I tuned into the NYC new years, and I guess it’s been awhile since I saw images of NYC - holy shit, it looks terrible! HAPPY KIA NEW YEARS! seriously? every inch of building is a scrolling screen. wow.
Yes and no. For ads to make any kind of revenue, you first need an user-base. And if the first thing you do is riddle them with ads, it will probably really hurt the sales.
So, the first generation of smart glasses should be pretty OK as far as ads go. Of course, they will gradually introduce them, but that will hopefully take several years before we get to that point.
And inevitably some FOSS/privacy focused alternative will show up, just like you have with GrapheneOS, PinePhone and similar. Or, assuming they will let developers side-load their apps without going through proprietary store (which may be unlikely, given the current trend of locking everything down - on the other hand, there is a pretty large market of developers who wouldn’t touch anything Apple-level of closed and someone will definitely want to cash in on it), you will eventually get OCR ad-blocks for billboards outside. I bet that would be one of the first apps developed once possible.
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 them 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.
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