
A global movement to ban urban billboards - amelius
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/can-cities-kick-ads-ban-urban-billboards
======
rdtsc
That is one nice thing about living around DC, there are no billboards around
the highways around here. You don't notice it until you go to other states.
Then it becomes obvious and it looks jarring -- "Hey, what is this crap
everywhere? How can people tolerate this!?"

Kind of the same effect if you are used to watching Netflix and then at a
relative's house and you see cable TV with commercials every 15 minutes. They
probably don't even notice it, but to me it feels strange and annoying to have
to put up with it.

~~~
oinksoft
If like many Washingtonians you never leave NW, sure. But there are plenty of
billboards in NE and SE. There are definitely billboards when you get a little
ways out on 66, also on 50E towards Annapolis. 95 in VA is non-stop
billboards, I forget if 395 has them. The one I'm not certain about is the
beltway ... but pretty sure I've seen billboards on the beltway in parts of
MD. There are (were?) also what amount to billboards along H St in NW. So I
have to disagree, and encourage you to explore the area more.

~~~
epoxyhockey
_If like many Washingtonians you never leave NW_

At 7th and H NW there are three giant electronic billboards that play sound,
not to mention the array of billboards plastered all over the Verizon center.

~~~
oinksoft
I mentioned those, but you're right that they're inconsistent with what I said
about people not leaving NW. 2006-ish I think there was a big debate on if
they'd be allowed ... they've always seemed like a special case, being part of
the arena itself. In any case, billboards are few and far between in NW.

------
AlexEatsKittens
I've always quite disliked advertising. I really think that it's a rather
insidious force in western culture, and it has always bothered me that it's so
aggressively forced into people's day to day lives. It nearly always preys on
people's insecurities, is intentionally designed to distract you and is often
just an eye sore.

I know it's a little goofy and "edgy", but this article reminded me of a quote
by Banksy (a well known graffiti artists):

"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life,
take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall
buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that
imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else.
They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the
most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with
it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are
forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and
copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with
total impunity. FUCK THAT. Any advert in a public space that gives you no
choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and
re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like
asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies
nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe then any courtesy. They
owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you.
They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs."
Banksy

It's overly angsty, but I like the idea that some cities are taking it upon
themselves to rid themselves of ads, rather than street artists destroying
personal property to accomplish it.

~~~
dangrover
I forget where I heard it, but I always liked "Advertising is someone taking a
dump in your brain."

~~~
tempodox
And the psychologists involved in creating it know exactly how to funnel that
refuse into your brain despite all your efforts to the contrary. There is no
such thing as “safe contact”.

------
blfr
I block all ads on my devices, don't watch tv live, etc but I do like outdoor
advertising. It's different. All the loathing here is a little surprising.

From guerilla stickers on the bus and posters on construction site fences to
entire buildings wrapped, complete with props (like a car hanging from the
side) it makes cities look alive. LED signs, especially the larger ones
capable of showing graphics, and (my personal favourite) proper, old-school
neons make cities look like cities. Billboards cover unfinished structures or
designs from architects who should have never been licensed.

Maybe it's all the crappy communist architecture here but even places that
evolved more naturally generally gain. Sure, there are some old towns,
picturesque villages and so on but that is nowhere near the majority of the
space inhabited by people.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
Polarized sunglasses sometimes cut out advertisements displayed on screens.
[http://imgur.com/doze8mP](http://imgur.com/doze8mP) Maybe we can legally
enforce all large public ads to be polarized so that those who wish to not see
them can put on a pair of glasses.

~~~
nvarsj
Do that the other way around and I think you have the right idea. Make ads
only viewable when wearing special glasses.

------
ccvannorman
I will go a step further: Advertisement _in general_ should be banned.

Yes, I realize how unpopular this is. "Advertising has been around since the
dawn of time!" and "Who will know what to buy? Economy would crash." To them I
say the following: If you could choose to live your life and never see another
advertisement, would you?

If the answer is yes, do you believe it is technologically feasible to live as
a human being without ever seeing an advertisement?

If the answer is yes, then we agree.

By the way, if you want or need something, google it or watch a dedicated "ads
about X" channel. When was the last time you saw an ad for anything and it
changed your life more than marginally?

~~~
vacri
Goodbye to the entertainment industry, I guess. No more seeing a billboard
about an upcoming gig for a standup comedian or a band, teasers for movies,
reminders about game time...

