconcilable contradictions it refuses to
honestly address.

------
logicallee
I encourage people to read this article as it more or less gives each side
their "best shot" by fully quoting the airport's position, in their own words.
I'm sure the side blocking the ads would prefer that the headline redd
"rejects" or "chooses not to run" (rather than blocks), but in the body of the
article they have a chance to state their piece in full. I'll quote this part
(in the article this is followed by a direct quoted rebuttal literally
starting with the words "This is wrong"):

>“In reviewing Open Media’s request to place advertising at the airport, we
determined that it did not serve all of our stakeholders as we felt it pitted
two groups against each other and it also has potential to add undue stress to
the travel experience,” wrote spokesperson Brock Penner.

>“Additionally, YVR aims to be non-political and Open Media’s borderprivacy.ca
website promotes an online petition with a political call-to-action directed
towards government officials.”

(It should go without saying that I am not endorsing this statement.)

------
jammygit
A recent student software engineering competition competition in Canada gave
first prize to a team that used cell phone signals and embedded devices around
an area to locate a person and track their movements. It was a sponsored
project, the idea being to use it in airports. The sponsor was very happy.

------
Scoundreller
Can’t we target mobile users that just arrived within a geo fence from a long-
distance-away geofence?

------
deogeo
Yet another example of the failure of the narrow view that free speech only
concerns government. A view that is disturbingly popular (see
[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)) despite an ever larger
portion of public speech being conducted through corporate platforms.

~~~
rosser
Requiring private parties to convey speech they disagree with is, itself, a
violation of their freedom of speech.

EDIT: Otherwise, please explain to me how _compelled_ speech is "less bad"
than its restraint.

~~~
deogeo
You skipped a step, jumping straight to a possible solution. But that may not
be the only solution, and even if it were, it shouldn't prevent us from
acknowledging the problem.

And it gets blurry when the private parties are ISPs or phone companies.

Edit: Alright, taking the hypothetical that the solution is compelled speech,
I'll try to explain how it's less bad. First is that there's a distinction
between original speech and _conveying_ the speech of others. E.g. it would be
pretty awful if ISPs or phone companies started interfering with what they'll
transfer through their networks. I frankly disagree with calling what a
telecommunications provider does 'speech' \- they're paid to move bits, like a
moving service is paid to move furniture. And second, if you don't look at it
through such an abstract "free speech vs. compelled speech" lens, but through
a pragmatic "who can speak and what can they say" one, you'll see that almost
no-one has effective free speech. Online, almost all of the audience is on (a
small handful of) private platforms, carried by private ISPs, hosted on
private servers. Offline, people spend much of their time in privately-owned
spaces, such as airports. If you cut all those away, how much speech does the
great 1st Amendment buy you? You can yell on a street corner (not Wall street
though - those streets are private!), or in the woods, and send a few paper
letters through the government-ran post office. You'll reach maybe a handful
of people. Meanwhile speech blessed by the platform owners will reach
millions. Difference from complete censorship is negligible. That's why you
shouldn't legislate in a vacuum divorced from reality, where only platonic
ideals of free or compelled speech exist. You'll choose an ideal free speech
law, and the effect will be that a handful of corporations will get to decide
what can be said.

~~~
rosser
Re: your edit:

The First Amendment doesn't guarantee you an audience. It only guarantees you
that _the State_ can't constrain your speech without a damned good reason. It
is utterly orthogonal to conduct between private parties, and it's specious as
hell to bring it up in that context.

For example, even in the case where it effectively limits your ability to sue
people for speech you don't like, the _actual_ constraint is on the ability of
the State, in the form of the court system, to be leveraged against an
individual's speech, not on your ability to sue.

~~~
deogeo
I know very well the 1st Amendment applies only to the State - my whole series
of posts is about the problems that arise due to that. Free speech as a
concept is not limited to the 1st Amendment.

~~~
rosser
Your right to make noise with your pie hole in no way obligates anyone else to
listen to, or even hear you, let alone broadcast that noise to a larger
audience than you would have had without their help. Full stop.

There is absolutely a legitimate, and very, very important conversation to be
had around whether, e.g., online censorship or moderation or "deplatforming",
or whatever, might constitute something functionally akin to prior restraint,
where the edge cases are in those questions, and what to do about all that.

That said, having those discussions about private behavior using terms that
are — and historically have more or less _always_ been — used in the specific
context of the State only confuses things.

My point being: if we're going to have that discussion, which we for reals
should be doing, let's try to do it in a way that doesn't make it _harder_ to
have, let alone have productively.

The attempt to expand the specifically and narrowly constrained notion of
"Free Speech" (note the capitalization) to domains other than a constraint
upon the State is a specious conflation, and ultimately yields more heat than
light.

EDIT: I mean, really, how productively can that conversation be had if it's
using terminology that enables randos who don't meaningfully understand this
distinction to pile on, all, "But the Twitters violated my 1st Amendmentses!"?

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gesman
globalnews.ca blocks videos if you use ad blocker.

~~~
admax88q
good. Autoplay videos on most news sites are useless.

~~~
stordoff
At best, useless. At worst, detrimental to the experience. It's a good way to
drive me away from your site. I can't think of anything I hate more (in design
terms) than the current trend of auto-playing videos following you down the
page.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
“In reviewing Open Media’s request to place advertising at the airport, we
determined that it did not serve all of our stakeholders as we felt it pitted
two groups against each other and it also has potential to add undue stress to
the travel experience,” wrote spokesperson Brock Penner.

Just so much wrong in this quote, three questions for Brock:

Which stakeholders aren't being served?

What two groups are being pitted against each other?

Is stress that results from knowing the extent of your rights 'undue'?

~~~
cortesoft
I am guessing the two groups are border security and airline passengers.

------
emptybits
I'll assume the two stakeholder groups referred to are travellers and CBSA.

I believe they should let the advocacy and informative message run.

The message is sensational, but no more so than any other ad with an agenda
(i.e. all of them) and many travellers through YVR (Canadian or otherwise)
would benefit from considering what they may be compelled to share, without
warrant or regular safeguards, with CBSA.

And if CBSA wants to run a sensational, informative, and fear-based campaign
of their own, let them. (As if they already aren't.)

------
scarejunba
When at airports, I want to see kinda harmless ads: beautiful homes, greenery,
that sort of thing. I'm fine with this. Traveling is stressful enough as it
is.

If this were a frequent event it'd be fine, but it's a rare event, so I'd
rather be chill. Like having a big ad saying "Your plane could crash" before
the gate. No thanks. Not worth it.

