
An experimental real world adblock - tstactplsignore
http://jonathandub.in/cognizance/
======
spain
That's pretty cool but I feel like they're mixing up ads and brands. Like I
expected a real life adblock to say, blur actual advertisements in a magazine
or billboard. Instead in this video they show it blurring brands like on the
soda bottle (which isn't that useful). I'm sure the tech could probably do it
but the demo could be better.

~~~
ReedR95
I'm one of the members of the team that built this.

Some context about the project: We built this a few days ago at the PennApps
hackathon during a period of 48 hours. We originally wanted to try to block
out magazine advertisements and billboards, but didn't think we could quite
get that working with the time constraints, so we chose to block out logos
instead. We called the project Brand Killer.

~~~
spain
> We called the project Brand Killer.

Ah neat, that certainly is a lot more fitting of a description.

------
bhhaskin
It would be pretty cool if you could replace advertisements altogether.
Imagine driving down the road instead of billboards you see art work.

~~~
chriskelley
In São Paulo they have the "clean city law"[1] which banned outdoor
advertising in 2006. Pretty crazy, here's a flickr gallery:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/7215760007550...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/72157600075508212/)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa)

~~~
ToastyMallows
This is crazy, these pictures look like they're from a dystopian future. Can
you imagine if this happened in the U.S.?

~~~
scott_karana
Some might say it looks like a _utopian_ future :)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Exactly. I live in a place with a bit less ad clutter than usual, so it's the
US cities that look dystopian to me :).

------
nsgi
This reminds me of the Black Mirror episode White Christmas (only blocking ads
instead of people).

~~~
dubin
Hey, I'm from the team that worked on this at PennApps. This episode was
actually our inspiration for the device!

~~~
nogridbag
Another Black Mirror fan here. I was about to post the same thing as the
parent. It's awesome that the show inspired this, but it's also quite scary at
the same time!

------
elihu
I think there's an interesting opportunity here to replace logos rather than
simply blur them. For example, you could replace the logo with:

\- the name of the brand in plain text

\- the parent company of the brand

\- the parent company's stock symbol, market cap, and percentage change in the
last week

\- political campaigns the parent company has contributed to recently

\- consumer reports / better business bureau ratings for the brand / company

------
barbs
Along the same lines of porting things to the real world: this DRM chair.

[http://vimeo.com/60475086](http://vimeo.com/60475086)

~~~
teddyh
See also _SeatSale: License to Sit_ :
[http://wearcam.org/seatsale/](http://wearcam.org/seatsale/)

------
johnloeber
VR, Augmented Reality, Holograms, etc. are currently abuzz in the news. It's
probable that these headsets will become popular consumer devices within the
near future. And they present a conflicting opportunity for advertisers and
consumers:

1\. Advertisers will probably want to use AR devices to superimpose their
product logos on the real world, thereby advertising more at a lower cost. No
need to rent billboard space when you can beam your corporate logo right into
the eye of the consumer.

2\. Consumers will probably want to use AR devices to _remove_ product logos
from the real world, much in the spirit of AdBlock and this video (using
machine vision to detect advertisements, and then to replace them with
something less objectionable).

What effects will these opportunities have? Who will come out on top? Will it
be like advertising on the internet, all over again?

~~~
chii
> Advertisers will probably want to use AR devices to superimpose their
> product logos on the real world, thereby advertising more at a lower cost.
> No need to rent billboard space when you can beam your corporate logo right
> into the eye of the consumer.

if advertisers did this, they have to somehow pay out to the consumer
something of worth - free stuff. otherwise, i m not gonna let an advertiser
beam anything into my field of view!

~~~
runeks
> if advertisers did this, they have to somehow pay out to the consumer
> something of worth - free stuff. otherwise, i m not gonna let an advertiser
> beam anything into my field of view!

Exactly. If the price is right, people will view advertisements. It's really
as simple as that. So the question of whether advertisement will win or
disappear depends on whether advertisers will be willing to pay what consumers
demand in return for viewing the ad in question.