~~~
igravious
Well, perhaps event promotion is fine. But I wouldn't shed a tear if product
advertising was banned in practically all its forms.

You could argue that movies are products but at least movies have a short
lifespan so their promotion is time-limited. I guess you could argue that
bands and sporting events and such-like are products too. But I'm okay with
"music_performance_x/sporting_event_y/movie_z/theatrical_performance_w is
coming to venue_v from time_t1 to time_t2" type promotions :)

There's an advertising hoarding/billboard on top of the opera house in the
city where I'm from. For a car company. Been like this for as long as I
remember. Permanent blot on the city-scape. Permanent eye-sore. Makes me
dislike the opera house as a venue because of it. Yuck.

I disapprove of billboards in general and most forms of outdoor advertising.
I'm not against personal recommendations and location-based promotion.

I'm sick of having my attention grabbed while consuming media, while browsing
the web, while walking or driving. I install ad-blockers on whichever device I
can. I keep TV viewing to a minimum and am continually put off by the sheer
volume of ads and their vacuity.

I do listen to the radio a lot, I hate the ads on radio less, you can sort of
tune them out. Visual ads I guess I hate the most.

------
josh64
I would love to ban the audiovisual advertising in some Sydney train stations.
You used to be able to avoid the static paper billboards but these days they
have giant video screens and very loud speakers spread all around the platform
so you can't escape hearing the constant pollution from advertisers.

I've started blocking ads on my devices again just so I can have a break from
advertising in my life.

~~~
username223
Wow. I've always assumed that the US would have the most aggressive and
terrible ads, but real-life auto-play videos are a level of evil I hadn't even
imagined. I can almost imagine the IAB's explanation of how blocking inter-
uterine advertising is "stealing" from someone.

~~~
cdubzzz
I noticed this in Bangkok. They have a nice sky train system that is cheap as
shit and seemed to run well (on time, clean, not too crowded at rush times).
However, all the cars have constantly looping video ads with audio. I don't
know Thai so it was easy for me to tune out, but if I did and had a daily
commute on those trains I think it would drive me nuts.

------
some-guy
I grew up in Davis, CA, right dab in the middle of the Central Valley in CA.
From a purely visual standpoint, billboard ads along those freeways were far
more ugly to me. The ugliness of billboard advertising in cities can at least
be mitigated by the visual "white noise" around it, whereas billboards in
farmland stick out like a sore thumb.

------
dba7dba
Entire state of Hawaii bans all forms of outdoor ads. Some company tried to
sell ads on bikes but were banned. Another company tried to sell aerial ads
(banner pulled by small planes) in Hawaii. The company insisted only FAA can
ban such ads, even AFTER FAA announced the state can ban aerial ads.

The pilot was actually arrested.

[http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/26075222/pilot-for-
aerial...](http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/26075222/pilot-for-aerial-
advertising-company-arrested-after-flying-over-oahu)

------
mc32
I can't imagine Tokyo or Taipei without large billboards and other signage
draping over whole buildings.

As others have said, I neither miss them nor dislike them. The one thing I
will say is that some do cover over otherwise useful windows --which since
covered by advertising become useless and wonder how the inhabitants deal with
diminished sunlight --but on the other hand you have places like France where
you are (were?) taxed on window count on your flat and so people would board
them up, so as not to count as "windows".

~~~
drdaeman
Hearing that somewhere there's a tax on how many windows a housing has, I was
confused and immediately rushed to search more about this weirdness.

Don't know about correctness, but
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax)
says France got this until 1926, so it must be somewhat before the age of
modern omnipresent advertising.

~~~
mc32
I lived with a family there over a summer, not sure if they were just telling
me stories or not, but my impression from their story is they boarded up some
of their windows to avoid taxes. Maybe it was an excuse, i don't know. A nice
tale they liked to tell a foreigner.

~~~
sean-duffy
In the UK it's fairly common to see windows that have been bricked up on old
buildings because of window tax. E.g.
[http://www.davidwallphoto.com/gallery/Other/London_England/I...](http://www.davidwallphoto.com/gallery/Other/London_England/IEng278.jpg)

------
vhost-
This might be an unpopular opinion, but fuck it.

I'd replace billboards with graffiti in Portland any day. I can't stand that
billboards are plastered all over the place, but one streak of paint on a
building left unscrubbed will result in the person owning that building
getting fines from the city. I miss the feel of an real urban environment and
having real graffiti on walls and over passes.

