I wonder how this goes over in conservative countries like Egypt. Is it a scandal of some sort with ample pearl clutching or is it mostly a non-event?
And you might say, "Not everyone wants to see ads!" And totally agree! But like, the people who have to look at this eyesore now have to deal with a different eyesore.
Why not, "This garbage ad remived from your view by hacking group X, you're welcome" and show some pet photos or something? Or like, get clever with it? Run onion or infowars style satire.
Egypt is one of them. There is value in most of the value being in the shock value. Egypt has already done the sorts of things you suggest. It doesn't work. Putting up porn actually makes a lot of sense from a decision matrix perspective here. First of all despite the pretense otherwise Egyptians watch a lot of porn (like most countries). It's sort of a great "in your face" mirror to a country rife with hypocrisy.
It's not like the authorities give much breathing room for more nuanced protest anyway. They're already in for a very unwelcome visit to the slammer if they are caught. Might as well go as transgressive as possible while you still can.
None of these would happen in places that are not invaded by speed of technology and connectedness. Slow is good, not sometimes, but always. Human life is not compatible with things moving at speed of electricity.
But you gave the controlling power to children. The children with science toys want more and more speed, just for fun and profit. They, unfortunately, control the future of human race.
Show a cute picture of Big Bird telling people to eat more pizza, and the company will just reset some passwords. Show a couple of choice scenes from Brazzers and the CEO just got a call from a government minister and suddenly the leaky hardware is getting replaced at breakneck speeds.
Works well too if the goal is just to get people to object to digital billboards.
– for observers on the road, make them more likely to film this and share on social media;
– for news agencies, make them allocate as much coverage as possible for this incident;
– for regular readers, simply to more likely grab theirs attention.
Showing a nice animal or a 'you're welcome' message achieves the goal of removing the ad, but falls short of fixing the root of the problem: the billboard existing. Ad long as it exists, the temptation and incentive to put ads on it also exists.
cowlevel•1h ago
hard_times•53m ago
vdfs•6m ago