How the economics of this will change is very hard to predict, IMO.

------
vacri
The solution to this problem isn't technical, it's legislative. Legislate
limitations on ads - several places do this, and they have a 'quieter' public
experience. This solution requires electronics and power, and still doesn't
change the amount of visual space taken by ads.

It's a nifty project, but ultimately it's attacking the symptom, not the
cause.

------
tux1968
But you are committing "theft" if you are wearing this technology and look at
your web-browser while it is trying to show you an ad?

Really makes it obvious that the browser-ad-blocking-is-theft argument is
bunk.

------
spb
I knew I'd seen something like this before - the "NO AD" app that replaces
advertisements with art: [http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/this-
augmented-reali...](http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/this-augmented-
reality-app-blocks-advertisements-with-digital-art)

------
TeMPOraL
While I'd totally love to have a real-world adblock, I fear a wide-scale
deployment will only make things worse.

See, such ad-block device to be effective needs to be able to distinguish ads
from legitimately important communication like traffic signs or warning
labels. This in turn will make advertisers design their ads to be as
indistinguishable from content as possible. In the end, we'll win nothing in
terms of ad reduction, but we'll lose traffic signs and other important
information.

I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't have stopped fighting ads a while ago just
to keep them from improving. Fighting advertsers is like fighting a fast-
mutating bacteria. Whatever partial solution we apply makes it only evolve to
a more nasty and disgusting form to be fought next season. I worry that the
end result will not be lack of ads - it will be lack of information you can
trust.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
By your logic we should stop fighting diseases, i.e. killing bacteria, to
prevent bacteria from evolving.

~~~
TeMPOraL
That does not follow by proper application of logic.

But to clarify:

\- advertising isn't as harmful (yet) as infectious diseases

\- if we want to get rid of it, the same rules apply as to fighting bacteria -
you want to hit as hard as possible in as many places as possible, to not give
any room for bacteria to mutate; proliferation of adblocks is like taking
antibiotics and stopping treatment half-way - not effective enough to kill off
everything, and forces bacteria to mutate into drug-resistant variety

Then there's also problem that ads mutate much faster than bacteria - because
they're driven not by evolution, but by sentient adversaries.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Ads generate money through sales. Advertisers can lobby lawmakers to not make
much restrictions on ads. Who you think can out lobby them? You and me? I
think we have better things to spend our money than that. Adblock gives
(almost) free and painless solution. I don't see how you think there's a
better, easier and cheaper way of dealing with it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't see any "better, easier and cheaper way" right now (which is why I use
AdBlock myself). I'm just expressing my fear that current solutions may hurt
us badly in the long run.

------
ArekDymalski
I'm waiting for someone to hack it and replace the blur with "OBEY" ;)