~~~
wingerlang
When you say graffiti, do you include the 90% of it that is basically shitty
tags?

~~~
Intermernet
Um, a lot of advertising is basically shitty tags as well.

~~~
wingerlang
I never said one is better than the other. Although I'd prefer shitty 'tags'
with content that may be relevant to someone in 0.0001% of the cases over a
shitty squiggle on the wall.

~~~
Intermernet
Graffiti tags are relevant to someone other than the "tagger" as well.

"Tags can contain subtle and sometimes cryptic messages, and may incorporate
the artist's crew initials or other letters."[1]

Just because you and I don't get it, doesn't mean it's content free.

I'm not defending tagging, I'm just decrying most advertising as being equally
bad, or worse.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti#Tagging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti#Tagging)

------
JesperRavn
It makes sense. Advertising is inefficient, wasting people's time and
attention for the gain of the advertiser.

Advertisements have long been used as a form of micropayment, to fund first TV
shows and now websites, where a monetary payment would be infeasible.

There is no such reason to allow advertising in public property (private
property is more complicated, but generally the outward appearance of
buildings is considered a public good, and highly regulated). The person
viewing the building or billboard is not a party to a transaction, so there is
no reason to charge that person a hidden fee for viewing that space. In a way
it is the ultimate hidden tax.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Billboards are illegal in four states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont. I
would love to form a SuperPAC to work on outlawing them in the other 46
states.

------
airza
I can't really imagine Tokyo without the billboards. It's too wrapped up in
the aesthetic for me. (Not that I think that should override the preferences
of whatever people in tokyo want to do.)

~~~
snogglethorpe
Yes... I find the "global movement" label sort of annoying, because it's very
much a local issue.

Some places suffer from excessive advertising, other places are energized by
it, and the actual contents, presentation, placement, and other details, all
of which are intimately tied in with the local culture, matter a great deal as
well.

A city like Tokyo would be very, very, different without outdoor advertising,
and it's not at all clear that it would be better...

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/snogglethorpe/9503120600](https://www.flickr.com/photos/snogglethorpe/9503120600)

~~~
dlisboa
> Some places suffer from excessive advertising, other places are energized by
> it, and the actual contents, presentation, placement, and other details, all
> of which are intimately tied in with the local culture, matter a great deal
> as well.

São Paulo was very much like that. Billboards were all over, some were
captivating and cool and there were even innovative moving billboards people
talked about. Small businesses got creative with theirs and changed their
façades in ways that were immediately recognizable. Brazilians are very
connected to advertising, so much so that it seeps its way into popular
lexicon and shape colloquial language.

Yet, no one misses them now. No one has asked for them to come back. No one
will.

Ads are much less an intrinsic cultural phenomenon than you think. We think
they matter to culture simply because they exist, but their absence has no
important effect on it.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _Ads are much less an intrinsic cultural phenomenon than you think. We think
> they matter to culture simply because they exist, but their absence has no
> important effect on it._

The thing is, though, every culture, every city, is different, and _you just
don 't know_ what the effect will be until you've done it. Maybe Tokyo and
other Asian cities would turn out to be the same as São Paulo, but ... maybe
they wouldn't.

Because of this, and because it would be a _major_ change, it's not something
you want to do unless there's a lot of local support for it; it's something
that needs to be locally driven.

Maybe in São Paulo, there was such support, and in the end things worked out,
which is great.

But if nobody actually cares, it would be pretty silly to do it simply because
of a "global movement."

------
iamthepieman
Billboards are already banned in my state. I'm always struck by how ugly the
roads and highways are when I travel to other states.

~~~
twblalock
What state is that?

~~~
nommm-nommm
TFA says "...several US states including Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, and Alaska
are billboard-free."

~~~
ccvannorman
Can we get this on the ballot for California?

------
ThomPete
I don't mind billboards it's whats on them that's horrible.

I Williamsburg where I live as far as I understand it's not legal to put up
posters or billboard posters. Instead people paint the billboards.

Which is pretty cool.

[http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SneJtEDliUk/hqdefault.jpg](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SneJtEDliUk/hqdefault.jpg)

------
mindcrime
Meh... I actually somewhat like billboards, at least when I'm making long
drives on the Interstate. They're something to look at that's more interesting
than farm combines, cows, empty fields, old barns, etc. I especially like the
ones that mark off "landmarks" on certain trips... like when I drive down I-40
from Raleigh towards Wilmington, I know when I start seeing the billboards for
boat dealerships and coastal golf plantations, that I'm nearly to Wilmington.
They help remind me that I am actually getting somewhere. (Of course, so do
mile markers, but counting those gets boring, and they're too frequent).

To be fair, I suppose none of this has much to do with "urban" billboards in
particular though... other than to say that outdoor advertising, in general,
really doesn't bother me. If anything, cities seem like they _ought_ to have
plenty of outside advertising.

------
revelation
I'd much rather they ban obnoxious high powered LED animated displays. At
least billboards don't blind you.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Arizona recently outlawed that specific type of billboard.

------
austinjp
People dislike pervasive advertising because it becomes clear that you are a
pawn in the game. This grates, consciously or subconsciously. The dissonant
suspicion that you're a bit-player in a game from which you derive no benefit
(while others gain massively) underpins sentiment in a number of recent
threads: the role of universities [1], the influence of money on research [2],
motor vehicle emissions [3].

We don't like being played for fools, and some of us feel that pervasive
advertising does exactly that.

But what of the "benefits" of advertising? Free access to content, for
instance.

Well that's only "free as in beer". Ad-funded content on the internet, or in
print, confuses "free as in beer" with "free as in speech". It assumes that if
I can get something for free, then I'm happy to exchange it for something
else; that I'm happy to accept content in exchange for my attention being
drawn to goods and services that want my money.

Personally, I'm not happy with that. I never opted-in, and I can't (easily)
opt out.

Billboard advertising is irritating because of exactly this reason: no opt
out.

People who disagree (or simply don't sympathise) with my sentiments probably
feel happy to exchange their liberty for advertising. Fair enough -- I don't
wish to persuade or disuade. I would, however, like the capacity to make my
own choice.

People who think we do have a choice -- it's very, very limited. It seems that
every square inch of publicly-visible surface in major cities could be scooped
up by advertisers. Risers on staircases; LED billboards on top of taxis; it's
getting ridiculous.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372181)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372446)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10354127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10354127)

------
bryanlarsen
A ban is pretty harsh, how about taxing them heavily enough that they almost
disappear? $1MM/billboard/year might be about right.

The reason people are asking for a ban of billboards is that they impose heavy
externalities: they're distracting, ugly, et cetera. Capture those
externalities rather than ban them.

~~~
coldtea
So only the ultra-rich can advertise through them?

~~~
bryanlarsen
99% of billboards are commercial in nature, and are quite expensive even
before heavy taxation.

Non-commercial speech is much better served by a human standing by the side of
the road holding a placard.

------
kylebgorman
I don't care about the presence of visual advertising, nor do I think cities
would be nicer if it was all replaced with reproductions of Renaissance
painting. It's not that I think I'm unaffected by advertising, it's just that
I don't think my quality of life is affected by it in the least.

But I do care about (actual) environmental pollution, poor economic
opportunities in the inner city, overly militaristic and authoritarian
policing, mass government surveillance, and the deteriorating public transit
infrastructure.

------
ddingus
There are passive printed ones. Ugly, but often tolerable and often useful.

Then there are those active ones. Blinking lights, bright to the point of
light pollution. I hate those things and they are everywhere now too with more
sprouting up all the time.

Count me in for the latter. I'll gladly continue to tolerate the former to get
some relief from the active ugly everywhere...

~~~
copsarebastards
Why is this a negotiation? We don't have to have passive ads to get rid of
active ads, we can get rid of both.

Advertisers never asked before barging obnoxiously into our collective
consciousness. We don't need to pre-emptively make concessions.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Consider what it would actually mean to ban billboards. If they were on
government-owned land near a highway, placed at the pleasure of the city or
state, then sure, they can (and should) decide to retract that permission; no
issue there. On the other hand, if they're on private land, then this suggests
that a local government can ban you from posting a sign on your own property
that's visible to others. Where does that stop, and on what basis could it
occur at all?

Within cities, I've seen signs posted on the sides of buildings, presumably
with the full permission of the building owner, because the building happened
to provide a convenient space visible to a fair bit of roadway. In residential
areas, I've seen people post large signs on the sides or roofs of their
houses, easily visible to the road. And that leaves aside the numerous small
picket or A-frame signs placed in non-highway areas, again on private
property: houses for sale, garage sales, lost pets, etc.

As much as I hate advertising, how exactly would you reconcile such a ban with
the first amendment in the US?