~~~
Amorymeltzer
FNORD

------
tarr11
Replace "ads" with "things I don't agree with" and you have quite the filter
bubble.

~~~
derekjobst
People already do this online. Facebook is very good at making sure you only
see what you agree with.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Facebook is very good at making sure you only see what you agree with.

For organic content, their algorithms (before considering paid reach) are
organized around making sure you only see, approximately, what you've actively
indicated you want to see (which isn't the same thing as "agree with" \-- if
you positively engage with things you disagree with, you'll see more of them.)

Of course, Facebook's revenue model is entirely based on people paying --
either via ads-in-the-overt-sense or paid reach for posts -- for more
favorable treatment for their content than the relying on the normal
algorithms and (in the case of ads-in-the-overt-sense) even the basic opt-in
following mechanism would provide, so its not at all the case that it is good
at making sure you only see what you agree (or have positively asserted an
interest in seeing, even.)

Though they do let you opt out of ads from a particular advertiser or
particular ads, so they are arguably fairly good at making sure you do not see
what you have actively requested not to see, which is different than only
seeing what you agree with (or even want to see.)

------
Animats
Cute. But blurring the labels of everything you pick up is not helpful. They
need something like Word Lens, set to recognize ads and replace them with
"Ad", or something more attractive.

------
meatcar
I had the pleasure of taking a course taught by Steve Mann, credited as the
inventor of visual computing. I recall he mentioned creating a similar device.
Not sure if it ever actually happened, but here's a link that I was able to
dig up:

[http://wearcam.org/diminished_reality.htm](http://wearcam.org/diminished_reality.htm)
via
[http://cyborganthropology.com/Diminished_Reality](http://cyborganthropology.com/Diminished_Reality)

------
apt-bunt
The reason why this is totally different from adblock is that this draws
attention to what is fuzzed out, rather than just ignoring it completely as
with adblock/hosts files... so when you see something fuzzed out, you are like
"woah is that lucky charms or what?" (based on the fuzzed colors). With
adblock/hosts you see nothing so you have nothing to focus your attention
upon.

Don't get me wrong this sounds like a fun project though.

------
nfoz
If we have a society don't like ads (perhaps a subcategory: intrusive ads,
offensive ads, loud/bright/aggressive ads, extremely large ads that clutter
our cityscape), we could simply ban those categories with law. Honestly I
would prefer that. I find the intensity of advertisement to be offensive to my
ability to live, my freedom of thought without people spamming images at my
face all the time.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> I find the intensity of advertisement to be offensive to my ability to live

Other people find Muslims, Jews, Mormons, non-caucasians, breast-feeding
mothers, alcohol-imbibers, blondes, Ugg boots, motorcycles, gold watches,
crying children, airplanes passing overhead, and dogs to be offensive to their
ability to live. Can't ban everything you don't like.

Also, there are already restrictions on advertisements (when was the last time
you saw an cigarette ad on television?), and some places are much more
restrictive than others.

~~~
nfoz
I wasn't suggesting to ban any of those things, so I don't see how that's
relevant aside from careless strawmanning. If a large majority of a society
wants to ban something, it can, and often that's a reasonable thing to do --
cigarette ads are a good example.

I simply suggested that, when we're considering _hacking our eyes_ as depicted
in the OP to avoid ads, we might consider limiting the ads instead. And that
has nothing to do with racism.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Exactly. There is a qualitative difference between what pavel_lishin mentioned
and ads, which while originally meant to inform people, now grew into a social
cancer.

------
Terr_
I think a far more powerful (and proactive) approach is to allow the
underlying brands/advertising through, and then augment them with _negative_
associations.

It's a bit of an obsolete example these days, but think back and consider
cigarette advertising, and someone trying to quit. If you just blocked them
out, marketers would evolve new ways to reach you, right? But if their logos
and ads were always surrounded by a picture-border of pulsing blackened lung-
samples... Well, you're actually reprogramming your own mind to _dislike_
their brand, which is very different.

A tamer example would be to _enhance_ your recognition of "good" brands at the
expense of the bad/less-good ones. Imagine walking through a supermarket and
having your eye drawn to the "good" products at the expense of the "bad" ones.
(Where Good/Bad is determined by some criteria that are resistant to
subconscious advertising.)

~~~
chii
> Where Good/Bad is determined by some criteria that are resistant to
> subconscious advertising.

so what are those criteria, and more importantly, how much bribery would
advertisers/companies pay to make themselves on the good list?

Negative advertising is just as bad as positive advertising in the scenario
you proposed.

~~~
Terr_
<shrug> Sure, there are always reputation problems (whose opinion do you
listen to?) but the additional level of abstraction is _still_ beneficial,
since it helps defend from people trying to condition your monkey-hindbrain
using stuff you can't normally control.

The most important difference is it helps increase your ability to control
your own unthinking behavior through other conscious choices. (This is
generally agreed to be a worthwhile thing, and factors prominently in a lot of
religious and psychological traditions.)