~~~
thirdtruck
With the long-standing understanding that commercial speech is not protected
to the same degree as non-commercial speech.

~~~
plonh
That's a horrible precedent. Most noncommercial advertising is popitical
advertising, which is funded by the special interests who will commercially
profit from the advertised politicians.

------
mhb
Leaf blowers next, please.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Are leaf blowers loud on purpose?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Leaf blowers aka. gasoline is free, infinite and burning it doesn't pollute at
all.

------
RobinL
What is better, billboards and a bike scheme, or no billboards? We shouldn't
ignore that there are real tradeoffs at stake here (even if they don't involve
bikes).
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vélib%27](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vélib%27)

~~~
orik
I don't understand. I'm sure there are tradeoffs (as with all things) but what
do the bikes have to do with it? Was the Véli program funded by billboards?

~~~
RobinL
Yep - details in the wiki link :-)

In fact, we even get a quantification of the potential 'value' of the
billboards (to the advertisers, at least) :

JCDecaux paid the scheme's start-up costs, totalling about $140 million, and
employs around 285 people full-time to operate the system and repair the bikes
on a ten-year contract. The city receives all revenue from the programme, as
well as a fee of about $4.3 million a year. In return, JCDecaux receives
exclusive control over 1,628 city-owned billboards; the city receives about
half of that advertising space at no charge for public-interest advertising

------
jonah
My city doesn't allow billboards in town. Billboards on the highways are also
banned in my half of the county. I really appreciate it. Less visually
assaulting and you can appreciate the natural and built beauty better.

------
veritas3241
I was just thinking about this today. My proposal was to replace them with
behavioral nudges[0]. Things like "Traveling the speed limit saves X lives and
gets you home faster[1]." Basically, they'd be gentle ways of making people
more conscious and aware of the road and themselves.

But of course, who gets to pick what the billboards say? And I'm sure nobody
would go for it if it were slogans from the State Dept. of Nudges...

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_\(book\))

[1] Real data of course. Citations needed.

~~~
pierrec
Sounds like the BRO (Border Roads Organisation) signs you can see in the
Indian Himalayas. These are some of the scariest (and most dangerous) roads in
the world, so it's a special sort of relief whenever you come across their
subtle life-saving jokes:

[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=bro+signs](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=bro+signs)

~~~
plonh
What is "MR" in those signs.

Tangent: Mozilla just changed the name of its new brotli feature tag, because
the "BRO" abbreviation was deemed sexist.

~~~
mikestew
(My assumption being that English is a 2nd language for you...) If you're
referring to the "Mr. Late" and "late Mr.", it's a play on words. "Mr." being
a male title in English, and the dead are sometimes referred to as "the late
Mr. Smith" (why is a lifelong mystery to me). So it's better to be the guy
that's late ("Mr. Late") rather than speed down a dangerous road and be dead
("the late Mr. Smith").

------
Nursie
Sounds good to me. The amount of visual pollution created by advertising is
mind boggling in some places.

------
lemevi
Another movement I'd like to see in the US is to take telephone poles down and
put all that wiring under the ground. Would generate jobs and make the country
much prettier.

~~~
cbd1984
Telephone wires are already largely underground. What you see are power
transmission lines. That's why the transformers are up there, too.

I can only imagine it would be rather hazardous to have power transmission
lines buried underground, especially in a region prone to any kind of flooding
or even heavy, ground-saturating rains.

~~~
Someone
Unlikely.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergrounding](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergrounding):

 _" All low and medium voltage electrical power (<50 kV) in the Netherlands is
now supplied underground."_

That is a country where, in half the country, with way over half the
population, you hit water year round after digging less than a meter.

------
rl3
Obviously art is subjective, though in my opinion the mural that _Foster The
People_ commissioned in LA last year to promote their new album managed to
strike a fantastic balance between art and commerce:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermodel_%28album%29#/media/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermodel_%28album%29#/media/File:Supermodel_Mural.jpg)

------
dopeboy
If you want to know what such a world is like, go to Cuba. It's a beautiful
thing.

~~~
necessity
I'm not sure if you only visited the touristic areas or are being sarcastic.

~~~
tensor
I assumed he was being sarcastic and trying to imply that banning advertising
will suddenly make us all communists.