------
waylandsmithers
I've been interested for a while in taking adblock in the opposite direction
in terms of technology: a service that unsubscribes you from those annoying
catalogs that always come in the mail. I feel like I'm just the middleman
between the postal service and the dump.

~~~
dnr
[https://www.paperkarma.com/](https://www.paperkarma.com/)

~~~
click170
Why do I have to subscribe to a service to not receive spam?

The fact that the service exists is evidence of the problem.

Canada's anti spam law just went into effect for email, companies can't (see
arent supposed to) just email you out of the blue anymore, why can't this
apply to snail mail as well?

I think the answer is because the postal service survives on the revenue they
get from stuffing your mail box with garbage, but I assert that's not a good
enough reason. If they can't keep themselves afloat without the spam. I
question whether they need to exist at all in the age of free webmail accounts
and the ability to run your own server.

------
lotsofmangos
Presumably you could do a sunglasses version with a couple of greyscale lcds
and tiny cameras, that just blacks stuff out. Would also then be nice to get
it to shade the sun as well. Oh and they should go completely black in
response to danger, but that goes without saying.

------
MattGrommes
Back in the 90s there was an artist who did a project I've always liked where
she blocked all ads in streetscape pictures with orange. It was to show just
how much of our landscape was covered with ads. I'd love to see this project
adapted to do the same.

------
uptown
I wrote something in college that attempted to remove the station logos TV
networks embedded in the corner of broadcast video. This was back before they
started making them animated and jump around. At the time they were usually
semi-transparent, and fixed in a corner. My software would determine the
location on the screen, then interpolate the correct color to replace each
pixel with based on a guess on how transparent the logo was, what color it
thought was behind that pixel, blended with a nearest-neighbor average color
weighted based on how close to the logo edge that pixel was. Worked pretty
well for most cases, though my implementation was all doing this as post-
processing - not in real-time.

------
blackhaz
Practical real world adblock: [http://www.euronews.com/2014/11/24/green-and-
noble-french-ci...](http://www.euronews.com/2014/11/24/green-and-noble-french-
city-grenoble-to-get-rid-of-street-advertising/)

------
ingenter
I've been thinking about this for a very short period of time, but then it got
to me that I would _not_ want to use it because ad-recognizing algorithm is
not perfect, and I could miss a road sign or other important information
_because_ of such augmented vision.

I still find the amount of advertising _annoyingly_ high, literally every
plane that could be possibly filled with ads is filled with ads. This has to
change on another level, not by simply ignoring the advertisement in one way
or another.

------
brightsize
I hope that this tech can be scaled up. Every time I see the ad for the Off-
world Colonies I get more tempted to pack it in and go.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZNzz4SaTYk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZNzz4SaTYk)
. The device would have to see through smoke/mist in this case, and I could
imagine that being a challenge. And then there's the audio...

------
hokkos
Now, that would be something useful for the Hololens.

------
Paul-ish
This could well for people who record a lot of video and don't want to remove
the brands manually.

------
Famicoman
Incredibly awesome considering the time constraint. I almost went to PennApps
as my company was a sponsor, but had to sit out. Had I went, I would have
suggested replacing the ads with "Consume, "Obey," or "Marry and reproduce."

------
_noodly_
It would be great if it were the size of contact lenses, and had far higher
refresh rate.

Yet I don't think I would use it, since in daily life, I don't see many ads.

The only ads I have to block are online, because they impact negatively my UX
with the content.

~~~
bnegreve
> _In daily life, I don 't see many ads._

Clearly advertising works, so some people must be exposed and influenced by
it. This product is useful for those people.

Do you have a reason to believe that you are less exposed or influenced than
the average person?

(I can't find a way to phrase it in a non-jerkish way, but it's actually a
genuine question)

------
flohofwoe
Awesome! This needs a Google-Maps like database for billboards which everyone
can contribute to, look at a billboard to detect its borders, coordinates are
uploaded and downloaded by others in the same area.