A more serious and relevant example would be São Paulo. They completely banned
outdoor advertising and the world didn't fall apart. Seems like they new
relaxed the ban enough to allow art.

[http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681353/advertising-comes-
back-t...](http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681353/advertising-comes-back-to-sao-
paulo-streets-via-graffiti)

------
Scoundreller
What about how, by design, billboards distract drivers' eyes from the road?
The article (and comments here so far) have not mentioned this.

And then if an accident occurs because a driver was distracted by a billboard,
we blame the driver for not paying attention? The odds are increasingly
stacked against them.

------
rooodini
PIRC and WWF produced an interesting report on this topic a few years ago:
[http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/think_of_me_as_evil.pdf](http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/think_of_me_as_evil.pdf)

------
SCAQTony
I live in L.A. and Sunset Blvd would be so very dull without oversized
billboards featuring super models, new albums and the latest movies.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-11/west-
holly...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-11/west-hollywood-
seeks-cash-from-sunset-boulevard-billboards-on-tax-squeeze)

~~~
hyperbovine
Los Angeles: Boring without advertising.™

~~~
beachstartup
sunset blvd is sort of like the west coast equivalent of times square, which
would also be pretty boring without the ads.

------
wisty
I suspect there are more people who sell and use web-ads than billboard ads
here.

In fact, I'm bet a few people are wondering when they can all be replaced with
giant QR codes, so they can automatically be replaced by something a little
more "targeted".

------
stock_toaster
I wonder what impact self driving cars will have on billboards in the
future...

------
nicklaf
I do often see PSA's from, say, the Ad Council, on billboards. I don't really
think these should go away, even perhaps if it means living with the
obnoxiousness of commercial billboards.

------
roflchoppa
How interesting that people within the afk space are beginning to dislike
advertisements, while people in the digital space have been actively removing
it for a while.

Does u-block allow for extensions?

------
johnydepp
I am living in Bangalore, India. Good to know its already implemented in
Chennai. I hope its soon implemented in Bangalore and other cities.

------
justatdotin
I live in a capital city with only one billboard. The cancel has a firm policy
against any visual pollution. On one hand I hate that graffiti rarely lasts
more than 24 hrs anywhere in this town. On the other, the lack of advertising
is really nice. Once I saw a mcdeath logo go up on the back of a traffic sign
so I called it in and it was gone the next day.

------
tempodox
I'm all for it. Imagine Times Square illuminated by art instead of ads.

------
rokhayakebe
I want billboards. Possibly more than now. However, like in Sao Paulo and
France in the article, I would like to have them show arts, culture,
interesting information. Not car ads.

------
noonespecial
Microsoft HoloLens and adblocking. Hmmmm....

------
JBiserkov
Where do I sign?

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gaetanomarano
often, billboards are ugly, but all them give "life" to our streets, so, I
don't agree with the ban kapipal.com/newspace

------
itistoday2
I am seriously confused by all the good news recently.

First U.S. decides to let nearly 6,000 drug offenders out of federal prison
early. [1]

Then I hear _CNN (!)_ was apparently talking about the rise of city-states.
[2]

And now this about cities considering or already actively banning billboard
ads??

So much sanity and good news in a short time period makes me almost
suspicious.

[1] [https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-is-going-to-let-
nearly-...](https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-is-going-to-let-
nearly-6000-drug-offenders-out-of-federal-prison-early)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/digitsu/status/653221388249993216](https://twitter.com/digitsu/status/653221388249993216)

~~~
itistoday2
Downvoted, that's more like it. :)

------
necessity
São Paulo is filled with graffiti instead of ads. Not art, just tags, as most
major Brazilian cities. It's not visually clean by any standards.

That said, the article is an ad in itself - "began to suffocate under a smog
of signage", gimme a break. I find it funny how anti-ad folk often advertise
massively against ads.

------
ekianjo
> Safe for eyeballs ... in a single year, São Paulo removed 15,000 billboards,
> many of which were replaced by street art.

so they replaced commercial crap by street art shite that never changes, and
that is supposed to be an improvement for the eyes ? Seriously ?

~~~
rdtsc
I dunno, I'll take mediocre street art over high quality "Buy Samsung!"
posters any day, but that is just me.

~~~
ekianjo
City ads represent fashion, ongoing trends and so on. Without it, it looks
like a dying place to me, a museum.

Of course, it depends how bad ads are in your country.