~~~
jimktrains2
We could probably start laying the ground work by adding billboards to
openstreetmaps

------
kszx
Does anybody remember the name of the cult movie where all advertisement is
blocked from the real world? It's pretty much the same idea. I remember seeing
that movie many years ago.

~~~
kszx
Found it: "They Live" by John Carpenter.

The idea is a bit different though. "Nada discovers the sunglasses are
special. After putting on a pair, he sees the world in black and white and
discovers it is not what it seems. Media and advertising hide constant
subliminal totalitarian commands to obey and conform."
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live))

Here you can see how the "sunglasses" work:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w)

[Added additional information]

------
zach_daily
Advertisers will adapt to this if it becomes ubiquitous. Logos will be
replaced with color schemes, etc.

Also this tool could be terrifyingly hackable. Imagine someone hacking into
your vision.

------
erickhill
Is that can your kid is drinking from a soda, or paint thinner? I love this
idea as a concept, but there are some "brands" you really want to be able to
see.

~~~
Sir_Substance
If you can't tell by the shape of the can, you should probably go to hospital,
you might be having a mini-stroke.

~~~
13
I have a bottle of floor cleaner that comes in the exaxt sake bottles that
orange juice does.

~~~
Sir_Substance
I feel like that's probably a flaw in your packaging legislation rather then
with this product. Pretty sure in Australia you're not allowed to package
hazardous liquids in the same bottles as food, and if you are shame on us as
well.

Sure, it might be a problem in the future for people wearing brand obfuscatory
equipment, but it's an inexcusable flaw in your packing laws _right now_
that's endangering anyone with Macular degeneration.

------
stolio
Under "More Info" it says it's built with: Hardware.

Maybe it's a secret, but is it custom hardware? Could a Raspberry Pi handle
this kind of image processing?

------
peterb
I would love it if they could optimize it for specific use cases, such as
removing the advertising on the ice & boards from a televised hockey game.

------
cronin101
Finally, a convenient way to make your daily life resemble any MTV* rap video
from the last two decades.

*Back when MTV actually played music videos.

------
Houshalter
Can we build this into a browser? Instead of trying to modify the html to
remove ads, just blur them out after it's rendered?

~~~
vortico
I like this idea, and it's entirely possible with the CSS `filter:
blur(10px)`.

------
frozenport
Now put up competing adds. Change pepsi to coke. No too far bro.

------
gearhart
Could somebody explain to me this community's fervent objection to
advertising? It seems so out of sync with (y)our usual socially liberal /
libertarian capitalist standpoint.

~~~
coldpie
With few exceptions, an advertiser's job is to convince people to spend money
on things they don't need. Often these things are actively harmful, like soda
or cigarettes. Advertisers use manipulation to achieve these goals. They're
not honest about the pros and cons of a product, they're not informative about
what the product is. Instead they rely on manipulative techniques like catchy
jingles, flashing banner ads, false "experts," or any other number of slimy
techniques to convince people to do things they wouldn't or shouldn't do.

------
c22
When everyone's wearing this I'm gonna dress up as Ronald McDonald and walk
invisibly through the crowds.

~~~
Someone1234
On a related note: I've been thinking about making a t-shirt with the EURion
constellation[0] on it, just to see if I can break some CCTV camera software
(which could be using software image parsing libraries which check for it) or
mess with people's digital photos ("This software does not allow the
unauthorised copying of bank notes")...

Could be fun, but might do nothing at all.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)

~~~
542458
That's a really cool idea, but I don't think it would work.

From wikipedia: "Research shows that the EURion constellation is used for
color photocopiers and is likely not used for computer software."

You can see this with photoshop, where the presence of the constellation does
not appear to affect currency detection.

[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/)

~~~
rangibaby
I don't have a screenshot handy, but I definitely got this error last year
when I tried to open a picture of some bank notes in Photoshop. GIMP had no
such qualms :-)

~~~
Logmix
Seconded. I played around with it for a while as well - creating images in a
different image editing app and then opening them in photoshop to see when the
warning is triggered.

